The Ethics of Talk: Classroom Conversation and Democratic Politics

Abstract

Recognizing that there is an ethical dimension to conversation generally, I raise the question: What is the ethical impact of conversation in the classrdom? This is an important issue for democracies, where the quality of politics depends heavily on the quality of public discourse. Recently, university education has been criticized for fostering a moral relativism and partisanship that are weakening American civic life. I argue that the experience of critical inquiry conducted through classroom dialogue can cultivate precisely those ethical characteristics required of participants in the public life of a deliberative democracy.