“You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there’s no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots. Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one twentieth of my capacity for life. What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning (some things, perhaps, it will never learn; this is a poor comfort, but why not say so frankly?) and human nature acts as a whole, with everything that is in it, consciously or unconsciously, and, even if it goes wrong, it lives.”
Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground
Storytelling in deliberation
Bachtiger et al. identified these two broad generations as type I and type II deliberation, where the former relies on the force of the better argument through reasoning to prevail as the output of a deliberative process, while the latter shifts away from the idea of purely rational discourse, and toward deliberation that incorporates flexible forms of communication [@bachtigerDisentanglingDiversityDeliberative2010]. They then identified normative and empirical blind spots in both types, and concluded that a sequential approach where debates and communication processes are partitioned into smaller sequences may overcome their limitations [@bachtigerDisentanglingDiversityDeliberative2010].
Throughout the contested history of deliberation theory over the past 60 years, two generations of deliberative ideals have emerged: the first conceived in the early phase of the “deliberative turn” between 1980 and 1993, and the second emerging as an effort to be more sensitive to pluralist ambitions and aspects of modern democracies [@vangelistiCambridgeHandbookPersonal2018]. One specific area of contestation within this history is the role of reason in deliberation, as the Habermasian “public sphere” was initially characterized by “people’s public use of their reason” in “rational-critical debate” which rests only on “the standards of ‘reason’” and “the authority of the better argument” [@habermasStructuralTransformationPublic1991]. Similarly, Cohen contrasts between deliberation and discussion, writing that “mere discussion” is not the same as “reasoning of the right kind” and the “defense of positions with reasons” [@cohenDeliberativeDemocracy2007]. Critics of reason-exclusive deliberation have pointed out various limitations of it. First is the existence of forms of communication outside of reasoning like testimony [@sandersDeliberation1997] (stating one’s own perspective and experience in one’s own words), greetings [@barberStrongDemocracyParticipatory2003] (explicit mutual recognition and caring), and storytelling [@irismarionyoungCommunicationOtherDeliberative2021] (communicating understandings based on personal experience rather than abstract argument). When forms of communication that rely less strictly on “reason” are more easily understood and felt by members of marginalized groups—including women, people with limited formal education, and non-dominant ethnicities—these theoretical additions become especially crucial. Another critique is the human cognitive capacity to perform idealistic reasoning, as research shows that individuals rely on heuristics such as influence of group leaders [@mutzPoliticalPersuasionAttitude1996], acceptance of stereotypes and identities [@gilesSpeechAccommodationTheory2012], and group affiliation [@lauAdvantagesDisadvantagesCognitive2001]. As an encompassing term, scholars use “considerations” to accommodate narratives and other emotionally based and expressed explanations and justifications [@hellerDeliberationDevelopmentRethinking2015].
The proposed sequential approach to deliberation splits the communicative process to multiple stages, where “alternative forms of communication could occur in earlier stages to counteract power inequalities and to generate social comfort among the participants.” They note that story-telling could be incorporated in deliberation if it serves the goals of providing relevant information, perspectives, or implicit arguments, levels the playing field of communication, and builds deliberative capacity in ways that help meet the preconditions of effective deliberative participation. Importantly, they mention that inputs in this earlier stage would need to be integrated into later sequences of canonical argument in a way that creates a recognizable deilberative system.