Evaluating discourses of dissent: Questions of Moralität and Sittlichkeit
| Author | Aspen E Brinton |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088216630765 |
| Published date | 01 October 2016 |
| Date | 01 October 2016 |
Journal of International Political Theory
2016, Vol. 12(3) 320 –344
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088216630765
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Evaluating discourses of
dissent: Questions of
Moralität and Sittlichkeit
Aspen E Brinton
Boston College, USA
Abstract
This article contends that the language of dissident movements should be analyzed
through the lenses of two modes of moral reasoning in order to evaluate the potential
success of those movements. These two modes are characterized as the differences
between Moralität and Sittlichkeit, Moralität as a type of moral reasoning based in universal
principles, Sittlichkeit based in local manners and customs. Both types of reasoning can be
observed in most dissident movements, and this article argues that dissident movements
will not be successful without a certain balance of both types of moral reasoning
infused in the processes of engaging citizens, mobilizing action, justifying strategy, and
ensuring representation. This article explores several historical discourses, including
anti-communist dissidents in Eastern Europe, Gandhi, and Aung San Suu Kyi. These
cases demonstrate both the differences in these two modes of moral reasoning, and the
various successful ways they can be used together as discourses of dissent. Conclusions
are drawn for the sake of application to global dissident movements more generally.
Keywords
Aung San Suu Kyi, civil society, dissent, ethics, Gandhi, Habermas, Havel, human rights,
Michnik, morality
There is an inevitable sameness about the challenges of authoritarian rule anywhere at any
time, so there is a similarity in the intrinsic qualities of those who rise up to meet the
challenge.
Aung San Suu Kyi (1991: 184).
Corresponding author:
Aspen E Brinton, Department of Philosophy, Boston College, Stokes Hall North, Chestnut Hill,
MA 02467, USA.
Email: brinton@bc.edu
630765IPT0010.1177/1755088216630765Journal of International Political TheoryBrinton
research-article2016
Article
Brinton 321
Introduction
The tension between “the universal” and “the particular” is one of the fundamental
questions driving contemporary political theory. “International political theory” must
approach a version of this question whereby we ask whether ideas of universality and
particularity are universal across time and place globally, or whether there are particu-
lar forms of questioning “the universal” and “the particular” that vary by locale. One
terrain where this two-layered question of the universality and particularity of the uni-
versality-particularity tension can be seen is within discourses of dissent, where activ-
ists and dissidents challenge unjust political systems for violating the norms of
universal human rights. The general idea that universal human rights might not be so
universal, and that so-called universal norms are often in some sort of tension with
particular cultures and customs, is of course not a new observation or question; in itself
this is a large and prolific debate within political theory.1 This question has been taken
up by Rainer Forst (2002, 2012), for example, as he works through gaps in Rawls and
Habermas to examine modalities of justification within the debate between liberals and
communitarians. From another angle, Axel Honneth (1995, 2007) has probed the
sources of disrespect and misrecognition, suggesting that responses to injustice are
influenced by how we conceive of recognition and respect. With these debates about
the relationship between universality and particularity as a backdrop, I will examine
what a selection of dissidents have said about themselves and their actions in different
historical and geographical spaces. As I will argue here, such texts can show one path
of investigation for “international political theory” as it seeks out political articulations
and ideas beyond the traditional Western canon. There have always been dissidents
writing texts about their dissidence in a wide variety of historical and cultural situa-
tions, drawing upon multiple and varied traditions of political thinking. To examine
these texts is to expand the scope of political theory’s thinking about universality and
particularity, power and justice, and visions of right and wrong.
I will focus here on dissidents from three global contexts who wrote about their
rationales for dissent and political action. The justification for choosing these cases is
that they represent different moments in the development of modern political culture,
and each in its own way is outside of a traditional “western” “democratic” context, while
each speaks in response to the norms created by the hegemonic global presence of those
traditions: Gandhi is responding to colonialism, Aung San Suu Kyi is responding to a
military dictatorship’s rejection of universal human rights, and the Eastern European dis-
sidents are objecting to communism as both a failed humanitarian vision and as the
progenitor of an authoritarian society. The modes of political thought articulated in these
writings reveal patterns that speak to how the tension between universality and particu-
larity plays out in the political practice of dissent. While it is possible to focus on a vari-
ety of ideas articulated by dissidents, including critiques of power systems in the
Foucaultian sense or methods of political action in the Arendtian sense, in the interests of
space and providing one focused example, I begin here with the normative discourses of
right and wrong. This is not meant to suggest that the other political ideas within dissi-
dents’ texts are less important, but rather that this selection of normative and moral dis-
courses can demonstrate a method of reading and inquiry with which to approach
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