Philosophy & Rhetoric

Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.4 (2000) 336-369

Characters in the Middle of Public Life: Consensus, Dissent, and Ethos

Erik W. Doxtader

ISMENE:
      I, for one, I'll beg for the dead to forgive me--
      I'm forced, I have no choice--I must obey the ones who stand in power.
      Why rush to extremes?
      It's madness, madness.

ANTIGONE:
      I won't insist, not even if you should have a change of heart,
      I'd never welcome you in the labor, not with me.
      So, do as you like, whatever suits you best--
      I will bury him myself.
      And even if I die in the act, that death will be a glory.
      I will lie with the one I love and loved by him--
      An outrage sacred to the gods!
      I have longer to please the dead than please the living here:
      In the kingdom down below I'll lie forever
      Do as you like, dishonor the laws the gods hold in honor.

--Sophocles, Antigone 65-78

The central dilemmas of public life are inherited, passed unresolved from generation to generation. Prohibited from burying their brother, Antigone and Ismene step outside the gates of the city to speak in private. Caught between the force of law and the faith of love, they argue over whether dissent can remake the collective order in the name of justice. Their disagreement is familiar. As bequeathed by modernity, the concept of the public sphere refers broadly to a deliberative arena in which individuals employ consensual forms of communication to develop a collective political will. This construction of the commons is both important and troublesome. Public deliberation can yield norms of material equality, democratic representation, and justice. However, experience teaches that public consensus-building is not always realistic or desirable. For one, modern society is not [End Page 336] a "natural" wellspring of mutual agreement. Among others, James Bohman (1996) in a recent study of public deliberation finds that "deep conflicts" frequently challenge the ability of citizens to find common ground, engage in deliberation, and reach consensus. What's more, principled commitments to consensus have been used to buttress a public sphere that trades human creativity, expression, and pluralism for rigidity, silence, and ideology. ¹

Antigone's chorus is left to weave the "laws of the land, and the justice of the gods." Similarly, scholars of the public sphere are increasingly concerned to plot the relationship between principles of consensus and practices of heartfelt dissent. In an essay that has yet to receive much attention, Thomas McCarthy argues that the consensual orientation of public deliberation finds its limit in "disagreements stemming from divergent conceptions of the 'good'" (1994, 204). Such disputes are not the end of public life. They do, according to McCarthy, warrant the development of a "multifaceted communication process that allows for fluid transitions among questions and arguments of different sorts" (214). Many scholars have pursued this agenda. ² As "neither dissent nor dissensus abnegates a shared reference world," Gerard Hauser counsels us to "recognize and theorize the differences among the range of rhetorical domains that have emerged historically as public spheres and the character of their relationships to one another as sources of influencing the production of society" (1997, 279). More directly, Thomas Goodnight argues, "Public discourse is characterized most fundamentally by controversy, not consensus, and so is shown to give rise to on-going struggles over practice with constitutive stakes" (1997, 274). On a similar road, Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth have each examined how dissent expands the range of public deliberation and enhances democratic pluralism. To this end, they argue that public life entails a "struggle for recognition," a process of dispute that prefigures and motivates mutual agreement (Fraser 1992; Honneth 1997).

These lines of study suggest that dissent is a moment of conflict in which taken-for-granted rules, topics, and norms of public deliberation are contested, opposed, or transgressed. Moreover, the positions each hold that some acts of dissent produce or generate constructive dialogue. This claim raises several interesting questions: When is dissent an...