"The Search for Common Ground"

Link to a clarifying essay by Stanley Fish on "philosophical" common ground and "pragmatic" common ground in politics. Includes comments from readers (and you, too, are free to comment—if you subscribe to The New York Times TimesSelect).

Excerpt:

There have been many candidates [for philosophical common ground]. Christianity offers a fellowship in Christ and the injunction to love your neighbor as yourself because he or she, like you, is a child of God. Thomas Hobbes thought that what binds human beings together is a fear of death at one another’s hands, and as an antidote to that fear, he urged an absolute monarch who could restrain me from assaulting you and vice versa. Immanuel Kant and his Enlightenment successors plumped for a rationalist version of the golden rule tied to what they took to be the prime virtue of individual autonomy: don’t impose restrictions on others that you would reject if they were imposed on you. Classical liberals tried to sidestep substantive disputes by instituting procedural rules to which everyone, no matter what his or her ideological vision, was required to hew. (In this system, fairness replaces truth as a linchpin.) Global capitalists invite us all to worship and follow the market. Multiculturalists ask that we honor difference and establish a politics of respect for others. Libertarians ask that we just leave each other alone.

If any of my readers don't subscribe to TimesSelect, but would like to read Mr. Fish's reflections in their entirety, they may leave a comment on this post and I'll send them a copy of the text via email.