A Civil Tongue: Justice, Dialogue, and the Politics of Pluralism

By Mark Kingwell

Book Overview

This book is about a widely shared desire: the desire among citizens for a vibrant and effective social discourse of legitimation. It therefore begins with the conviction that what political philosophy can provide citizens is not further theories of the good life but instead directions for talking about how to justify the choices they make--or, in brief, "just talking." As part of the general trend away from the aridity of Kantian universalism in political philosophy, thinkers as diverse as Bruce Ackerman, J rgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Richard Rorty have taken a "dialogic turn" that seeks to understand the determination of principles of justice as a cooperative task, achieved in some kind of social dialogue among real citizens. In one way or another, however, each of these different variations on the dialogic model fail to provide fully satisfactory answers, Mark Kingwell shows. Drawing on their strengths, he presents another model he calls "justice as civility," which makes original use of the popular literature on etiquette and work in sociolinguistics to develop a more adequate theory of dialogic justice.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0271013354
• ISBN13: 9780271013350
• Release Date: December 1994
• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

This book won the 1995-96 Spitz Prize for political theory

I'm actually the author's wife so i hope it's okay for me to use this category to let people know that A Civil Tongue just own an important prize: the Spitz Prize for the best political theory book in 1995 and 96

This book won the 1995-96 Spitz Prize in political theory

I'm actually the author's wife so I hope it's okay for me to use this category of review to let people know that A Civil Tongue just won an important prize: the Spitz prize for the best political theory book published in 1995 and 96