The Problem of Democratic Persuasion

What is the problem of democratic persuasion today? Looking at the complex cases of what Robert Fogelin calls “deep disagreement,” this essay brings Hannah Arendt and Ludwig Wittgenstein into a critical dialogue about the possibilities for persuasive speech. Questioning the received reading of “form of life” and “worldview” as the hard limit on such speech, it argues for a world-opening approach to persuasion where shared premises are missing. By contrast with those who reduce persuading to convincing based on such premises, Wittgenstein and Arendt show how to create them. Persuasion involves not convincing an interlocutor to adopt one’s point of view but learning to see from different points of view: a practice that Arendt calls “seeing politically” and Wittgenstein calls “seeing an aspect.”