603 Rachel Wahl P H I L O S O P H Y O F E D U C A T I O N 2 0 1 7 Learning from Our Enemies: Human Nature, Democratic Confict, and the Risks of Dialogue Rachel Wahl University of Virginia INTRODUCTION Watching the presidential debates in 2017, you may have sighed wearily – or gasped in agitation – over the inability of our political candidates to hold a substantive and respectful conversation. You may have refected, moreover, that this absence of reasoned exchange is not limited to those who speak with Donald Trump. From online news outlets that cater to the converted, to univer- sity campuses where students protest offensive speech, the need to reinvigorate substantive discussion seems to loom large. The willingness to learn from those with whom we disagree seems to be what is most noticeably absent. Substantive exchange is meaningful not only when people put forth their best arguments, but also when they are open to the possibility that the very best arguments will be made by someone else. According to the seminal theorist of deliberation Jürgen Habermas, the rationality to which deliberators should conform “remains accidental if it is not coupled with the ability to learn from mistakes, from the refutation of hypotheses and from the failure of interventions.” 1 Without such learning, differences can create chasms that can make it seem impossible to attain the vision that theorists such as John Dewey had of a good democracy: that of a common project to create a more just society. 2 With no sense of shared aims or concern for those with whom we differ, there is only competition that is unequal from the start. Given this, it would seem that the capacity to learn from those whose views we oppose may be the most crucial skill a democracy could teach its young citizens. Learning to learn from others, and attendant virtues such as the ability to listen well and tolerate diversity, seem like a fairly uncontroversial remedy for a divided society. PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 2017 | Ann Chinnery, editor © 2019 Philosophy of Education Society | Urbana, Illinois