Discursive democracy

The conditions for learning within the context of an ideal speech situation are social and material rather than linguistic in character. Scale is important. A community should be large enough to encompass a diversity of perspectives, yet small enough to enable participants to know each other personally.

A community is no more than an enclave of shared interest unless there is interdependence. Community members need each other and, regardless of role or status, need to feel that their voices are being heard. Participants in discourse will be inhibited, silenced or forced to adopt radical strategic action if they are faced with communicative interactions that are blatantly asymmetrical or distorted by excessive role privilege.

HERE TO LEARN

Institutional learning is our relentless and formidable task; our very survival may depend on it. We learn continually as we go about our daily face-to-face interactions with the people we know intimitely and also in more formal encounters as we go about our business in our local institutions; but, our greatest challenge is to learn in tandem with anonymous others in the larger global arena.

In a shrinking world which is becoming ever more complex, the manifestations of incommensurabile perspectives will only intensify. Conflicts will increase. Our new global reality requires maximum responsiveness to continuous and unforeseeable change and lest we forget that the very sustainability of the planet is at stake. Our very survival may hinge on the right kind of ongoing, collaborative learning in our giant corporate and political institutions. Being here—to learn—more than ever before is our precarious and fragile predicament.

Andrew Brown (2005) Figure. Pastel, ink and charcoal on paper

SOURCES FOR DISCURSIVE DEMOCRACY

MAXINE GREENE

American Philosopher of Education

J. M. Bernstein (1995: 49) describes an aspect of Habermas’ schema which is of pivotal significance:

One can think of these four validity claims as conforming to the different dimensions of reality with respect to which all speech actions are related in virtue of being uttered; and as a consequence, as representing the different dimensions in which communicative interaction can break down.

Bernstein reminds us of the significance of power and privilege in this context. He notes that “not everyone has the right, for example, to tell me what to do or not to do, arrest or punish me, fail an essay, give a degree, or grant absolution” (1995: 49). He offers the following cautionary words which relate to the broader aspirations of Habermas’ ideas:

In thinking of a discourse free from distorted communication we are imagining an ideal speech situation... strategic motivations and inhibitions will not be overcome if the norms binding agents are not symmetrical, that is participants to dialogue must neither possess role privileges, nor be subjected to one-sidedly binding norms. The conditions for an ideal speech situation are not then linguistic in character; rather, they are social and material conditions.

Bernstein, J. M. (1995) Recovering Ethical Life: Jurgen Habermas and the Future of Critical Theory. London: Routledge.

J.M. BERNSTEIN

American Philosopher

Maxine Greene insists (1988: 16-17) that individuals in a genuine community must be “authentically present to one another” and involved in a “project they can mutually pursue.” She also echoes Hannah Arendt’s call for the capacity to begin anew in the public sphere when she (1988: 4) declares that participants must be able to pinpoint “a world that can be to some extent transformed”:

When people cannot name alternatives, imagine a better state of things, share with others a project of change, they are likely to remain anchored or submerged, even as they proudly assert their autonomy (1988: 9).

Greene, Maxine (1988) The Dialectic of Freedom. New York : Teachers’ College Press.

Ricoeur offers a communicative model—like the ideal speech situations of Habermas—which is not only useful as a benchmark for political critique, but also, in a very practical sense, a legitimate social order worth striving for. He affirms (1992: 258) that:

[d]emocracy is not a political system without conflicts but a system in which conflicts are open and negotiable in accordance with recognized rules of arbitration. In a society which is ever more complex, conflicts will not diminish in number and in seriousness but will multiply and deepen. For the same reason, the free access of the pluralism of opinions to public expression is neither an accident or an illness nor a misfortune; it is the expression of the fact that the public good cannot be decided in a scientific or dogmatic manner. There is no place from which this good can be viewed and determined in a manner so absolute that discussion can be held to be closed. Political discussion is without conclusion although it is not without decision.

Ricoeur, Paul (1992) Oneself as Another. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

PAUL RICOEUR

French Philosopher [1915-2005]

The essential elements of the notion of proportional equality have been eloquently framed by Wittgenstein scholar Hanna Pitkin (1972: 303):

The real problems and subtleties of justice only begin, and therefore its real nature can only be studied or displayed, where we find unequal, different people, with different needs and abilities, different claims and deserts, so that the problem is assigning different but precisely appropriate things to each.

Pitkin, Hannah Fenichel (1972) Wittgenstein and Justice. Berkeley : University of California Press.

HANNA PITKIN

American Political Theorist