The myth of the best argument: power, deliberation and reason

Power in communication takes two main forms. As 'external' power, it consis ts in the ability to acknowledge or disregard a speaker or a discourse. As 'internal' power, it is the ability of an argument to eliminate other argum ents by demonstrating its superiority. A positive or negative value may be ascribed to these forms of power. Four ideal-typical positions are discusse d - strategy, technocracy, constructionism, and deliberation. Public deliberation has three virtues - civic virtue, governance virtue and cognitive virtue. Deliberation lowers the propensity to, and the benefit o f, strategic behaviour. It also increases knowledge, enhancing the quality of decisions. For Habermas, the unity of reason is expressed in the possibility of agreem ent on the most convincing argument. However, sometimes conflicts are deep- lying, principles and factual descriptions are profoundly different, and un certainty is radical. The best argument cannot be found. There is no univer sal reason. The question is whether non-strategic agreement may spring from the incommensurability of languages. In search of an answer, Rawls's concept of overlapping consensus, the femin ist theory of the public sphere, and the idea of deliberation as co-operati on are discussed. The argument developed is that the approach to deliberati ve democracy may be renewed by rethinking its motivational and cognitive el ements. Public deliberation is grounded on a pre-political level of co-oper ation. Intractable controversies may be faced at the level of practices, lo oking for local, contextual answers.