A Moral Compass for a Practical Discipline: Metaethics and the Metamodel

• In Event: Liberalism, Rights, Normativity, and the Good Life

Abstract

Because the cultivation of “praxis through critical study” (Craig, 1989, p. 107)—the central goal of practical discipline—requires both practical and ethical reflexivity, metatheory ought to orient scholarly activities and define evaluative criteria according both pragmatic and ethical principles. In this essay, I argue that a lack of metaethical groundwork limits the possibilities for praxical engagement within the dialogical–dialectical coherence of Craig’s (1999) constitutive metamodel of communication theory, and also leaves the pragmatic principle that undergirds the metamodel vulnerable to critique on grounds of moral relativism. As a remedial measure, I advocate for an infusion of Levinasian ethics into the pragmatic moorings of the metamodel. The result is an ethically grounded pragmatism that guides and grounds the field of communication theory and addresses a critical deficiency in the metamodel without introducing moral absolutism into the metatheoretical superstructure.

Author

• Joanne C. Esch, University of Colorado