261 Summary A rational dialogue can well lead to new insights about fundamental values, but rational arguments do not seem to be decisive for someone’s identity. • Strategy 3: empathizing with identity differences: this strategy is aimed at an inner change of the fundamental values of the parties to the conflict. The idea is that by getting to know each other’s perspective, parties can refine their own self-understanding. Based on the thinking of Charles Taylor, this idea can be elaborated in what I call an ‘Articulation Ethic’. When moral conflicts are approached as an opportunity to refine one’s self-understanding, stable and just solutions can indeed be achieved. The challenge is to substantiate that a new self-understanding is more refined, in the sense of being authentic, than the original self-understanding. If no criterion is available for this, then any transformation is justified at any given time, making solutions unstable. Challenges to existing theoretical lines of thought From the analysis of Political Liberalism, I conclude in chapter 2 that the strategy of privatizing identity differences is unjustified for identities in which public expression of fundamental values is essential. IRMCs exist precisely because identities conflict in the public sense. Distinguishing a solution from IRMCs requires a theory in which the whole identity is involved in a public sense. Discourse Ethics is a theory in which every aspect of one’s identity can be involved in conflict resolution, but it can only discern stable and just solutions if what I call a ‘modern ethical assumption’ is met. This assumption implies that conflicting parties have an identity in which universal moral norms always take precedence over particular fundamental values. In chapter 3 I show that this cannot be assumed in IRMCs. A change in the self-understanding of parties in an IRMC towards this modern ethical assumption would be necessary. Seyla Benhabib calls a discourse in which a change of self-understanding is central a ‘moral-transformative experience’. However, such a morally transformative experience is not conceptualized within Discourse Ethics. The Articulation Ethic offers a theory with which a discourse can be conceptualized as a morally transformative experience. In this way, a stable and just solution can be distinguished for IRMCs. In such a process, the parties come to a more refined self-understanding by empathizing with each other’s identity. However, from the perspective of any identity, a criterion for ‘more refined’ must be justified. Without such a criterion, the parties can empathize with each other and understand each other in depth, but still hold on to their own identity, which in fact deepens the conflict. Or, if parties do conclude to a different self-understanding without a criterion, then the arbitrariness of this means that parties cannot be assured that a solution is stable. In chapter 4 I show that Articulation Ethic lacks such a criterion. In short, for any of the theoretical lines of thought, the challenges are too great to distinguish a stable and just solution for IRMCs. This seems to imply support for philosophers who argue that conflicts over fundamental values cannot be resolved. According to these ‘agonistic’ thinkers, justice is not served by naively hoping that a universal consensus can be achieved. That attitude could legitimize the exercise of power by dominant parties. According A
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