Darren Walhof

Friendship, Otherness, and Gadamer’s Politics of Solidarity

This article makes the political dimension of Gadamer’s thought more explicit by examining the interplay of three concepts in his work: solidarity, friendship, and the other. Focusing primarily on certain post-Truth and Method writings, I argue that Gadamer’s conception of solidarity has to do with historically contingent manifestations of bonds that reflect a civic life together of reciprocal co-perception. These bonds go beyond conscious recognition of observable similarities and differences and emerge from encounters among those who are, and remain, in important ways other to each other. I make this case through an analysis of Gadamer’s phenomenology of friendship and the crucial role of otherness in his accounts of both understanding and friendship. I suggest that Gadamer’s political thought gives us a way of conceptualizing solidarity and otherness without making the other same or leaving the other completely other.

Habermas, same-sex marriage and the problem of religion in public life

This article addresses the debate over religion in the public sphere by analysing the conception of ‘religion’ in the recent work of Habermas, who claims to mediate the divide between those who defend public appeals to religion without restriction and those who place limits on such appeals. I argue that Habermas’ translation requirement and his restriction on religious reasons in the institutional public sphere rest on a conception of religion as essentially apolitical in its origin. This conception, I argue, remains embedded in a standard secularization framework, despite Habermas’ claim to offer a new account of secularization. This approach betrays the complex reality of the political constitution of religion and the religious constitution of politics, as demonstrated by the current debate about marriage rights in the USA. In mischaracterizing the inherently public and political dimensions of religion, Habermas undermines the effectiveness of his normative framework.

Paying Attention to Reality

Walhof situates Gadamer as a political thinker by analyzing his account of practical philosophy. Gadamer rejects the modern divide between theory and practice and instead argues that social and political affairs necessarily involve contextualized judgments about both ends and means. Given this, the role of the political theorist is not as the expert who stands apart from political reality to offer an explanatory account, but as a situated agent who assists others by bringing to awareness things that might otherwise remain obscured. Walhof calls this practical philosophy as the discipline of paying attention, and he argues that democratic theory as practical philosophy ought to draw our attention to political and social realities that have become hard to see or that are taken for granted.

Solidarity, Friendship, and Democratic Hope

Walhof shows how Gadamer’s conception of solidarity stands in contrast to both universal conceptions and identification conceptions, each of which cast solidarity in terms of a pre-political recognition of commonality. Gadamer instead casts solidarity in terms of historically contingent bonds that are not necessarily based on evident similarities but emerge through democratic practices themselves. Through an analysis of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, Walhof demonstrates how this account of solidarity helps us see the connections that constitute political communities and underlie democratic action, even amidst hyper-partisanship and social conflict. The bonds disclosed by OWS were not those of shared interests or a shared identity but temporary manifestations of a shared life together that arises from encounters among those who are, and remain, diverse.

Conversation and Understanding

Walhof argues that the possibility of understanding in dialogue reorients our views of democratic discourse and reveals the potential for forging common ground even in divisive political contexts. He uses Gadamer’s analysis of conversation to show that theorists of deliberative democracy are simultaneously too optimistic and too pessimistic: they are too optimistic about the epistemic capacities of democratic citizens, and they are too pessimistic about the potential of dialogue for forging common ground. A Gadamerian approach instead highlights the vital necessity of a political culture of face-to-face dialogue, in which citizens and especially political leaders engage with each other about public problems in ways attuned to the possibility of free responses from others.

Tradition, Religion, and Democratic Citizenship

Walhof argues that democratic theorists cast religion primarily in epistemological terms, as assent to a set of theological beliefs, which tends to treat religion as apolitical and ahistorical in its essence. He develops an alternative approach built on Gadamer’s twofold conception of tradition: first, tradition as that which forms our unreflective prejudgments or prejudices and, second, tradition as an ongoing, collective re-narration of the past. Highlighting the tradition-structure of religion makes apparent the role of democratic politics in both reinforcing unreflective religious prejudices and also re-narrating the identities of religious communities and individuals. Walhof examines the shifting perspectives of evangelical Christians in the US on climate change and same-sex marriage to illustrate this complex relationship between religion and politics.