When Dialogue Fails: Arguing With the Rabbi

Abstract

Abstract It has conventionally been assumed that there are no limits to ethical discourse: that is, that no matter how difficult or fraught the questions being asked some common ground can always be found. This has been thought to arise from fundamental shared values and the conditions of possibility of dialogue itself. Contemporary events have put this assumption in doubt and raised questions about when and where dialogue might cease to be possible. This article examines some aspects of the conditions of, and obstacles confronting, ethical discourse today, focusing on the Kantian model, as represented by Jurgen Habermas, which emphasizes rational discourse and communicative action, and the critique of this view presented by Alphonso Lingis. It traces an actual dialogue—about potential justifications for the actions of the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza—and analyses both the multiple obstacles encountered and the unsuccessful attempts by the protagonists to circumvent them. The article concludes by proposing that a new ethical predicament has emerged where discourses encounter intractable limits—characterized as “categorical ethical exclusion” or “ethical homo sacer ”—in which multiple groups of individuals are systematically excluded from ethical consideration. The emergence of such an ethical singularity, it is suggested, may call for a fundamental re-examination of the conditions of dialogue and the mutual construction of meaning.