Within a Dialogic Ethic: Listening in/and Public Rhetoric

• In Event: Scholar to Scholar VII
  In Paper Session: Ethics and (of) Listening

Abstract

This paper extends work on a dialogic ethic in public rhetoric (Arneson 2008), describing how Hans-Georg Gadamers philosophical hermeneutics and Krista Ratcliffe’s rhetorical listening provide ethical ground for speaker-listener(s) within a rhetorical situation. Hermeneutical reflection, as a form of critical questioning and dialogue between different horizons or world views, makes judgment possible. Rhetorical listening provides a means for questioning the logos at play with/in texts by turning listening from a receptive process into a process of invention. A dialogic ethic grounded in interpretive understanding provides an approach for ethically reconstituting understanding for social action. This work considers impulses for phenomenologically attending to a dialogic ethic and maintaining such a stance in the face of resistance from others. The role of acknowledgment, care, and listening within the historical moment will be attended to in a rhetorical case study.

Author

• Pat Arneson, Duquesne University