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Abstract
Philosophy of communication ethics examines the interplay between philosophies of communication and communication ethics to reshape, reengage, and restructure our approach to the study of communication ethics. This essay examines philosophy of communication ethics working from three assumptions: (1) through philosophy of communication one can discern, learn, and engage various communication ethics; (2) a multiplicity of communication ethics exist; and (3) in a postmodern moment characterized by multiple narratives, philosophy of communication ethics offers a space for the renewal of communication ethics scholarship. This work acknowledges that current rhetorical frameworks for engaging philosophy of communication limit the implications for communicative action. From this acknowledgement, this essay reviews two exemplar studies of philosophy of communication ethics, asking what are the coordinates from which we can begin to examine the relationship between philosophy of communication and communication ethics in postmodernity, and why is this examination necessary in a world of narrative and virtue contention?
Notes
[1] Ronald C. Arnett, Janie Harden Fritz, and Leeanne Bell define postmodernity as a moment of “narrative and virtue contention.” See Arnett, Fritz, and Bell, Communication Ethics Literacy: Dialogue and Difference (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2009), 1.
[2] Ronald C. Arnett and Pat Arneson, introduction to Philosophy of Communication Ethics: Alterity and the Other (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014), ix.
[3] Ibid., xi.
[4] François Cooren, Action and Agency in Dialogue (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2010).
[5] This works presents rhetorical frameworks for engaging philosophy using the definition of rhetorical from Pat Arneson, “The rhetorical refers to those dimensions of expressivity that function to induce judgment or provoke a decision.” See Pat Arneson, Communicative Engagement and Social Liberation: Justice Will be Made (Lanham, MD: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014), 8.
[6] See specifically, Pat J. Gehrke, “Before the One and the Other: Ethico-Political Communication and Community” in Philosophy of Communication Ethics: Alterity and the Other, eds. Ronald C. Arnett and Pat Arneson (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014), 55–76.
[7] This section is indebted to the work of Pat Gehrke. His essay “Before the One and the Other: Ethico-Political Communication and Community” further articulates philosophies of the One in comparison to philosophies of the Other. Cliff Christians and Michael Traber further examine perspectives of the One in their edited collection, Communication Ethics and Universal Values (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997). See also Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (Malden, MA: Polity, 1992).
[8] Gehrke, “Before the One and the Other.’
[9] Ibid., 56.
[10] Gehrke's project can be traced through the following essays: “Community at the End of the World;” “Before the One and the Other: Ethico-Political Communication and Community;” “Turning Kant against the Priority of Autonomy: Communication Ethics and the Duty to Community.”
[11] Ronald C. Arnett, “Communicative Meeting: From Pangloss to Tenacious Hope,” in A Century of Communication Studies, eds. Pat Gehrke and William M. Keith (New York: Routledge, 2015), 273.
[12] My discussion of theoretical and practical here follows Gehrke's argument in his essay “Community at the End of the World” in which he argues that scholarship has becomes either so theoretical as to have no practical importance or so practical that it is easily dismissed. See Pat Gehrke, “Community at the End of the World,” in Communication Ethics: Between Cosmopolitanism and Provinciality, eds. Ronald C. Arnett and Kathleen Glenister Roberts (New York: Peter Lang, 2008),
[13] For a description of Levinas's “ethical echo” Ronald C. Arnett, “Beyond Dialogue: Levinas and Otherwise Than the I-Thou,” Language and Dialogue 3 (2012): 140–55.
[14] Calvin Schrag, Communicative Praxis and the Space of Subjectivity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986).
[15] Gehrke, “Community at the End of the World,” 134.
[16] Gehrke, “Before the One and the Other.’
[17] For a description of Stroud's work and his understanding of Kant's community in relation to Gehrke see, Scott Straud, “Kant on Community: A Reply to Gehrke,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 39 (2006): 157–65.
[18] See specifically Gehrke, “Turning Kant against the Priority of Autonomy: Communication Ethics and the Duty to Community,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 35 (2002): 1–21.
[19] Gehrke, “Before the One and the Other,” 59.
[20] Ibid., 60.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid., 61.
[23] Ibid., 60.
[24] Ibid., 60.
[25] Ibid., 61.
[26] Ibid., 61.
[27] Ibid., 61.
[28] Ibid., 62.
[29] Ibid., 62.
[30] Gehrke, “Community at the End of the World,” 122.
[31] Ibid., 123.
[32] Gehrke, “Before the One and the Other,” 63.
[33] Ibid., 64.
[34] Ibid., 65.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid., 66.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Ibid., 67.
[39] Gehrke, “Turning Kant against the Priority of Autonomy,” 2.
[40] Gehrke, “Before the One and the Other,” 65.
[41] c.f. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics, trans. C.D.C. Reeve (Indianapolis, ID: Hackett Publishing, 2014). Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to any future metaphysics, ed. Paul Carud (Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Group, 1912).
[42] Gehrke, “Before the One and the Other,” 59.
[43] For a description of reciprocity in Levinas see Arnett, “Beyond Dialogue: Levinas and Otherwise Than the I-Thou.”
[44] Bettina Bergo, Levinas between Ethics & Politics: For the Beauty that Adorns the Earth (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2003). (Original work published 1999), 3.
[45] Bergo, Levinas between Ethics & Politics: For the Beauty that Adorns the Earth, 3.
[46] Amit Pinchevski, “Emmanuel Levinas: Contact and Interruption,” in Philosophical Profiles in the Theory of Communication, ed. Jason Hannon (New York: Peter Lang, 2012), 350.
[47] Bergo, Levinas between Ethics & Politics: For the Beauty that Adorns the Earth.
[48] Cf. Simon Critchley, Ethics, Politics, Subjectivity (London: Verso, 1999).
[49] Bergo, Levinas between Ethics & Politics: For the Beauty that Adorns the Earth, 38.
[50] Ibid.
[51] Ibid.
[52] Ibid., 39.
[53] Ibid.
[54] Ibid., 40.
[55] Ibid.
[56] Ibid., 43.
[57] Ibid., 47.
[58] Ibid.
[59] Ibid., 48.
[60] Ibid.
[61] Ibid., 123.
[62] Ibid., 125.
[63] Ibid., 126.
[64] Ibid., 298.
[65] Ibid., 299.
[66] Ibid., 300.
[67] Ibid., 164.
[68] Ibid., 170.
[69] Ibid., 164.
[70] Ibid., 166.
[71] Ibid., 167.
[72] Ibid., 168.
[73] Ibid., 169.
[74] Ibid., 171.
[75] Ibid., 171.
[76] Ibid., 177.
[77] Ibid., 194.
[78] Ibid., 169.
[79] Ibid.
[80] Ibid., 47.
[81] Ibid.
[82] Ibid., 49.
[83] Ibid.
[84] Gerard Hauser, “Afterword: Machiavelli's Question Mark and the Problem of Ethical Communication,” in Philosophy of Communication Ethics: Alterity and the Other, eds. Ronald C. Arnett and Pat Arneson (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014), 305.
[85] Hauser, “Afterword: Machiavelli's Question Mark and the Problem of Ethical Communication,” 306.
[86] Arnett, Fritz and Bell, Communication Ethics Literacy.
[87] Gerard Hauser, “Afterword: Machiavelli's Question Mark and the Problem of Ethical Communication,” 311.
[88] This statement is made with recognition that these philosophers may not be recognized as philosophers of communication, but that they offer implications for the philosophy of communication. Ronald C. Arnett and Scott Stroud recognize Emmanuel Levinas and Immanuel Kant as philosophers of communication. See Arnett, “Emmanuel Levinas: Priority of the Other,” in Ethical Communication: Moral Stances in Human Dialogue, eds. Clifford G. Christians and John Merrill (pp. 200–206) (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2009) and Stroud, Kant and the Promise of Rhetoric (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014).
[89] Ronald C. Arnett, “The Fulcrum Point of Dialogue,” The American Journal of Semiotics 28, no. ½ (2012): 105–27.
[90] See Ronald C. Arnett, Leeanne Bell McManus, and Amanda McKendree, Conflict between Persons: The Origins of Leadership (Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt, 2013). Arnett's works, in particular, articulates communication ethics as the communicative task. I make this statement with recognition of his work.
[91] Cf. Rob Anderson, Leslie Baxter and Kenneth Cissna, “Texts and Contexts of Dialogue” in Dialogue: Theorizing Differences in Communication Studies (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2004), 1–18.
[92] Arnett, “Communicative Meeting,” 273.