https://theloop.ecpr.eu/democracy-requires-description-not-explanation/

Hojjatollah Sadeqi invites us into his metaphor of democracy as a city. What he means by this, in my understanding, is that a city acts as a perfect metaphor for knowledge on democracy.

This is because the information available to us about democracy is both immense and diverse, with lots of people contributing to it and engaging with it from across time, space, ethnicity, and language. Sounds like a city, no?

Consider the following lines from Sadeqi:

"When asked 'what is democracy?', we confront a question seeking descriptive answer. It is not a normative question like 'why is democracy important?' which tends to an explanative answer. The purpose of offering a descriptive answer to 'what is democracy?' is to describe the existence of it. Nothing more, nothing less. This, Wittgenstein says in his own way, is the responsibility of the philosopher."

Sadeqi's point (via Ludwig Wittgenstein) is that our city of democracy, whilst immense and diverse and full of peoples, is presently dark and difficult to see. The job of the philosopher is to illuminate the city through meticulous description and, only after that, explain it. In other words, first we must complete empirical work and only after that generate strong theory from this foundation.

What do you think about all this?

https://theloop.ecpr.eu/democracy-requires-description-not-explanation/