44
39-40. Stephen White discusses this feature of Connolly’s political thought in Sustaining Affirmation: The
Strengths of Weak Ontology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), ch. 5.
69
I borrow this language from White, Ibid.
70
I am drawing on the language of horizons from Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel
Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1994), pp. 304-307.
71
For a useful discussion of this problem, see Cass R. Sunstein, “The Law of Group Polarization,” The
Journal of Political Philosophy, 10: 175-195.
72
For an insightful study that takes the question of the conditions of listening seriously, see Susan
Bickford, The Dissonance of Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).
73
J.S. Mill, drawing on his own reading of Socratic dialogue, also speaks to this issue: “The fatal tendency
of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors.
A contemporary author has well spoken of ‘the deep slumber of a decided opinion.’” On Liberty, ed.
Elizabeth Rapaport (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1978), p. 41.
74
See Judith Shklar, “Liberalism of Fear,” in Political Thought and Political Thinkers, ed. Stanley
Hoffmann (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
75
Hence, democratic humility is compatible with deliberative democratic theory and communicative ethics,
giving support to the moral and political importance of standards like reciprocity (emphasized by Gutmann
and Thompson) and what Habermas calls “the moral point of view.” Yet, in speaking of democratic
humility as a positive moral duty that weighs particularly heavy on public officials under conditions of
economic inequality and political exclusion, democratic humility may also address some of the concerns of
those scholars who sense that deliberative theory and communicative ethics are not sufficiently alive or
responsive to the various modalities of difference. See Anne Phillips, The Politics of Presence (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1995); Susan Bickford, The Dissonance of Democracy (1996); Iris Marion
Young, Inclusion and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
76
On these points, see Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 629-631.
Convention