Irrationality and the Public Sphere: Constructing a Post-Discursive Politics

• In Event: Challenging Pluralism: Political Violence and Sabotage

Abstract

In these increasingly irrational times, a common response has been to wax nostalgic for a political era when civil, rational debate was the norm. Claiming roots in works like John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration and James Madison’s Federalist #10 and #51, this nostalgia yearns for a form of democratic politics in which the public sphere is imagined as a discursive realm in which reason reveals the truth. However, this paper argues that this discursive approach to politics has rarely served the truth, but instead has often obscured it, and that certain forms of incivility are actually the rhetorical mechanisms by which deliberative democracy can be saved.

Specifically, rather than focusing on the substantive content of a speakers opinion, this paper argues that the truth of our opinions often resides in the underlying motive that led to our belief, and that without a willingness to engage in the incivility of personal attacks this truth cannot be revealed. And while this might seemingly lead to a public sphere in which ad hominem arguments reign, the purpose of this paper lies in advancing a methodology by which these motivations can be revealed, so that they can be interrogated without devolving public discourse into little but unfounded personal attacks. That is, this paper argues that with the proper methodology, legitimate personal attacks can be made, and that these personal attacks are a necessary tool for establish a public sphere that is not only formally democratic, but that is normatively democratic too.

Drawing on works in Ancient philosophy, including those of Socrates and Plato, and reinterpreting them through the lens of modern thinkers, such as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, this paper demonstrates that the tole that motivation—or will—plays in the formation of our beliefs has long been a subtext of Western political thought, but one that has been insufficiently acknowledged by proponents of discursive politics. However, by drawing out this subtext it is possible to reappraise the role of public reason, putting this new conceptions in conversation with proponents of public reason such as John Rawls, so that deliberative democracy can be better inoculated against the irrationality that currently dominates it. Ultimately, as this paper argues, public reason is not a means to the end of deliberative democracy, but the end itself, and as such, it requires other tools for its achievements. And these tools require a willingness to engage in forms of politics and discourse upon which our notions of public reason might, one day, frown.

Author

• Jamie Aroosi, St. Olaf College