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223 Praxis, Practical Discourse rational argumentation always presupposes the plurality of opinions that are tested and purified in communal debate. Paradoxically, despite Arendt's understanding of the coercive power of "truth" and of what she takes to be cognition proper, she thinks argumentation (as debate) is irrelevant to truth and cognition. But this tells us more about her peculiar (and inadequate) conception of truth and cognition than it does about her positive analysis of judgment, which always presupposes intersubjective and communal argumentation.95 BEYOND OBJECTIVISM AND RELATIVISM: THE PRACTICAL TASK Throughout my discussion of Gadamer, Habermas, Rorty, and Arendt, I have sought to elicit the common concerns that they share, without denying the important differences among them. In all of them we have felt a current that keeps drawing us to the central themes of dialogue, conversation, undistorted communication, communal judgment, and the type of rational wooing that can take place when individuals confront each other as equals and participants. We have been made aware of the practical and political consequences of these concepts-for as we explore their implications, they draw us toward the goal of cultivating the types of dialogical communities in which phronesis, judgment, and practical discourse become concretely embodied in our everyday practices. Such a vision is not antithetical to an appreciation of the depth and pervasiveness of conflict-of the agon-which characterizes our theoretical and practical lives. On the contrary; this vision is a response to the irreducibility of conflict grounded in human plurality. But plurality does not mean that we are limited to being separate individuals with irreducible subjective interests. Rather it means that we seek to discover some common ground to reconcile differences through debate, conversation, and dialogue. The role of conflict in democratic politics has been eloquently and succinctly stated by Pitkin and Shumer: Democratic politics is an encounter among people with differing interests, perspectives, and opinions-an encounter in which they reconsider and mutually revise opinions and interests, both individual and common. It happens always in a context of conflict, imperfect knowledge, and uncertainty , but where community action is necessary. The resolutions achieved are always more or less temporary, subject to reconsideration, and rarely unanimous. What matters is not unanimity but discourse. The substantive 224 Beyond Objectivism and Relativism common interest is only discovered or created in democratic political struggle , and it remains contested as much as shared. Far from being inimical to democracy, conflict-handled in democratic ways, with openness and persuasion-is what makes democracy work, what makes for the mutual revision of opinions and interest.96 In comparing these four philosophers, I have been using their work to develop a complex argument. Peirce, in characterizing philosophic argumentation, tells us that philosophy ought "to trust rather to the multitude and variety of its arguments than to the conclusiveness of anyone. Its reasoning should not form a chain which is no stronger than its weakest link, but a cable whose fibers may be ever so slender, provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected.,,97 Suppose we take Peirce's metaphor of the cable and its fibers seriously and apply it to these four thinkers. Concerning Gadamer , we can say that his philosophic project has been concerned to offer us a reading of philosophy which shows that what is most distinctive about our being-in-the-world is that we are dialogical beings. Gadamer's reflections on the speculative character of language provide a rich phenomenological understanding of what dialogue, conversation, and questioning mean. I have argued (sometimes against Gadamer) that if we draw out the meaning of what he says and appropriate it for an understanding of praxis today, we are compelled to recognize the radical tendency implicit in his work. Indeed, this is the point where a rapprochement can be made with Habermas, and where his independent line of research can be woven into a cable that is stronger than its individual fibers. Habermas does not really disagree with what Gadamer means by dialogue, conversation, and questioning, but is rather (as Marx did in a different time) constantly drawing our attention to those systemic features of contemporary society that inhibit, distort, or prevent such dialogue from being concretely embodied in our everyday practices. When we unmask or decode Rorty's quasi-positivist and quasiexistentalist rhetoric and explore his neopragmatism, we find further support for a vision of community life in which there is genuine participation. Habermas may be too "foundational" for Rorty, and Gadamer too wedded to...

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