한국윤리교육학회

This article examines the politico-ethical problem of democracy and populism, focusing on the existential implication of people. I argue that it is necessary to understand classical philosophical insights into the being of people as a problematic foundation of democracy in order to grasp the recurrent problem of populism. In these days, the widespread phenomena of populism show a significant critique of social reality, which contains the existential question of people alienated from the established powers of political elites and other influential socio-economic factions. While the movement of populism implies a negative effect of severly attacking the existing order of democratic institutions, it also discloses a positive aspect of raising serious questions about how to reconstruct the genuine sense of democracy. This ambivalent possibility of populism allows us to reconsider the ethical ground of democracy that must secure the best-possible modes of popular coexistence. Accordingly, this research starts from illuminating the question of being revealed in the contemporary philosophical thinking and its relationship to the existential question of people; then, it analyzes how the modern political thoughts of the democratic republic attempt to embrace the existential fragmentation of popular factions into a dynamic political community; finally, I show how these contemporary and modern ways of understanding the problem of people lead us to disclose ancient philosophical views about the ethical problem of popular freedom and political friendship in a deeper sense. Thereby, this article suggests a practical possibility of political ethics to confront the recurrent question of populism in carefully seeking the proper way of maintaining democratic regime.