The other and pluralism in contemporary theory of democracy: A assessment on Seyla Benhabib

Today, communities which marked with certain boundaries, contain many "others", both inside and outside. On the other hand, this state of otherness, brings with it plurality which is one of the most important subject of our era. The plurality situation and its increasing visibility, which has become one of the central problems of democracy, brings demands for the need to restructure and construct democracy, especially with the intellectual effect of globalization and postmodernism. Seyla Benhabib puts forward a solution proposal for these demands. At this point, the hypothesis of the study is that based on the assumption that identity/self and meanings attributed to the "other" contribute to the shaping of pluralism, Benhabib offers an expanded pluralistic democracy alternative. The aim of the study is basically to evaluate Benhabib's alternative, which focuses on how to achieve pluralism where the self and the "other" are together. Correspondingly, the study aims to show Benhabib's position in terms of "other" and identity approaches, and how her understanding of pluralism is constructed in terms of these identity and other approaches. Within this framework, the scope of the study consists of the identity and the "other" approach which we reached to the pluralism understanding of Benhabib, as well as the deliberative democracy model and the understanding of inclusion or exclusion practices based on this model. The importance of the study is revealed in that it presents an assessment that will respond to the situation of plurality, which is seen as one of the main problematics of today's democracy, and contributes to the theory of pluralism with a perspective based on identity and "other". In this study, Benhabib's works were handled with the method of notional analysis and in the same time, the literature on the subject was consulted. In this sense, something has been learned about how benhabib's teachings of a systematic system, how it is played. As a result of this study, it has been concluded that Benhabib offers a pluralistic alternative with moral, political and legal ground and the foundations of this alternative are laid with identity and "other" approaches. Keywords: Benhabib, Pluralism, Identity, Other, Deliberative Democracy, Democratic Iterations