Theories of deliberative democracy have faced the charge of leading to the unjust exclusion of voices from public deliberation. The recent rhetorical turn in deliberative theory aims to respond to this charge. I distinguish between two variants of this response: the supplementing approach and the systemic approach. On the supplementing approach, rhetorical modes of political speech may legitimately supplement the deliberative process, for the sake of those excluded from the latter. On the systemic approach, rhetorical modes of political speech are (...) legitimate within public deliberation, just so long as they result in net benefits to the deliberative system. I argue that neither of these two approaches adequately meets the unjust exclusion charge. Whereas the supplementing approach does not go far enough to incorporate rhetorical speech into public deliberation, the systemic approach goes too far by legitimizing forms of rhetoric that risk only exacerbating the problem of unjust exclusion. More constructively, I draw on Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric, as an art that is a counterpart to dialectic, to argue for a constitutive approach to rhetoric. I show how this approach provides a more expansive notion of deliberation that remains normatively orientated. (shrink)

Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s work, I argue that neither of the two standard accounts of forgiveness offer an adequate understanding of forgiveness. Conditional accounts insist on specifying the conditions an offender needs to satisfy in order to count as deserving of forgiveness. I argue that such accounts not only render forgiveness unintelligible (since forgiveness is intelligibly offered only to the offender qua offender), but also dissolve the ethical decision forgiveness demands of us. Unconditional accounts promise to do justice to both (...) by insisting that forgiveness is a freely granted gift offered to the guilty as guilty. But I argue that when pressed to justify why one should forgive unconditionally and how one avoids the threat of condoning, they typically fall back onto the conditionalist’s ground and lose the electivity of forgiving. I conclude by arguing that genuine forgiveness would have to be purely unconditional but could never appear as such. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to bring into view an ethical task that we face when grieving the loss of a loved one. That task is to see the independent reality of the lost other. I shall do so through a reading of C. S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed. I shall try to show that Lewis’s struggle to see the independent reality of his wife, Joy, provides an important, and troubling, insight into what it means for us to grieve (...) well. Lewis’s account forces us to reflect on a key, but largely overlooked, assumption in contemporary philosophical accounts of grief, namely, that we do indeed see the independent reality of the lost other. Lewis’s account reveals that the struggle to see the lost other is at the same time a struggle to escape deeply-rooted aspects of the self. (shrink)

Theories of deliberative democracy have faced the charge of leading to the unjust exclusion of voices from public deliberation. The recent rhetorical turn in deliberative theory aims to respond to this charge. I distinguish between two variants of this response: the supplementing approach and the systemic approach. On the supplementing approach, rhetorical modes of political speech may legitimately supplement the deliberative process, for the sake of those excluded from the latter. On the systemic approach, rhetorical modes of political speech are (...) legitimate within public deliberation, just so long as they result in net benefits to the deliberative system. I argue that neither of these two approaches adequately meets the unjust exclusion charge. Whereas the supplementing approach does not go far enough to incorporate rhetorical speech into public deliberation, the systemic approach goes too far by legitimising forms of rhetoric that risk only exacerbating the problem of unjust exclusion. More constructively, I draw on Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric, as an art that is a counterpart to dialectic, to argue for a constitutive approach to rhetoric. I show how this approach provides a more expansive notion of deliberation that remains normatively orientated. (shrink)

Abstract A principle aim of this paper is to convince friends and critics of deconstruction that they have overlooked two crucial aspects of Derrida's work, namely, his rearticulation of the concept of experience and his account of the experience of undecidability as an ordeal. This is important because sensitivity to Derrida's emphasis on the ordeal of undecidability and his rearticulation of the concept of experience-a rearticulation that is already under way in his early engagement with Husserl and continued in later (...) work-necessitates a rethinking of what the `experience of undecidability' entails. Rather than signaling a withdrawal from politics or a normatively impotent ethics of `mere openness to the other,' Derrida's account of the experience of undecidability not only points to a fundamental aspect of our basic ethical experience but also leads to a number of ethico-political demands, which I summarize as the demand to maintain an ethos of interruption. (shrink)

Our political climate is increasingly characterised by hostility towards constructed others. Steven Gormley answers the question: what does it mean to do justice to others? He pursues this question by developing a critical, but productive, dialogue between deliberative theory and deconstruction. Two key claims emerge from this. First: doing justice to the other demands that we maintain an ethos of interruption. And secondly: Such an ethos requires a democratic form of politics. In developing this account, Gormley places deliberative theory and (...) deconstruction into critical conversation with the work of Mouffe, Aristotle, Rorty, Laclau and different traditions of critical theory. (shrink)