How fixing Najib’s new cabinet has been a good fix for Mahathir

Developing a democratic society

A democratic society may develop itself only by generating culture not as an abstract body of superior knowledge but as a complex dialogue that must never come to rest. In fact, democracy must become a lived philosophy, which it can only do by refusing absolute truth and its attached totalitarian regimes. The only hope of a democratic politics is to form citizens who articulate their own practical needs, freely and unencumbered by the pressures of simplistic and lazy metaphysical systems.

The political message of philosophy after the end of modernity is that there is nothing outside our human and natural community. Philosophers must understand problems as rooted in society. The danger is that philosophers become alienated from communities – as has happened to so many analytical philosophers. We therefore submit that philosophy must subordinate itself to the political demands of democracy.

Mahathir confuses ponderousness with deliberateness, equates yelling as emphasizing, and thinks that furrowing his forehead as being in profound thought.  In the hands of  Najib gifted actor, those could be great comedic acts.  Alas, Najib is also far from being that.there was nothing in Najib’s   new cabinet  that was so urgent or important to justify that.  As self-professed champions and defenders of transformation,

Mahathir’s remark that he still ‘remains active in politics’ to pursue his ‘dream to make Malaysia the greatest nation.’ Both the timing and the substance of these comments have predictably raised eye-brows. Why did Najib say what he did when there is a growing clamour within the Najib’s cabinet to project Najib as the party’s mascot for the UMNO elections? And why has the veteran  Mahathir thrown his hat in the ring in all but the name when the cadres have in overwhelming numbers made known their preference Mahyuddin ?Against this background it made sense for Mahyuddin ? to not rule himself either in or out of the succession battle. To rule himself out would have meant reducing himself to playing a lame-duck role for the remaining term of the BN  GOVERNMENT. And to rule himself in would have rubbed both the -for-PM  and other wannabe prime ministerial candidates in his party

Democracy never arrives at a resting place – it is always under revision, refinement and revaluation

From a political point of view people still believe in nostalgic and dangerous ideas like “objectivity” “reality”, “truth” and “values” as a precondition for democracy. But believers in absolutes forget a crucial lesson borne out of the historic record namely, that the tide of secularisation is irreversible and remains inextricably bound-up in the human condition. This reality necessarily checks and harnesses the search for fanatical, absolute truth-claims that, we maintain, are contrary to the very nature of democracy.

Indeed the demand democracy places on us is therefore a commitment to maximising critical, open dialogue whilst maintaining a minimal peaceable solidarity among different social and political actors. We thus submit the need to dispense with arrogant notions of truth opting instead for more temperate and humble philosophical programmes, ones that, for example help nurture a larger more volatile discourse of human flourishing.

It is worth briefly examining the logic that appeals to claims that are absolute and beyond the reach of history. From the birth of religion and early philosophy the ever-changing natural world was interpreted as threatening, chaotic and unpredictable. This further resulted in a neurosis, which was only cured, it was thought, when the threatening material world of change was a result of a more fundamental unchanging, immaterial idea, or a God.

By appealing to absolute moral foundations, or a God, or Truth, any disagreement could be resolved so long as everyone agreed with the final appeal pronounced by the ruling class. And if there was disagreement, the rulers in power, like political or religious authorities, could be justified in exacting violence against a dissenter.

Pragmatic and hermeneutical approach

The danger in this metaphysical universe was that only the King or Pope (or the philosopher-king) could discern what the true will of God (or Reason) was on earth without question or criticism. In this way, an eternal, unchecked idea was given moral justification beyond the reach of democratic discourse. Consequently, unjust political regimes could get away with implementing their power in the name of the Almighty or an idea.

It is little wonder that one minor tradition in Greek philosophy, the Platonic legacy, was quickly adapted into the Greek and later Roman Empire, as Peter Sloterdijk has recently argued. This legacy could then easily be transferred into the hegemony of Christianity in the form of the Roman Catholic Empire, which neutralised many other divergent Christian, religious, pagan and philosophical traditions in order to alight as an absolute authority both religious and political. This set the stage for the spread of the Islamic Empire in the 7th century.

By contrast, we submit that history and not religion (or unchecked Reason) must be taken seriously as opposed to idealising absolutes, which, in political theologies, only serve as flimsy veils behind which violent and inflexible premises invariably lurk. It is difficult not to interpret mainstream religious ideology and its historical reality as employing appeals to almighty God as a means to dominate the cultural, political, moral and even economic discourse.

By contrast, when, for example, Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government excluding all others, what he meant was that you cannot find a better system if you take history seriously. This is a pragmatic and hermeneutical approach, which entails a modest style committed to an experimentation and perpetual improvement on inevitable shortcomings.