2. Dialogue and Other Political Theories

In this chapter I will attempt to show that a dialogue theory might be the best way of avoiding some of the problems that accompany other political theories.  I will discuss how a dialogue theory can avoid several of the weaknesses found in liberalism and communitarianism, and argue that it provides a way of understanding and addressing moral-political disagreement that is superior to the ways suggested by those two main theories.²

We might think that one of the advantages of a dialogue theory over liberalism is that it can offer an alternative to hypothetical contracts based on principles chosen in hypothetical original positions by people ignorant in certain relevant respects.  It is questionable how binding or convincing individuals are likely to find arguments which involve claims about what sorts of principles would have been chosen in a highly abstract and tailored situation.  Arguments based on original-position arrangements for non-discrimination among genders or "races"/ethnic groups seem to be more acceptable than arguments based on original-position arrangements for non-discrimination among comprehensive doctrines and conceptions of the good in determining the political set-up.

It is one thing to say "Imagine that you didn't know whether you were going to be male or female" or "Imagine that you didn't know whether you were going to be Caucasian or African-American".  But conceptions of the good and comprehensive doctrines are more resistant to being stripped away and put beyond the veil of ignorance than other characteristics.  To a person with strong moral convictions and beliefs, it will seem that he is being asked to pretend to know less about the good than he does.  This is problematic because our beliefs about what is good or right form the basis of all our choices.  Such a person may not see ignorance about the good as a "virtuous" kind of ignorance, leading us to principles of nondiscrimination, but rather as a vicious kind of ignorance, like a child unknowingly eating something poisonous or walking on thin ice.  At least on a nonpublic level, most people discriminate in judging conceptions of the good and comprehensive doctrines.  More specifically, each tends to think one's own is the best, and others are good or bad depending on how closely they align with one's own.  In contrast, relatively few people think that their own gender or ethnic group is superior to the others.  It is not the case that they think that their own gender or ethnic group is superior but that superiority should not be reflected in the institutional set-up.  Expecting people to put their conceptions of the good and comprehensive doctrines aside in thinking about an original position seems about as plausible at first glance as expecting a racist to support measures ensuring racial/ethnic equality of opportunity after being exposed to an original position thought-experiment similar to the one Rawls describes.  While possible, it seems unlikely.  Rawls intends the lack of knowledge of one's conception of the good (or at least most of it) in the original position to model the fair terms of cooperation among free and equal citizens who embrace differing reasonable comprehensive doctrines.  But it is not clear that those are the fair terms of social cooperation.  Why would we not, for example, accept a majority vote based on considerations included within the different comprehensive doctrines as fair?  True, those who are outvoted would have to endure a result that they disagreed with, but this is no different than voting on any other matters (say, a candidate for office).  A strong case can be made for "toleration" of a variety of religious, moral, and philosophical doctrines, but this doesn't seem to entail that the only fair terms of social cooperation are those which rely solely on reasons and views common to all.

Another feature of liberalism is the great value it places on maximizing its citizens' freedom and room for self-determination, their right to choose and pursue their own conceptions of the good freely.  Much emphasis is put on keeping the "cultural marketplace" as laissez-faire as possible.  No conception of the good should be favored by the state any more than its rivals; rather, they should each compete on a level playing field for the citizens' allegiance.  This aggressive defense of an individual's right to make a fair, undistorted choice between differing moralities and ways of life makes most sense in the context of a belief that individuals can freely judge between conceptions of the good, evaluate them, and choose the one they like best, however distant it may be from their current conception.³

Here it seems that liberalism generally may be too optimistic of the individual's ability to stand apart from his current conception of the good, from his chosen ends, and from the role he now plays, in order to evaluate them.  This is not to say that we aren't capable of revising our conceptions of the good or choosing different ends or taking on different social roles—it appears that we can to some extent.  But we can only stand so far away from them.  By what measures could we evaluate our conception of the good besides the ones that we have?  We can't stand back from all our values impartially and choose from among them; rather, parts of our conception of the good will be critiqued by other parts of it.  We can choose different ends, but the values which led us to choose the ends we held previously still remain, and limit how different the new ends can be.  We can reject the social roles we find ourselves in and attempt to take on new ones, but the perspective we have with us during the transition will nonetheless be shaped (perhaps strongly) by the role we had before.  Our capacity for self-determination is inevitably limited in this sense.  Liberalism seems to ensnare us in this problematic conception of the person, but dialogue makes no such controversial implications about the extent of human autonomy.

Furthermore, a dialogue theory does not have to make ambitious claims about the possibility or the worth of a morally neutral social/political system.  It does not presuppose that we can simply impose such a system and have all citizens recognize that it is fair to them as they live under it.  It is doubtful whether such a system acceptable to all citizens could be put forth.  It also seems that with several issues, neutrality is impossible.  What kind of decision on the abortion issue would both the pro-choice and pro-life parties find neutral?  The same problem arises with capital punishment, or the institution of universal health care.  There are people who are for and against each side, and the state must take one side or the other. 

One might wonder: even if neutrality were possible, would it be desirable?  I can think of at least two reasons why we might think it wouldn't be.  First, we might think that the law and policies of our society cannot help but teach its citizens morality, and that the morality taught by a neutral liberal framework is a rather thin and empty one.  Many cultural/political conservatives have insisted from time to time that the laws and policies of the state ought to reflect a particular morality, so that it might impress that morality onto the conscience of the citizen.  The law, such people would argue, should be a teacher, instructing its citizens in the right way to live.  Regardless of whether or not the state's policies should indirectly teach morality to its citizens, there is the question of to what extent it actually does.  This extent, it seems to me, might not be negligible.  If we are brought up to be "law-abiding citizens", it seems likely that the categories of what is legal and what is illegal would "rub off" on one's opinions about what is right and wrong.  This seems to be the rationale for opposing the legalization of certain (currently illegal) drugs, for example—that it might send the wrong message by implying that using such drugs is "okay."  In a more general way, the concern with liberalism and the minimization of "morality" in its policies and laws might be that it leaves citizens with a very thin and minimal conception of morality.  A system of laws and policies which does not discriminate at all between different moralities and conceptions of the good and which bans only those activities which infringe on the rights of others might lead to the emergence of a generation of citizens who think that "it really doesn't matter what you do as long as you don't hurt anybody else" and therefore do not care a great deal about their own conceptions of the good.  This seems quite undesirable—even those who are adamant about defending our freedom to choose and pursue a conception of the good might be concerned about such anemic conceptions being selected. 

Secondly, one might think that neutrality is problematic because it might just lead to a proliferation of bad moralities or to the success of a few bad moralities.  Perhaps the liberal's faith in the cultural marketplace's ability to provide an arena for vigorous quality-driving competition among conceptions of the good is too optimistic.  After all, such a view presumes that popularity correlates with the quality of the conception of the good.  Perhaps instead neutrality might degenerate into a refusal to engage in or accept moral criticism.  There may be several (or many) equally good reasonable comprehensive doctrines embraced by different citizens within a society, but not all are equally good, and we may not want to encourage the bad in our attempt to avoid discriminating among the better ones. 

So, we have seen that there a few troublesome aspects of one form of liberalism which dialogue might help us avoid.  This is not to say that no dialogue theory could have these aspects, only that it doesn't need to.  A dialogue theory could get around the unconvincingness of original-position-type arguments by replacing such hypothetical decision-making with an actual dialogue in which the citizen (or his representatives) could participate.  It could evade the difficulties which might stem from the controversial liberal exaltation of self-determination by not implicitly assuming any sort of controversial conception of what a person is.  Furthermore, it could help us get past questions about the possibility and desirability of neutrality by insisting upon neither.  The right system, the dialogue theorist might say, should not be built by attempting to make it neutral (which generally involves relying on controversial assumptions about what is neutral); rather, it can be arrived at through a process of actual dialogue among disagreeing, non-neutral parties.  The fair terms for the society are decided upon in the conversation or by a process decided upon in the conversation rather than being determined a priori. 

A dialogue theory could also be a preferable alternative to a communitarian response to liberalism.  For if liberals seem too naïve about the difficulties involved in surmounting the problem of moral diversity, communitarians don't offer much of a solution at all.  It may be argued that communitarianism doesn't attempt to solve this problem, and thus should not be faulted for its failure to do so.  Still, I would argue, given that moral diversity exists, any political philosophy worth considering ought to at least indicate some possibilities for confronting that problem, and I do not see how a communitarian theory could do so if it tried.  Communitarians talk extensively about how a society ought to have a "politics of the common good" which all citizens abide by, yet the historical exemplars they offer of this kind of society—democracies of Ancient Greece, 17th century New England town governments—are vastly different from ours, being ethically homogenous and unapologetically exclusive in their membership. (Kymlicka 1990, p. 226)  How our society with its moral diversity and the value it places on being inclusive of all within its borders should learn from their example is very difficult to understand.  Communitarians talk about how nice it would be if we all shared a common conception of the good, yet they seem short on suggestions on how to get to such a situation from our current one.  What should be the common good of our society?  Should it be the most popular view of the good?  If so, how could we justify to all the other citizens (with their own conceptions of the good) our asking them to embrace another conception for no reason other than that it happens to be more in fashion at a particular time.  It is not enough to ask them to grudgingly comply with the laws and grudgingly accept the policies of such a society—for a society to thrive from a "politics of the common good" viewpoint, the embracing of the common good by all citizens must be wholehearted.  Yet people cannot change what they hold to be good on command.  The alternative seems to be extreme balkanization, through which we break down into mini-societies which are unified enough in their opinions to have a real "common good".  In either case, communitarianism doesn't seem to offer an attractive solution to our problem of moral diversity, provided we don't want the decomposition of the society we have. 

A dialogue theory could avoid these problems as well.  It acknowledges that as of yet we do not share a common conception of the good, regardless of how superior life in a society with such a common conception would be, and furthermore that there are no good quick and easy ways of getting to that point.  Dialogue theory could be a middle ground for those who are not terribly impressed by liberalism's claims to neutrality but are nonetheless concerned enough about imposing laws and policies on "moral minorities" which conflict with those minorities' convictions to be not too enthusiastic about simply allowing the dominant cultural view to become the common good which society is directed towards, with no diversity allowed.

In an important sense the dialogue theory I am going to argue for is quite different from either the liberal or the communitarian options.  For those seem to address the problem of moral diversity by trying to dissolve it, making it a non-problem.  Liberals try to do this by assuming that a neutrality is possible which is acceptable to all, and that standards of public reason and fair cooperation among free and equal citizens shared by all will keep us to a large degree out of societal trouble by sufficiently deterring citizens from imposing policies which favor their views unreasonably on their disagreeing neighbors.  Communitarians tend to do this by simply wishing aloud for a society without great moral diversity, perhaps implying that the best way to go is to somehow eliminate the moral diversity that we have.  But this dialogue theory says that the problem is real, and cannot not be so easily dissolved as adherents of the other two views think.  It does not dissolve the problem but rather offers a tool to cope with it.

3. Kymlicka appears to be committed to this reather strong view of our freedom and capacity for self-determination.  (Kymlicka 1990, pp. 202-3, 209, 211-215)  Rawls in Political Liberalism, on the other hand, is careful to avoid making any controversial claims about conceptions of persons. (Rawls 1996, pp. 27, 29-35.) [back]