Chapter 6 emphasizes the Court’s practice pertaining to freedom of expression Article 10) and freedom of assembly and reunion (Article 11). It underlines ‘deliberative pluralism’ as the core principle relevant to tackle the populist erosion of democracy. However, while the Court puts emphasis on deliberative pluralism in its proportionality analysis, the Court only adduces minimal infrastructural guarantees that may be perverted by populist governments, such as ‘procedural guarantees’, while the scrutiny of media bodies and the larger media landscape remains largely cosmetic. This is reflected most prominently in a limited and parsimonious proportionality analysis.

Abstract: In this chapter, Garchar applies Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy to the concept of dying well, shifting the focus from death as a passive event to dying as an active, process-oriented experience. As Garchar argues, Dewey’s framework emphasizes the continuity of life and death, embedding dying within social, environmental, and communal relationships. Dewey sees life as a process of interruption and recovery, where individuals grow through interactions with their environments. Garchar shows that this model extends to dying, which is not an isolated event but a communal process shaped by relationships and social structures. Recognizing this continuity allows for the cultivation of environments that support both living and dying well. Habits, often unquestioned, structure human experience. In end-of-life care, rigid habits – such as aggressive medical interventions – can prevent meaningful engagement with dying. Dewey’s emphasis on deliberation and imagination invites critical reflection on these habits, encouraging more humane and flexible approaches to end-of-life experiences. Garchar concludes that dying well requires active participation, including open discussions about death and structural changes in healthcare and social norms. Rather than seeing death as a battle, Dewey’s pragmatism reframes dying as an opportunity for reflection, growth, and intentionality – aligning with Epicurus’ insight that “living well and dying well are one.”

Abstract: This chapter provides an account of Dewey’s treatment of deliberation in Human Nature and Conduct (1922). Dewey presents deliberation as a dynamic, imaginative process of self-discovery rather than mere calculation. Instead, deliberation functions as a dramatic rehearsal of possible actions, shaping both our choices and our character. Rejecting mechanistic views that treat deliberation as weighing pros and cons, Dewey argues that it involves moral experimentation – imagining different paths and exploring what kind of person we wish to become. It is a process of self-constitution, revealing both external facts and internal values. As Heney illustrates, deliberation, for Dewey, is not just about decision-making but about shaping identity and moral growth. Dewey highlights deliberation’s social dimensions, emphasizing that moral understanding develops through interactions with others. The chapter illustrates how this aligns with his pragmatist ethics, which values flexibility, inquiry, and adaptation over rigid principles. Heney situates Dewey’s view within contemporary decision-making debates. While other approaches focus on responding to reasons, Dewey sees deliberation as transformative. Hard choices are not just about selecting the best option – they are opportunities to construct a meaningful life and actively shape the world we inhabit.

Since the 1930s there have been intense debates about how far democracy can go to protect itself against its enemies. Hans Kelsen’s antagonistic relationship to militant democracy is well established in the literature and is not controversial. First, this chapter anchors Kelsen’s opposition to militant democracy more deeply and systematically in his own theory of democracy. This sheds light on the reasons why his opposition to militant democracy remained consistently immune to the defeat of democracies – as painfully observed in the 1930s – and to the conviction, shared by many of his contemporaries, that such vulnerability legitimises the prevention of anti-democratic parties from abusing the democratic process. Second, the chapter challenges the common view that Kelsen’s rejection of militant democracy would have no contemporary adherents. It discusses similarities and discontinuities between Kelsen and a new generation of thinkers who also express doubts about militant democracy. In doing so, the chapter offers a fresh look at the strengths and weaknesses of Kelsen’s perspective on militant democracy and assesses its influence on the issue in contemporary literature.

This chapter presents a neo-Aristotelian account of stakeholder deliberation, arguing that a range of virtues is needed to ensure that consensus among stakeholders with large power imbalances is based on trust and authentic deliberation rather than zero-sum competitive interactions. We identify three stylized phases of stakeholder deliberation that highlight how the need to cope with vulnerability drives interactions with other stakeholders that, in turn, foster the development of a range of deliberative virtues. In the first phase, involving the acknowledgment of dependence and vulnerability, the virtues of justice, mercy, and benevolence help mitigate stakeholder myopia by enabling weaker voices to be heard. In the second phase, involving the establishment of common ground, the virtue of benevolence plays a crucial role in overcoming differences in modes of discourse by creating trust and goodwill between stakeholders and preventing deliberative processes from devolving into merely self-interested posturing and negotiation. In the third phase, the virtues of justice, courage, honesty, and practical wisdom reduce the risk of decoupling, ensuring that deliberative processes promote the flourishing of diverse market actors.

Abstract: This chapter considers the moral potentialities of science education in the atomic age through the lens of Dewey’s Human Nature and Conduct (1922). Science education involves moral, ethical, social, economic, industrial, and political issues that go beyond the mere possession of scientific knowledge and the acquisition of skills. The education of scientifically literate citizens has become increasingly important of late. Izawa looks specifically at science education in Japan, showing that although Japanese students maintain relatively high academic achievements in science and mathematics, and their science literacy is high, science education in Japan is still on a new growth path; social and political interests in science and technology have not yet fully matured. This chapter illuminates how science education requires greater cultivation of political citizens who engage in moral and ethical issues. The chapter considers Dewey’s insights into not only the destructive use of science but also its peaceful use and links this with discussions in environmental ethics. Izawa discusses the implications of Dewey’s view for science education today by examining the case of Japan. He concludes that science education focused on the moral potential of physical science requires the creation of conditions for maturing environmental justice and enriching deliberative democracy.

Carla Bagnoli takes up a worry about Kant’s version of constitutivism about moral norms, which says that the norms of rationality are too abstract to account for the exercise of rational agency and fail to do justice to the significance that the consequences of action have for moral assessment. Bagnoli argues that: (i) the constitutive norms of practical reason are not meant to provide normative reasons for action by themselves. So, the incompleteness of constitutivism about practical reason is not a bug, but an essential feature of the constitutivist agenda; (ii) the full story about determining rational action includes reference to the consequences, which are importantly comprised in the Kantian account of the agent’s description of the action under assessment; (iii) to explain how this works, it is best to deploy a strategy that deserves to be called Aristotelian – that of placing action in its circumstances.

This chapter argues that fundamental problems limit ESG’s potential benefits for society and can be traced back to ESG’s initial conceptualization in the early 2000s in the advent of the United Nation’s Global Compact initiative. ESG from the very beginning has been built, on the one hand, on the premise of promoting institutional investors’ interests at the expense of critical stakeholders’ concerns and, on the other hand, on quite idealistic assumptions about the proper functioning of markets and states. Drawing from the theory of deliberative democracy, this chapter develops suggestions of how ESG could become more beneficial to people and planet by making the ESG investing system, understood as an organized set of actors and procedures, more inclusive, argumentative, and consequential with a view on societal rather than investors’ benefits. The chapter proposes that incorporating deliberation in the governance structure of rating agencies specifically is one way to do so.

In the West, liberty and equality emerged as individual rights from theological speculations about the nature of God and human beings, and the relationship of human beings to each other and to God. It was a natural theology in which God is beneficent and glorifies in what God has created, having made a world in which it is possible for human beings to pursue happiness. Derived primarily from the writings of John Locke, that natural theology was embraced and expanded upon by Thomas Jefferson and articulated in the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration’s natural theology foundation holds that liberty serves God’s purpose: preservation of creation and flourishing in the pursuit of happiness. And liberty is equal liberty because, as Locke’s philosophy and Jefferson’s Declaration proclaim, human beings’ equality is more than a right; it is a fact of creation. For Locke and Jefferson, and for the “American mind” of the founding era, the theology underlying the Declaration implies duties to one another. Without such obligations beyond the self, egoism would lead to confusion as everyone would assert their own interests, and God’s purpose would not be realized.