ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the crisis of communicability as it now manifests in the post-millennial period. Taking Habermas’ concerns about the decline of dialogue in the public sphere into the contemporary digital age, this chapter reflects on the lessons offered by the foregoing chapters of In Defense of Dialogue. Namely, this chapter considers the ongoing need for communicative action in order to address psychological, emotional, and political problems as well as to imagine the possibility for meaningful intersubjective relationships. In the face of growing polarization in public life, this chapter underscores Habermas’ view that embodied dialogue in the lifeworld stands the best chance for staging the debates that enable mutual understanding if not consensus.
