Abstract:

This might seem a surprising topic for a U.S. philosopher who lives in a political climate of deep and heated moral and political disagreement, a climate in which many of the contestants seem so determined not to compromise that they barely take the trouble to comprehend the other side’s reasons or adopt the most cynical construal of its motivations. My hypothesis, however, is that this kind of conflict is a symptom of our inability to tolerate disagreement, much less to value it. If we fail to address the psychological dispositions, institutional incentives, and cultural norms that sustain this inability, calls for deliberative democracy will remain quixotic. We must decide which psychological dispositions to try to cultivate, whether we have the right mix of incentives in place, and what our current cultural norms both say about us, and how these norms shape us.