Beyond politics: Rethinking the future of democracy

The problem of order is central to all societies. Bacon, Hobbes and Smith each proposed to resolve the problem of order by investing moral authority in a "Leviathan" that would guarantee order: science, state and market, respectively. Later scholars adapted their works to other ends. But putting the Leviathans into practice had the unintended effect of relieving individuals of moral responsibility and creating widespread disorder. Widespread networks of democracy in all spheres of social life are proposed as an alternative solution to the problem of order, one that encourages the collective discovery of moral values. Such networks put moral responsibility neither on the shoulders of individuals where it becomes crushingly heavy, nor on society where it becomes unbearably light.