Reason and Democracy

Kant's notion of Pure Practical Reason is, at least in part, derived from Rousseau's idea of a Democratic General Will--personal rational interests are conditioned by Universal Reason. Kant thus both Rationalizes Democracy and democratizes Reason. Less obvious is a democratization of Reason elsewhere in his System. When he briefly alludes to the categories of traditional Logic in his development of Transcendental Logic, he effectively is demonstrating how the former is derived from the latter. That is, he is showing how Logic, traditionally regarded as having a supernatural origin, is no more than a refined expression of cognitive processes that are intrinsic to every ordinary experience of anybody. Peirce's Pragmatist treatment of Logic similarly implicitly democratizes it, by showing how reasoning is ingredient in most ordinary behavior, and Dewey does so explicitly, by explaining how the split between Theoretical and Practical Reason, with priority accorded to the former, is historically the product of class distinctions. Contemporary Analytic Philosophy, with its attempt by a few specialists to treat Language as applied theoretical Logic, is, despite its debt to Peirce, thus, a reaction against the democratization of Reason. So, efforts such as Wittgenstein's 'language games', and the notion here of Preception, which extends Peirce's study of the Logical role of Language in all behavior, is, with respect to Analytic Philosophy, a further democratization of Reason.