The Limits of Dialogue in Ethical Understanding

• In Event: Democracy, Dialogue, and Democratic Design in Education

Abstract

Drawing on conceptual resources available in the work of Charles Taylor, I argue that dialogue should be understood as interdependent with a quieting of the conceptual mind in order to cultivate ethical insight. Taylor argues that articulation grants people access to a sense of what is good. But Taylor’s emphasis on articulation is difficult to reconcile with his description of the relationship between language and moral orientation. Building on Taylor, I argue that education meant to cultivate students’ capacity for judgments of what is good such as in ethical, social, and political issues might be enhanced through practices that place students’ capacity to produce reasons through dialogue in relationship to their receptivity to non-verbal insight.

Author

• Rachel Lee Wahl, University of Virginia