Conciencia Democrática

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Origin

The word as
public responsibility

This journal starts from a simple conviction: to write with care, in freedom and with arguments is one of the possible ways of caring for democracy. The moral reference is the White Rose — a core of students and professors connected to the University of Munich who, between 1942 and 1943, wrote and distributed leaflets against the National Socialist regime. They had no powerful organization, no media of their own: they had the written word, moral arguments and a public conscience that refused to remain silent. We do not turn them into myth or emblem; we take them as a sober reminder.

A memory

The White Rose —Die Weiße Rose— was a core of students and professors linked to the University of Munich who, between 1942 and 1943, wrote and distributed pamphlets against the National Socialist regime. They had no powerful organisation and no media of their own: they had the written word, moral arguments and a public conscience that refused to remain silent. Several of its members were arrested and condemned by the regime. Their memory remains as one of the most sober and demanding expressions of moral resistance against totalitarianism.

Revista Conciencia Democrática does not claim to compare itself to the White Rose or to continue their story. From that memory it takes a measured inspiration: the written word as a form of public responsibility, conscience in the face of authoritarianism, and the defence of human dignity.

Memory of the White Rose

Their names are not recalled to build a myth but to put faces to a form of responsibility: to write, to discuss and to act when human dignity was denied by power.

Sophie Scholl
Biology and philosophy student · 1921–1943
Her name became associated with youthful conscience against totalitarianism and the decision not to remain silent.
Hans Scholl
Medical student · 1918–1943
Sophie's brother. From the start he took part in the writing and distribution of the pamphlets.
Christoph Probst
Medical student · 1919–1943
Father of three. His figure is a reminder that resistance also grew from friendship and shared study.
Alexander Schmorell
Medical student · 1917–1943
Member of the initial core. He contributed to the early texts and to the group's intellectual formation.
Willi Graf
Medical student · 1918–1943
He extended the distribution network of the writings to other German universities.
Kurt Huber
Professor of philosophy and musicology · 1893–1943
His presence ties the memory to the responsibility of teaching against totalitarian power.

What orients the publication

Three commitments order this journal. None of them is new: they belong to the common vocabulary of contemporary humanist, liberal-democratic and republican thought. The complete list of editorial commitments can be read in Principles.

Human dignity

Prior to any law and any circumstantial majority. Each person as an end in themselves, not as a means for a policy, an ideology, a collective identity or an economic project. Dignity assumes effective conditions —education, work, health, housing, freedom of conscience— without which formal rights become rhetoric.

Liberal democracy

Understood as a way of organising public life: individual rights protected by the State, division of functions, reciprocal checks, freedom of the press and of expression, alternation, pluralism. A fragile architecture that only stands with attentive citizenry and solid institutions.

Republic

The law above the will of whoever governs; the separation of powers as a condition of liberty; public responsibility as the natural counterpart of any delegated authority. Institutions are not conceived here as obstacles to the popular will, but as its stable form.

“In order that power should not be abused, it is necessary that, by the very disposition of things, power should be a check to power.”
— Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, XI, 4 (1748)

The name

Conciencia Democrática names at once a condition and a practice. Condition: every democracy needs to look at itself, to recognise its errors and its limits. Practice: that conscience is built publicly —by reading, writing, discussing—. The journal keeps its distance from militant epic just as from technical indifference.

On the founding

Revista Conciencia Democrática was founded by Juan Tomás Jara Masson, BA in International Relations from the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, doctoral candidate in Political Science and holder of a diploma in Humanistic Leadership from the same university. The publication arises from a concern for human dignity, liberal democracy, the republic and the responsibility of the public word.

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