Chapter 6 was on public discourse ethics. Public discourse ethics "examines differing insights that shape our public engagement."(100) This can be thought of as seeing a differing opinion or good as an equal opinion to your own. Public discourse ethics is the driving factor of ensuring that the most ethical ideas win out in the market place of ideas. With differing goods in the public, it is unfair to make one opinion out as the "right" opinion.
I had a teacher who promoted the public discourse ethic. Our class, like many at the university, was very discussion based. There were many different opinions in the class based on different values that the students held. During the class, students would start to confirm shared opinions with each other through discussion, usually a democratic political view. This would usually discourage the people with republican views from talking. The teacher wouldn't allow the students to mention negative opinions about the other political views to keep the atmosphere fair and allow people to think for themselves.
That sounds like a cool class! Which one was it? I had a similar class in high school called AP GOV. We would usually discuss current political topics and see others views. The teacher was not bias because he did not disclose he political side. People who shared similar beliefs would be grouped up and at the end of each class the groups would present the positive and negative qualities of each. This helped me realize that without agreeing on the right or wrong topic that I could learn more about others ideas.
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