Democratic participation requires the development of one’s own voice. In popular imagination, such development is a private activity, occurring within an individual and apart from shared criteria and public reception. Such a view is democratically harmful and philosophically false.
Against it, I argue that Stanley Cavell’s reading of Wittgenstein and Thoreau offers a philosophically compelling and democratically wholesome account of how our voices develop. I conclude by inviting audience participants into an exercise in which they reflect on the development of their own voices, with particular attention to the texts, people, and questions who have aided this development. This activity shows the impact our understanding of voice development has on the way we prepare students to participate in democratic life.