Theorizing the Grounds of Rhetorical Judgment

E-International Relations, 2013

The mentality known variously as phronêsis, prudentia, prudence, or practical wisdom has become a topic of renewed interest in International Relations. For example, a recent article by David McCourt asks, what counts as phronêsis in world politics, and how can it be nurtured by scholars and other international knowledge producers? In addition, he suggests that pluralism should be seen as an important resource for developing prudent policy-makers. These claims resonate with ongoing discussions in the discipline regarding the conduct of inquiry, the importance of incorporating diverse perspectives into official decision-making, and even a rehabilitation of classical realism following experiences in Iraq.[ii] What is Prudence? Our own work on prudence and the need for a more rhetorical conception of international politics directly supports such calls for taking seriously the distinctive characteristics of political judgment.[iii] We find, however, that discussions of prudence have been too narrow. Scholars are averse to the seemingly simplistic maxims that are used by political actors on the ground, and they are understandably drawn to Aristotle's acute formulation in the Nicomachean Ethics, where phronêsis is carefully articulated as a mode of reasoning having its own standards, procedures, and problems. One unintended consequence of these academic preferences is that those wanting to promote prudence cut themselves off from important resources. For example, Aristotle's conception can be broadened by reference to his works on politics and rhetoric, and additionally-as was the case in antiquity-through attention to the more explicitly rhetorical tradition that runs from Isocrates through Cicero to the Italian renaissance and beyond. Likewise, the talk of foreign policy practitioners reveals not merely that they don't sound like journal articles, but that the prudential mentality is carried in part through their commonplaces of speech and thought. Thus, instead of scientific hypotheses or laws, we find practical rules of thumb; instead of general theories, we find mentors and maxims; and, instead of overarching principles or doctrines, we find cases and analogies. Of course, political actors in the international arena typically are well-educated, sophisticated, and immersed in fields of discourse that require awareness of larger theories and empirical research in conflict and cooperation, trade and development, decision-making and rationality, area studies, and the like. The key contribution of the literature on prudence is not to add another set of ideas or skills or beliefs to this mix. Indeed, prudence is not really about knowledge. Instead, the goal is to produce the reflective practitioner. This prudential actor is someone capable of working midway between habitual practice and context-independent theory. The prudential actor doesn't rely on intuition alone, although that is adequate for many ordinary activities, nor on the extended arguments of scholarly discussion, although they can provide important resources for decision-making. Prudence requires acting in time but with more deliberation than is needed simply to react. As we summarize this mentality, prudence involves attention to character, culture, and other situational constraints in order to balance incommensurable goods to achieve mutual advantage through successful performance. At the same time, we believe that definitions of prudence are of limited value in capturing how prudence actually works. Any formulation does need to be grounded in an account of the basic conditions for political decision-making and choice, which is why the Aristotelian formulation is so useful. Thus, prudence is the mode of reasoning about contingent matters in order to select the best course of action. Contingent events cannot be known with certainty, and actions are intelligible only with regard to some idea of what is good.

Philosophy and Rhetoric, 2004

This introductory framing paper theorizes the role of legitimation—the public justification of policy—in the making of grand strategy. We contend that the process of legitimation has significant and independent effects on grand strategy’s constituent elements and on how grand strategy is formulated and executed. Legitimation is integral to how states define the national interest and identify threats, to how the menu of policy options is consti- tuted, and to how audiences are mobilized. Second, we acknowl- edge that legitimation matters more at some times than others, and we develop a model specifying the conditions under which it affects political processes and outcomes. We argue that the impact of legit- imation depends on the government’s need for mobilization and a policy’s visibility, and from the intersection of these two factors we derive five concrete hypotheses regarding when legitimation is most likely to have an impact on strategy. Finally, we explore who wins: why legitimation efforts sometimes succeed in securing public as- sent, yet at other times fall short. Our framework emphasizes what is said (the content of legitimation), how it is said (technique), and the context in which it is said. We conclude by introducing the papers in this special issue, revisiting the larger theoretical stakes involved in studying rhetoric and foreign policy, and speculating about how changes in the technologies and sites of communica- tion have, or have not, transformed legitimation and leadership in world politics.

2010

[monograph] How did the G.W. Bush administration manage to persuade Americans to go to war in Iraq in March 2003? How was this intervention, and the global campaign named as "war-on-terror," legitimised linguistically? This book shows that the best legitimisation effects in political discourse are accomplished through the use of 'proximization'–a cognitive-rhetorical strategy that draws on the speaker's ability to present events as directly and increasingly affecting the addressee, usually in a negative or threatening way. There are three aspects of proximization: spatial, temporal and axiological. The spatial aspect involves the construal of events in the discourse as physically endangering the addressee. The temporal aspect involves presenting the events as increasingly momentous and historic and hence of central significance to both the addressee and the speaker. The axiological aspect consists in a growing clash between the system of values adhered to by the speaker and the addressee, and the values characterizing a third party whose actions, ideologically negative, are made "proximate" and thus threatening. Although the tripartite model of proximization proposed in the book is complex at the level of its linguistic realisation, the working assumption is intriguingly basic: addressees of political discourse are more likely to legitimise pre-emptive actions aimed at neutralizing the proximate "threat" if they construe the threat as personally consequential. The book shows how language of the war-on-terror, and especially the rhetoric of the Iraq war, respond to this precondition. This second revised edition features an extended preface and a new closing chapter. "Piotr Cap's book takes great theoretical strides in critical discourse analysis, exploring the dimensions of space, time and value, and applying his model to decisive texts in the contemporary world." —Paul Chilton, Lancaster University "This fascinating book provides readers with new theoretical insights into issues of legitimisation (and representation). More specifically, the US rhetoric of war is critically analysed and explained in innovative pragmatic-linguistic ways - a methodology which could be applied to many other salient problems in our complex world." —Ruth Wodak, Lancaster University

John Dunn has long criticised the easy assumption that in our psychological and political habits of thought we human beings can make ourselves responsive to the lightest breeze of reason. This chapter joins his chorus, focusing on the case of judgement and judgementally sensitive attitudes. We muster evidence that judgement does not come and go as rationality requires; in face of rational demands it proves remarkably sticky. And we argue that there is a case for resorting to the techniques of rhetoric in order to undo that stickiness and to give reason a chance. Rhetoric has a place in the private forum of deliberation, not just in the context of public debate; it can serve in a therapeutic as well as a strategic role.