Abstract:
Today, discussions about politics look more like battle than thoughtful
conversations aimed at working toward the common good. My thesis is an effort to
imagine what a more healthy political discourse might look like. To do this, I do three
things: examine the common good and its place in a liberal regime, recover fundamental
ideals that are related to public deliberation from our political theoretical tradition, and
engage with some of the literature on the movement called "deliberative democracy." I
look at it critically, seeing what it has to offer us in light of the common good and the
tradition which I have outlined. I conclude by bringing together these three elements to
understand what happened to public deliberation, and offer a few ideas on how we might
bring our society's discourse closer to something that looks more like cooperative
discussion than battle.
