Political Philosophy and Ethics discussion
Ethics
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Human Ethics: Basis, Principles, Applications
Thanks very much, Professor! I understand the concept (and salute the motive) of honest persuasion. It's the marriage of honest (i.e.: discursive, inclusive, logical and circumspect) practices and avoidance of either ad-hominem appeals or recourse to authority to "outlaw" disagreement.
But the term honest "rhetoric" is uncomfortable. Rhetoric is the science and/or the art of persuasion devoid of moral consideration, as its study and practice seems always to have been. I can and do (as you clearly do) revere the project of Plato to make the stronger argument appear the stronger. But I have a hard time separating what appears to me to be the amoral practices of sophistry from rhetoric per se. Call me a nit-picker if you will, but too much of rhetoric is devoted to clouding men's minds deliberately, regardless of motive. . .
I look forward to closely reading Reason and Human Ethics when my copy arrives this week to avoid diverting you from more important work.
Mod
I don’t agree that rhetoric has to be “devoid of moral consideration” or that it has always been devoid of moral consideration. As stated in my previous post, I cite the examples of Lincoln, JFK, and Churchill. I think that one big problem of contemporary thinking, especially as it manifests itself in the social sciences, is that we gauge everything by the lowest common denominator. There is a difference between true rhetoric and demagoguery. The latter may be more statistically predominant than the former, but moral evaluation has nothing to do with statistical incidence.
Peter wrote: "I look forward to closely reading Reason and Human Ethics when my copy arrives this week to avoid diverting you from more important work."
Reason and Human Ethics is not yet published and won’t be until later this year. In the meantime, I have published my current drafts of Chapters 1 (“What Is the Basis of Human Ethics?”) and 2 (“Human Reason”) at https://www.academia.edu/65022633/Wha... and https://www.academia.edu/74417357/Hum..., respectively. I will address questions of rhetoric in Chapters 5 (“Citizen and Media Ethics”) and 6 (“Political Ethics”). You are probably thinking of my book Free Will and Human Life, which is the first volume of my philosophical trilogy on free will (published 2021), ethics (forthcoming 2022), and political philosophy (forthcoming sometime after 2022).
July 9, 2022 NOTE:
Today, I posted the following on Academia.edu: “Excerpts from Reason and Human Ethics by Alan E. Johnson” (https://www.academia.edu/82835731/Exc...). The front matter (excerpts), Chapter 1 ("What Is the Basis of Human Ethics?"), and Chapter 2 ("Human Reason") of Reason and Human Ethics were included in this public post. Chapters 3 ("Individual Ethics"), 4 ("Social Ethics"), 5 ("Citizen and Media Ethics") 6 ("Political Ethics"), and the Appendix ("Conflicts among the Claims to Revelation") were not included.
The above-referenced excerpts are from the published book (see https://www.amazon.com/Reason-Human-E....
I also deleted the previous papers on Academia.edu that constituted excerpts from earlier drafts of this book.
Correct: miss-copied the title of Free Will and Human Life: apologies.I am not saying rhetoric must be devoid of moral consideration, only that for its history it often has been. P.S, Churchill is not a good exemplar in this regard. JFK was as good as his father was poor in this regard. Lincoln is an amazing special example of moral speech. Classical rhetoric was virtually never concerned with truth except as it assisted persuasion as I understand it. The question I am asking is: is "rhetoric" a term of art denoting an amoral (not immoral) category? It can be "honest" or deceptive. It can be deceptive for moral ends. It can be honest with deleterious results. I think of the Thucydides debates in this regard as early examples. It seems to me that honest persuasion is possible, but "honest" rhetoric is like "humane" economics: two disparate rubrics that must be carefully defined and limited to be yoked and treated as a heuristic concept. Hence my need to dig deeper into your intentions. Again, thanks for your time. It is a pleasure to find a lector and rhetor so dedicated and wise.
Mod
We seem to have a semantic issue about what “rhetoric” means. My view—as a high-school debater and a three-decade career as a litigation lawyer—is that rhetoric can be based on reason and evidence while also presenting the “logic,” so to speak, in a manner that is accessible and attractive to ordinary people. In my entire career as a lawyer, I never once lied or misrepresented anything to a judge or jury, though I was quite aware that other lawyers often did. I enjoyed calling them out when they committed fallacies or had deficient evidence. And my approach was not unsuccessful.
To reject all rhetoric is, necessarily, to reject all political life. To stand above the fray allows the demagogues sole control over public opinion. That may suit the Ivory Tower, which loves to condescend to the masses (you will find examples in Chapter 1 of my Free Will and Human Life), but it tends to the destruction of our democratic republic. Where would we be, for example, without Lincoln? Where would the world be without Churchill?
As you say, “ Lincoln is an amazing special example of moral speech.” Although Churchill erred on questions of colonialism, his wartime speeches were mostly good, in my view. As for JFK, I will disregard the ad hominem remark about his father. Theodore Sorensen wrote JFK’s speeches, and perhaps we can attribute the great rhetoric of those speeches to him rather than JFK. However, JFK was himself quite good when he spoke extemporaneously, e.g., in his press conferences.
I have to run now—won’t be back at my computer for a few hours.
Yes. Semantics is at the heart of my discomfiture. While I have great respect for your insight, your career and your stance, reflections on the marriage of moral rectitude (including factual accuracy, logical consistency and linguistic probity) with persuasive language based anecdotally on one's own honorable approach to the controlled and formal speech of the courtroom and chambers is very, very troubling. The world is no courtroom, and even in the courtroom I still suspect (with much more experience than I will attest here) that honest rhetoric is most remarkable by its absence. I cannot but feel, despite the attractiveness of your position, that the marriage of these terms is essentially utopian.
Mod
Then we should throw up our hands and leave politics to the blatant demagogues? Shall we just surrender to the lunatics? If Trump runs against Biden in 2024, should we just sit home and suck our thumbs because Biden isn’t perfect enough? Should we have let Hitler have his way just because Churchill and FDR had their faults?
I don’t think in absolutist either-or terms. There is—and always has been—a gradation of better and worse in politics. The perfect is the enemy of the good. I propose a model of how things should be. That model is aspirational and will not be achieved by anyone in the real world of politics in the foreseeable future. But it is something that politicians can look to and try to implement to the extent possible in the milieu in which they live.
This is what I mean by academic condescension and why the academics and I never saw eye to eye.
With regard to rhetoric in the courtroom, nothing is more persuasive than the simple, unadorned truth. It doesn’t work with every listener, but it is always optimal for a group. And appeal to their better angels. They want to do right.
I recall reading that in Ancient Greece, there was a deep rift between sophists versus philosophy students from schools like Plato's and other sages. These two groups were always at odds with each other; and I believe the root issue was something like 'contracts' --paid speaking gigs.
Mod
Looking at these posts again this morning, it seems to me that Peter is not understanding what I am saying and that I am not understanding what Peter is saying. Nevertheless, I really don’t have time to pursue this issue further at this time, so our exchange will have to stand for those who may or may not figure out what exactly the issue is.
Alan wrote: "Peter wrote: "Yes. Semantics is at the heart of my discomfiture. While I have great respect for your insight, your career and your stance, reflections on the marriage of moral rectitude (including ..."Alan: I believe I understand you perfectly. And I share and salute your aspirations, and do not recommend sacrificing the good for the perfect.
I am saying that (echoing Von Jhering ~ Law as Means To and End), I respect the call to honest discourse in formal jurisprudence (!) What I am also saying is that the art, study and history of persuasion in rhetoric per se (in and out of court) has always been amoral, and that in a polity with the grand project of true free speech (the USA without the Sedition Act of the Federalists) that the attempt to exhort parties to "honest rhetoric" is existentially transitory to the point of being utopian (except for very special cases which you enumerated).
Currently we all find ourselves in a hyper-partisan public discourse on multiple issues where objective truth, facts and data-supported policy recommendations are not only ignored: they are critiqued and derided as humbug by the right and subject to glittering generalities and false assumptions by the left.
I posit that discourse failed in Weimar Germany by 1932 in the same way, for similar reasons. My suspicion, and the heartfelt reason for my question is: have we not already reached the same circumstance? I see absolutely, positively no willingness on the part of the US Republican Party, nor any of its private media apologists (Sinclair, Fox-Murdoch, OAN, Infowars, The Hill, etc., etc., etc.) nor most laissez faire businesses and their lobbyists in any sector to do anything but ridicule any democratic discourse that contradicts the extreme right wing "party line" regardless of content, data, etc. And I see most Democrats and virtually all Progressives beginning to believe that discourse is at an end, and that unless the GOP can be countered by representative vote or plebiscite that there is no longer any ground for consensus, nor toleration nor further discourse. Any obedience the left shows in such repressive circumstances will be that shown to tyranny perforce out of fear alone. I do not believe that the USA will survive in its current confederation if there is resurgent Republican legislative control such that the agencies, statutes and rule of law that are at least nominally descriptive of the commonwealth are rescinded. And I do not believe the "left" holds any such threat to the USA. The vilifying descriptions of Democrats, Liberals, Progressives and "Postmodernists" I now regard as canards or "straw men".
So let me be clear: the project of calling for factual, rhetorically honest debate is the best and most humane goal for everyone in the polis. But current political rhetoric (as so often in the past) is deliberately, essentially not honest in the main, and ignored and lambasted regardless of its character. The anti-intellectual bent of American political and much academic rhetoric of late seems as strong today as it was in 1798 when a sitting President unparalleled in his legal practice and devotion to moral rhetoric was willing to make free speech punishable as a felony by report alone of up to two years in prison and loss of assets and reputation despite the 1st amendment. My only point is not to cavil on semantics alone, but to underscore the proven, extensive historical and practical reality that rhetoric in the USA is now and has nearly always been amoral at best, immoral at worst. I find most of Wall Street amoral because it takes short term duty to increase profit by income statement as the only measure of fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. I find the GOP acceptance of proven, repeated sedition to be immoral and its use of speech (rhetorical and otherwise) to justify this immoral in the extreme. Does one "give in" to such falsehood? You put those words in my mouth with your last response, which was not quite honest. What you call aspirational I am calling utopian. I shall study your approach further in your written studies without belaboring this or troubling you further. Again: thanks for the serious responses. It is a pleasure to read your posts regardless.
Mod
Re Rudolf von Jhering: He was a theorist of Roman, not Anglo-American, law, and I am accordingly not familiar with his work. He was never mentioned in the law school that I attended. The continental Roman/civil law tradition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_l...) is different from the Anglo-American common law. Although I have always wanted to study it, I have never found time to do so.
You claim that the project of “honest rhetoric” (Wayne Booth and myself) is “utopian.” You say that rhetoric is, by nature, “amoral”—both in theory and in practice. Actually, I am not quite sure that the historical tradition of rhetoric has been exclusively amoral. Although it has been more than fifty years since I read Plato’s Gorgias, my recollection is that Plato (in the character of Socrates) had a concept of rhetoric in that dialogue that is similar to my own. I’ll have to reread the dialogue to ascertain whether my memory is correct. I have to finish writing chapters 3 and 4 of my Reason and Human Ethics before reaching the chapters (5 and 6) in which I will discuss rhetoric. So it will be a few weeks or months before I pick up the Gorgias again.
You correctly diagnose the Right’s departure from democratic constitutionalism. You acknowledge that the Left has “glittering generalities and false assumptions . . . .” But I don’t understand how you think we should counteract all this. You seem to be willing to just give up. If we don’t have honest rhetoric, what do we have? Is it all, in your view, going to have to be decided by force? Are you advocating repression of the Right? Help me out here. When I was a debater, long ago, the affirmative team had to present both a “need argument” and a “plan.” You’ve presented the need argument. What’s your plan?
MAY 26, 2022 NOTE: I have now reread the Gorgias and found the passage to which I was referring in the second paragraph above. Accordingly, I have added the following remarks to my draft of Chapter 6 (“Political Ethics”) of my forthcoming book Reason and Human Ethics:
We have discussed the demagoguery that so often permeates public life. This, of course, is nothing new. Plato wrote an entire dialogue on rhetoric called the Gorgias. In that dialogue, rhetoric as it is so often practiced is justly given a bad name. However, Plato’s character Socrates points out in this work that there is a kind of rhetoric his interlocutors have never seen. That is the kind of rhetoric that is based on knowledge and encourages the rational part of the human soul. (citing Gorgias 503a–504e)
Prof. Johnson: The nature of a plan is the same as that of a good law: (1) it must be as concise as possible to solve a defined problem without unnecessary particularity, (2) it should not depart from stare decisis if possible, but when it does the nature of the departure must be clear (no shadow docketing), (3) it should be both fungible and executable within defined agencies/functions and authorities and (4) it should be enforceable. Each of these parameters must be reviewed for sufficiency to propose a plan (which may encompass one or more laws. The difficulty level here is every bit as challenging as the original Constitutional project (always stunningly good despite faults in retrospect). What is the problem to be addressed? I don't think it is one that depends on (nor can it depend on) articulated persuasion. I believe that the currently exiguous progress of the partisan debate is not a failure to be honest. I really think that this is a symptom of underlying problems which, if not addressed, will obviate debate (as they did in the Constitutional convention).
The issues as I see them were manifest to at least some of the founders, but could not be acted on then because of the diametric opposition of small vs. large populated states, agricultural vs. budding mercantile states, slave-dependent vs. tariff dependent states and the beginnings of disparate settlement of immigrants after the Terror in Paris, accelerating through the 1848 revolution year. And I don't believe the underlying weakness of the Constitution in addressing these problems is anywhere near the forefront of the current political "cant" that passes for discourse.
1. Both Jefferson and Adams agreed that (in light of the history of the East India and Hudson Bay Companies and the semi-private Creolized French sugar colonies) the danger of uncontrolled "great agglomerations of wealth" would eventually endanger both representative government and equal access to law and the benefits of the commonwealth. This worry was impossible to square with Hamilton's successful protection of property as antecedent and above the constitution and its conferred rights. The problem of income inequity, and the horrific un-Constitutional nature of the headnote to Santa Clara vs. the Southern Pacific Railway in 1868 (wherein corporations were defined as persons under law, entitled to all civil rights, etc.) which the power of great wealth carved out of the Constitution is a cancer that in its current guises (e.g.: Citizens United, et al) is actually the gravest problem confronting the Union. The use of this unlimited wealth in powering scoff-law propaganda in support of the ultra-right selective denial of the rule of law has reached precisely the emergency nature that both Jefferson and his one-time enemy Adams warned of. And I posit that this operand is cynical and deliberately impervious to both law and discourse. You talk of force as if that were the most abhorrent of alternatives. I'm not so sure. Certainly plebiscite (necessary for needed Constitutional amendments) and the voting booth are the primary vehicles for change open to us short of that, but evidence is mounting that the power of unrestrained capital will not permit change of that type. We were close to that type of coup last year. If the GOP recovers legislative control this year, the coup will likely be effective more permanently by 2024. True taxation without representation and tyranny in every sense defined by the Declaration of Independence (except perhaps for quartering of troops). I am never suggesting "giving up". I am only stating clearly that when the founders determined to give everyone free speech, it necessarily included bounders and idiots. There is no undoing this (especially since the Holmes rule on clear and present danger re: yelling fire in a crowded theater has been rejected in by the court). The combination of free speech unhindered by facts or "honest" reporting and unanswerable to any moral or legal authority, and a more or less clandestine oligarchy of international capital dedicated to monopoly (J.P. Morgan's dicta: to avoid unnecessary competition) that cynically destroys the effectiveness of "honest persuasion" (NB: I'm still fussing over the other word, but that is not important.) is a combination that, in light of the unrestrained penetration of social media poses a greater danger than the scurrilous broadsides of our rollicking partisan past. Prior to the 1850's, literacy and media were poor enough that propaganda was comparatively haphazard and depended on a wide county-based "machine" politics to turn out the vote one way or another (including the graveyard vote). Now the advancement in media penetration without commensurate advancement in the sophistication of the voters leaves them very vulnerable to the demagogy of right and left that "honest persuasion" would serve to combat. It is for this reason that I submit that that addressing the problem from the standpoint of rhetorical improvement may be impractical. Worthy to aspire to, and worthy to promulgate, but frankly ineffective against the challenge posed. It is significant that we can discuss these things on Goodreads or Quora or University blog list-serves with very limited exposure, but impossibly on the egregious and madcap media of FB, Google, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, etc. and the insular comments sections on partisan media servers where the greatest damage against factual reporting, logical argument and "honest" rhetoric is done daily.
There are other weaknesses in the Constitution that must also be addressed by Amendment (e.g.: the right to life did not presuppose a right to access of medicine in 1789 because medicine was still essentially quackery. Not so now, which should elevate access, quality and costs of medical care to federal (not state) oversight, and removed from private insurance which uses experience (not community) actuarial rating to determine access and premiums). Similarly, environmental concerns must be elevated to supersede issues of property to some degree, and also therefore require Constitutional protection.
So what is the plan? Define the key problems to be addressed. Agree on those issues. Discuss any means possible to address them within the framework of existing legislation, jurisprudence, executive action and, if necessary, Constitutional plebiscite. The cynical powers that be (and their dupes among voters) will not accede to discursive solutions. They will spend billions to avoid this without doubt. And they will certainly not hesitate to invoke the use of force to do so, just as they have done to break Unions ever since the Wobblies were successfully vilified and driven underground. At some point, alternatives like secession may have to be considered in order to communicate the error inherent in the coup of big money allied with reactionary reliance on seditious empowerment of executive, legislative and/or judicial tyranny. We have reached the point where the Constitution cannot protect the rights of the majority against the whims of the minority: a result not looked for by the founders, and the corruption of discourse is not incidental to that tragedy.
Mod
I think that my "honest rhetoric" is the same thing as your "honest persuasion." At least I don’t see any difference between the two concepts. Note that all your proposed constitutional or statutory changes would have to be effected by honest persuasion or honest rhetoric. That cannot be circumvented unless you are talking about violent revolution. And we have a rule against the advocacy of violence: see posts 28 and 29 in the “Rules and Housekeeping” topic. Revolutions may be justified in very extreme circumstances, e.g. when governments suppress speech and imprison or kill political opponents or dissidents from the official religion. We are not there yet and hopefully will never be.
Your answer gets into many issues of political philosophy, which will be the subject of the third book, Reason and Human Government, of my philosophical trilogy. I am currently focused on ethics, which I regard (as did virtually all of the American Founders) as a precondition of good politics and good government. I will get to political philosophy in due course. In the meantime, see my books (which you have told me you have already purchased) The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience and The Electoral College: Failures of Original Intent and Proposed Constitutional and Statutory Changes for Direct Popular Vote, 2nd ed..
Many thanks, Professor Johnson.Advocacy of violence is the end of hope, and I do no such thing. I am very afraid that the USA is approaching the extreme circumstances that may trigger it.
I look forward to studying your approach to date in detail. I have ordered the Roger Williams book in a used copy: is it still in print?
Thanks again for your patience.
Mod
Yes, all my books are still in print except my 2000 book First Philosophy and Human Ethics, which will be replaced by Reason and Human Ethics. The regular price of the Roger Williams paperback is a bit high (though inexpensive compared to most academic books), because it is over 600 pages (including end matter), though the Kindle edition is only $9.99.
I share your concern about the future of the United States. Chapter 5 of the second edition of my Electoral College book discusses the 2020 election and its aftermath, including the January 6, 2021 insurrection. I conclude that book with recommendations for constitutional and statutory changes.
Thank you for the dialogue. It's clear that you are very knowledgeable about history and philosophy. As I've mentioned before, I'm not a professor and have never been a professor. I'm guessing that you might be a professor, but you don't have to tell us if you don't wish to do so.
The modern combination of rhetorical techniques combined with high-powered, big-budget, advertising and brainwashing campaigns is what is really frightening.
Mod
[R]hetoric is the crucial link between philosophy and politics and must take an important place in education if political life and intellectual activity are to be in the best shape possible. While it is easy to denigrate the art of persuasion, most obviously by contrasting its possible deceptiveness with the truth of genuine knowledge, science, or philosophy, one should never forget the fundamental political fact that human beings must coordinate their activities with other human beings in order to live well, and that the two most basic modes of such coordination are through persuasion and by force. Everyone knows the disadvantages of excessive reliance by a political community on force or violence. If the highest intellectual activities—science, philosophy—are to have much efficacy in practical political life, rhetoric must be the key intermediary. (James H. Nichols Jr., preface to Plato, Gorgias, trans. and ed. James H. Nichols Jr. [Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1998], vii–viii)Nichols discusses the Enlightenment and postmodern disparagement of rhetoric at some length and the reasons for same.
This is a paperback edition. The foregoing is repeated, along with other material, in the subsequent Kindle edition of Nichols’s edition and translation of Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedrus (here).
The foregoing except from Nichols’s preface is exactly what I was trying to say in my discussion of “honest rhetoric.”
(revised May 26, 2022)
Alan:Postmodern "disparagement" of rhetoric is an overstatement, no? Having read Eco, Derrida and studied deconstruction with Bill Spanos at Binghamton and spent quite a few hours trying to handle hermeneutics after reading Quine and the logical positivists, I find (1) "Postmodernism" is the cover term for fad-ish conglomeration of philosophical and linguistic approaches to meaning in a dependable form. Many of the linguistic approaches (in sociological and close reading of philosophy) do show that meaning is a carefully wrought concept that hides behind many layers of subjectivity in both connotation and denotation. I am not convinced that the term has any academic or political meaning (truth that would be subject to judgment and review by multiple parties with minimal misunderstanding and the ability to reduce the statements to logical sequences) except as a straw man to knock down academic pseudo-intellectual prejudice (which does exist, and to which I share your aversion). (2) All sciences, philosophy, statutory law are absolutely dependent on rigorous rhetoric, logic, the rules of evidence and the linguistic tools of both syntax and semantics in order to function. (I am not sanguine in extending this to common law which is too often dependent on truisms masquerading behind mystical vocabulary)
But politics is an art: not a science, and these rules only apply in critical theory and philosophical exchange regarding politics per se.
We don't disagree at all, Sir. What we do not share is a surety that the practice of rhetoric is honest in this or any other polis. While I concur that the attempt must be made to be rigorous in rhetoric, logic and the rules of evidence (data before anecdote, no authority not subject to critical analysis, no "special terms" or definitions not defined and adhered to), my point from the beginning has been that manunkind (to steal from e.e.cummings) is in the aggregate routinely incapable of that rigor, and therefore of the requisite "honesty".
That does not mean that the alternatives of (1) force or (2) exile are to be promoted in place of rhetoric, but that "honest rhetoric" is an exceedingly difficult task in discourse, and must be subject to critique and correction not only as to its content but in its presupposed definitions and intentions. In this regard (though wordy as hell) I am merely saying that definitions and agreed on principles (e.g.: "freedom" vs. "negative freedom" vs. "license", etc.) in all political discourse are loaded with connotations (and sometimes odd denotations) that make the hermeneutics of "truth" in rhetoric a much greater and more complex science than Plato or Aristotle ever allowed. That is so because they both essentially equated words with thoughts and arguments as "things as such" (Kant's mighty "ding an sich")
And your books arrived today! Starting in on Roger Williams and the Freedom of Conscience now. . .Many, many thanks for these efforts. I will enjoy these no end.
Mod
Peter wrote: "Alan:
Postmodern "disparagement" of rhetoric is an overstatement, no? Having read Eco, Derrida and studied deconstruction with Bill Spanos at Binghamton and spent quite a few hours trying to handle..."
I wrote in my linked review: “Nichols discusses the Enlightenment and postmodern disparagement of rhetoric at some length and the reasons for same.” I have now changed this sentence to the following: “Nichols discusses at length the disparagement of rhetoric by the Enlightenment and the vast expansion of the meaning of ‘rhetoric’ by postmodernism.” This may be a more accurate statement, though the effect of the postmodern expansion of meaning of the term has, as I understand it, an even more disparaging effect.
Although I consider myself knowledgeable in political and ethical philosophy prior to the twentieth century, I have said for many years, in this forum and elsewhere, that I am not an expert in twentieth- and twenty-first century philosophy, including but not limited to postmodernism. That may be the reason that I find much of what you say on this topic unintelligible. However this may be, Professor Nichols, who has been a political philosophy professor for many decades, has considerably more knowledge and understanding of post-1900 philosophy than do I. Here are some excerpts from his introduction (which first appeared in 1998) to his translation that is the subject of my review linked in post 168 supra:
Today’s lack of clarity about rhetoric can be seen most evidently in the confusingly varied ways in which we use the term rhetoric. Rhetoric’s precise nature and scope remain altogether indeterminate. In particular, popular usage and the most advanced academic usage of the term diverge sharply. Rhetoric in popular usage is almost always a term of disparagement. The phrase “mere rhetoric” typically designates deceptively fashioned speech whose meaning stands at odds with the speaker’s real purposes. Politicians are taunted by their opponents and exhorted by political commentators to cut out the rhetoric and tell us what they would really do to deal with our problems. Many intellectuals reflect this point of view when, in treating some topic or other, they set rhetoric and reality in opposition to each other. A completely different usage occurs, however, among academics influenced by the latest academic trend, postmodernism. Such academics tend to give an immensely broad meaning to rhetoric: it is the study and practice of how discourse is carried on in any area whatsoever, comprehending the rules of discourse that obtain in any area as well as an account of how they came into being and continue to change. In accordance with this usage, we would have rhetorics pertaining to the whole range of subject matters from literary criticism to economics and even mathematics . . . .As for the remainder of your comments, to the extent I understand them, I have already responded repeatedly and at length.
And yet today the discussion of rhetoric is going on full tilt, to such a degree that one can properly speak of a sharp revival of interest in rhetoric. The most easily available evidence of this trend can be discovered through inspecting the growing number of book titles that mention rhetoric. Scholarly articles that analyze rhetoric or rhetorical aspects in literature, philosophy, and political theory likewise abound. How can this be? The key to understanding this development, I believe, is to be found in the hugely expanded sense of the term rhetoric that has emerged under the influence of postmodernism. Along lines drawn by Nietzsche and plowed more deeply by Heidegger, postmodernism continues the project of uprooting the Western philosophical tradition. That tradition’s search for metaphysical foundations; its impulse toward what is permanent and universal rather than transient and local; its dichotomies of belief and knowledge, subject and object, truth and opinion, appearance and reality, science and rhetoric—all these ways of thinking, it is asserted, have proven to be dead ends, habits that our riper experience and reflection should lead us to outgrow. Mode of presentation, therefore, cannot be tenably distinguished from the substance of what is intended; form cannot be separated usefully from content; rhetoric cannot be soundly differentiated from science or philosophy or political goal. All discourse is rhetorical. (italics in the original)
I’m glad you have received my books. If, as you read them, you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. Be sure to look at the errata and supplemental comments to the Roger Williams book posted at https://www.academia.edu/34149040/Err.... After I finish Reason and Human Ethics, I will prepare a revised edition of the Roger Williams book that incorporates those errata and supplemental comments. See also the errata to Free Will and Human Life at https://www.academia.edu/50793367/Err... and the errata and supplemental comments to the Electoral College book at https://www.academia.edu/46094865/Err....
Oh, and I am sure that, as a good scholar, you will read the endnotes! They are there for your and others scholars’ benefit. Although I try to write my books so that the advanced general reader can understand them, I also document carefully what I say.
Peter's remarks dovetail with something much on my mind lately. I'm beginning to believe the most longstanding human problems all stem from revolving changes in concept, meaning, and lexicon. "Language losing meaning" is one of the factors which most brought about the fall of Rome.
In my workplace I've recently encountered two employees who have undergone gender changes; they now demand that everyone in my agency police our pronouns when we refer to them. They have names like "Bob" but women's figures, so they add this admonition to their (lengthy) signature on every message: "Pronouns expected: she, her, they"
Can you stand it? This is part of Orwell's predictions. Euphemisms are an abomination. Refer to a 'garbage-man' as a 'garbage-man', not a 'sanitation engineer'.
Consumerist culture aggravates the issue like nothing else. Call water, 'water'; and call 'tea', 'tea'.
Society needs to stop meddling with language.
Mod
I'm beginning to believe the most longstanding human problems all stem from revolving changes in concept, meaning, and lexicon. "La..."
It only bothers me when they call lies truth, war peace, etc.
I'm willing to accommodate transgender people; it's a very complicated issue involving biology and other things.
As for "garbage man" etc., everyone deserves some respect, and I don't have a problem incorporating that respect in language. The terms we were brought up with as kids don't always do that. Think of how many offensive terms have rightly been verboten during the last few decades.
Alan wrote: "Peter wrote: "Alan:Postmodern "disparagement" of rhetoric is an overstatement, no? Having read Eco, Derrida and studied deconstruction with Bill Spanos at Binghamton and spent quite a few hours tr..."
Nichol's extended quote is welcome: and I concur with only quibbles about equating Heidegger's epistemology with "post-modernism". That's a messy compression. Otherwise, yes: the issue that troubles me regarding rhetoric is partly the "loss of meaning" of both the term and the study thereof, especially in "popular" treatment (i.e., mistreatment), and partly in the worthy linguistic attentions to semantic ambiguity that peels back language a bit from its ostensibly denotative function. I am quite pleased at your "project" as it regards ethics.
Parenthetically: where does Kant's "Metaphysics of Morals" enter into your abstract ethical construct?
I shall devour your excellent researches and opinions with gratitude. Best regards.
Alan wrote: "Feliks wrote: "Peter's remarks dovetail with something much on my mind lately. I'm beginning to believe the most longstanding human problems all stem from revolving changes in concept, meaning, a..."
Yes. Newspeak is exactly the unethical horror Orwell painted it to be.
Mod
Nichols was not conflating Heidegger’s epistemology with postmodernism. He was saying that Heidegger took Nietzsche a step further and that postmodernism thereafter took Heidegger a step further. Nichols was not equating them but rather showing how each separately “progressed” to where we are now.
Peter wrote: "Parenthetically: where does Kant's "Metaphysics of Morals" enter into your abstract ethical construct?"
I thought you’d never ask. 😊
I discuss, quote, and cite the Metaphysics of Morals in my section on Kant in Free Will and Human Life, pp. 60–63 (reproduced at https://www.academia.edu/44135781/Kan...) and the section titled “Kant’s Categorical Imperative” on pages 20–22 of my draft (https://www.academia.edu/65022633/Wha...) of Chapter 1 (“What Is the Basis of Human Ethics?”) of my forthcoming Reason and Human Ethics. As that draft of Chapter 1 and the draft of Chapter 2 (https://www.academia.edu/74417357/Hum...) point out, my concept is that human ethics is based on secular human teleology (not to be confused with erstwhile theological teleology). Additionally, as also discussed therein, I don’t agree with Kant’s evident reduction of ethics to a deductive syllogism with the categorical imperative(s) being the major premise(s). Although I agree with Kant’s ultimate ethical views in some, perhaps many or most, respects, I get to that place by rational reflection on human ends and means, including a recognition, per Aristotle, that ethics is not subject to the same rules-oriented regime as mathematics, for example. I also disagree with Kant’s view (at least in some of his writings) that human nature and experience have nothing to do with ethics: that the ethical standard should rather be dictated by “rational beings” such as God, angels, and rational beings on other planets (a doctrine I consider so ridiculous that I would attribute it to exotericism had not Kant taken such an absolute position against dissembling). The above-linked draft Chapters 1 and 2 of Reason and Human Ethics discuss all of the foregoing. The remaining chapters (in progress) will elaborate on and apply my secular teleological principle. My view is consistent with Aristotle’s formal and final causes (rejected by Bacon, Hobbes, Luther, Calvin, and most of modernity and postmodernity), but, strangely (to my mind), Aristotle does not explicitly (though he may implicitly) use the same procedure in the Nicomachean Ethics.
See also my discussion of Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals in posts 225–26 of the “Immanuel Kant” topic.
As Robert Hanna, Robert Wess, and others have pointed out, however, Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment seems to go a step beyond his earlier views in the direction of my secular teleological analysis. See, for example, posts 161, 184, and 246–48 in the “Immanuel Kant” topic. Whether or not this contradicts Kant’s other writings is a large question that Robert Hanna and others have discussed at length but which is above my scholarly pay grade.
(minor stylistic edits on April 15, 2022, @ 8:03 p.m. US Eastern Daylight Time)
Simply great! I have been sampling Nichols on Heidegger and Nietzsche and will forego comment: not sure of my ground here.
The Nicomachean Ethics is a puzzle to me: almost as if it was composed by a different Aristotle. . .Kant is the closest thing to my head and heart with regard to composition of moral action, and we of course agree that his reduction to syllogism and his seemingly sarcastic referral of ethics to angels, et al are unhelpful. I agree with Hanna on the Power of Judgment: it seems contradictory at best.
I might as well also confess in passing that I am a thoroughgoing Lutheran by temperament (even down to the constipation).
And there isn't much that I detect above your scholarly "pay grade". Thanks again!
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Unlike Kant, Aristotle probably wrote in an esoteric manner. For one thing, he always started with the common opinions of his time and place. Accordingly, the views stated in the early part of the Nicomachean Ethics are not the last word for him. See my paper on Book 1 of the Nicomachean Ethics at https://www.academia.edu/37014806/Som.... I recommend the Bartlett/Collins translation/edition of the Nicomachean Ethics, listed in the prefatory abbreviations to this paper. Bartlett and Collins are Straussians, and they interpret the Nicomachean Ethics accordingly. The Joe Sachs translation/edition is also very good; Sachs is (perhaps) a quasi-Straussian who, as a longtime tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, has devoted his life to the study and teaching of classical and other texts. I would describe myself as a quasi-Straussian. I agree with Strauss’s hermeneutical approach and with much of his overall interpretation of the history of political philosophy. I disagree with some of his statements and emphases, but there is, of course, no one with whom I agree entirely. Note: James H. Nichols Jr. is, of course, a Straussian.
Peter wrote: "I might as well also confess in passing that I am a thoroughgoing Lutheran by temperament (even down to the constipation)."
Both my wife and I are recovering Lutherans, our respective parents having been congregants in what Garrison Keillor used to call a "dark Lutheran" denomination ("dark" in the sense of dogma, not race). I stopped going to church during high school, when I applied my critical thinking skills, learned in debate, to religion; my wife liberated herself from Lutheranism in college. Her Lutheran pastor was stricter (though more congenial) than mine, and it took her decades to get over the enforced guilt of "original sin" beaten into her head during her childhood and adolescence. We are now both members of the Pittsburgh Freethought Community (https://pghfreethought.org/) and co-moderators of one of their monthly discussion groups. (By the way, PFC members have different political orientations, and I do not necessarily agree with all the views stated by their monthly lecturers. I have myself given lectures in that series based on my Roger Williams and free will books, and I will probably give a further lecture, later this year or next year, on my forthcoming book Reason and Human Ethics.)
I have struggled to find coherence in the N. Ethics since my days at the U of C, not only because it is so "rhetorical"and will have to review my notes. My father is a Lutheran Minister: LCA most of his life but switched to what he considered doctrinal purity to the Missouri Synod late in life, only to abjure their politics and episcopacy about ten years ago (he's 90 now and living outside Las Vegas: the perfect home for lapsed Lutherans in my opinion. Pittsburgh (where my daughter is at Pitt Med School) is more pleasant by leaps and bounds.
I am being organized about taking notes (no marginalia!) to your work, and will likely have some questions when I am further along.
Given the Table Talk, it seems natural to promote to the Aufklärung coming from Luther. Sin boldly, then!
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I grew up across the street from the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, though my family went to the American Lutheran Church across town (my father was assistant chaplain to the pastor of the American Lutheran Church during World War II in Europe). A son of the pastor at the Missouri Synod church was a pal of mine during childhood and later my debate partner in high school (we were effective debaters together, but we never talked religion or politics when we were teenagers; I'm sure he thought that I was going to hell as a result of my freethinking). His father was very strict in both doctrine and practice. The latter, after I left town, was promoted up the Minnesota hierarchy, and the family moved to Minneapolis or some such place. Two of his sons (including my friend) became Lutheran pastors. The third son (many years older than I) dropped out of seminary, got a Ph.D. in political science, and ended up being a political science professor at Cleveland State University. Although he was in Cleveland during many of the years or decades I was there, we never got together.
My parents (now deceased) left the American Lutheran Church (long after I was gone) after the big 1988 Lutheran merger, resulting in the ELCA, on the grounds that it was too liberal on abortion and gay rights. They joined a Methodist church, which was the ancestral church of my mother. I always thought that the Methodist church was more "liberal" than the Lutheran church, but apparently they were more conservative on such cultural issues at that time.
Thanks for sharing this: our experiences in this regard overlap and they do inform at least my own determination to know the materialist world to delineate what the postulated knowledge by "revelation" means to a confessional monotheist, and what this (fictional) knowledge forces the believer to give up to take communion. I will be off line for two weeks: must knuckle down on articles I am reviewing/editing for others by May. Thanks again Mr. Johnson for your erudite, painfully honest and generous discourse.
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Thank you. I think we have both learned some things from our dialogue. Best of luck on your current project.
Alan
Alan wrote: "As for "garbage man" etc., everyone deserves some respect, ..."I was kinda overwrought when I composed my post; I'm in a workplace crisis so bad I've been taking steps to turn whistleblower and flee the USA to live as an expat.
But I cleave to the gist of what I stated.
Naturally, no one would argue any merit in retaining hurtful or derogatory slurs leftover from society's past. Choosing which side to stand on that historical progression is relatively easy.
The kind of change which bothers me in language is "top down" change rather than "change from the bottom up".
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If you haven't done so already, you probably should consult a lawyer.
I will yes. Certainly been discovering all sorts of surprises during this process. Just one example: unrelated to the corruption scandal I'm witnessing, I received an on-the-job injury. To request exemption from strenuous duty while I recover, I must submit an 'RA' (request for Reasonable Accommodation).
A lawyer (pronoun she, her, they!) in the Disability Rights Unit emails me the form I must fill out with accompanying documentation. I affirm back to her that I will fill out the form, and then (since it contains medical info) I will hand-deliver it to her office. Answer: "Sorry, we no longer accept RA submissions in person".
Reason? None given. But I must either mail documentation to the agency via USPS or send it over from the offices in my building to the offices in her building via "inter-office mail" in a manila envelope. Hand-delivery must come from one of our agency's approved inter-office mail couriers.
Why such rules were conceived in the first place? I can only imagine that if a clerk in the Disability Rights Unit observed an employee limping up to the door when they hand in their request for special accommodation, it might prejudice them in the employee's favor when they evaluate their request.
Just one small sample of the municipal environment I work in. There's a mountain range of more such absurdities; and this is part of the problem I would be exposing. Thick-lidded minions rigidly following rules written years ago, no matter how irrational, no matter what havoc ensues, (or, no matter what criminality they encourage).
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It's possible the new policy prohibiting in-person delivery is a Covid protocol, but who knows?
Feliks, please don't tell us anything more about your legal matter. As a former (retired) lawyer, I am aware that anything you communicate to anyone other than your personal lawyer about this is not privileged and is discoverable. Get a lawyer quickly, and communicate only with him/her/them about the situation.
This post (about 1200 words) comments on post #170, where Alan quotes John H Nichols at length. Nichols contrasts two meanings of rhetoric. One is the pejorative “mere rhetoric.” The other goes in the opposite direction, identifying rhetoric as foundational in multiple disciplines. In this foundational sense, rhetoric becomes inquiry into “the rules of discourse that obtain in any area as well as an account of how they come into being and continue to change.” This references the postmodern practice of historicizing that I mentioned in a number of previous posts. The second meaning, where rhetoric becomes foundational, references the revival of rhetoric that began near the end of the twentieth century. Since Booth was mentioned earlier in Alan’s and Peter’s discussion of rhetoric, one might look at Booth’s “The Revival of Rhetoric,” a 1964 lecture that was later published and still later reprinted as chapter three Booth’s Now Don’t Try to Reason with Me. Booth’s lecture came in the infancy of this revival. Before the revival, the pejorative “mere rhetoric” dominated everywhere. During the revival the foundational sense of rhetoric became widespread in a number of academic disciplines.
A deeper historical perspective on this revival appears in “Rhetoricality: On the Modernist Return of Rhetoric,” pp. 3-39 in The Ends of Rhetoric: History, Theory, Practice (Stanford UP, 1990), edited by John Bender and David E. Wellbery. In their history, Bender and Wellbery identify Kant as responsible for the most recent nadir of rhetoric before its most recent revival (18). I put it that way because the history of rhetoric is a roller coaster ride that results from a fundamental characteristic of rhetoric, namely, that it has no subject matter so that it can be applied to any subject matter. Rhetoric’s fortunes rise when subject matters are seen as discursive inventions; they fall when that view of subject matters is rejected. In the book I’m finishing on philosophical turns, I sloganize rhetorical turns as “the tyranny of the new.” In a rhetorical world, the “new” becomes a “tyrant” in the sense that there is never a final word about anything. The possibility of the “new” is always there to undermine whatever is thought to be the final word. This can be good or bad, depending on the particular “new.” In the early decades of the present century, there is an emergent metaphysical turn in which, if it is successful, rhetoric’s fortunes are likely to decline once again.
My view of this revival of rhetoric is that it is the culmination of the prioritizing of language that began early in the twentieth century. Part of the reason for this is my experience in Richard McKeon’s classroom. McKeon often remarked that what happens to philosophy in the twentieth century is what happens when philosophy uses rhetorical methods.
One irony is that most of the philosophers responsible for this rhetoricizing of philosophy did not recognize the rhetorical ingredient in their thinking, possibly because after the most recent nadir of rhetoric, thinking of oneself doing rhetoric long became equivalent to parading a scarlet “R” (“mere rhetoric”) on one’s chest. Derrida is an exception insofar as there are a few places where he seems to come close to recognizing the sense in which his philosophizing is a rhetoricizing of philosophy (e.g., see his use of the term “rhetorics” on p. 152 in Limited Inc, Northwestern UP, 1988). This rhetoricizing of philosophy finally gains widespread recognition in the revival of rhetoric late in the twentieth century and continuing into the present century.
A McKeon article that offers a useful perspective on this matter is “The Methods of Rhetoric and Philosophy,” published in 1966 and reprinted in Selected Writings of Richard McKeon, vol. 2. (U Chicago P, 2005). McKeon begins with a brief overview of the prioritizing of language in the twentieth century, concluding with its core assumption, “Things and thoughts are in the significance and applications of language and in the consequences and circumstances of action” (97). He then goes on to argue that such a philosophical turn needs to understand its underpinnings in rhetoric to understand itself. As an example he gives the historical precedent of how Cicero, in an earlier age of rhetoric, rhetoricized Aristotle. Aristotle’s four fundamental questions of inquiry appear at the beginning of book 2 in Posterior Analytics: is it? what is it? what sort is it? why is it? Cicero rhetoricized these questions in a legal context. For example, in Cicero, “The answer to the question `why’ is found not in a cause which connects the terms in a proposition but in a judge who determines the issues in question” (101).
There is an ontological feature of language that helps to explain why rhetoric can periodically rise to a philosophical level. By contrast to language, consider the tan that a sunbather sports after spending hours in the sun. Here, there is a causal link between the sun and the tan. There are no such causal links between what is “out there” and the words we use to talk about it. Onomatopoeia imitates such a link, but the sizzle in the frying pan does not cause the word “sizzle.” This is why I would recommend looking to Saussure, who was very influential in France, before either Nietzsche or Heidegger. Derrida in particular builds on and deepens Saussure’s view of language as a system of differences with no positive terms. Languages divide the world up differently. Translators tell us that problems arise when the term X in language A has no exact equivalent in language B. Anthropologists tell us that languages in different cultures divide up the color spectrum differently, so much so that colors are distinguished differently. And so on.
I don’t think these considerations are far from Aristotle’s mind when he establishes his principle of non-contradiction. Examine the indirect way he establishes this principle in Metaphysics 4.4 by asking his hypothetical interlocutor to say something. Aristotle is not saying that things or thoughts cause words the way the sun causes tanning. He recognizes the sense in which words are arbitrary inventions, but he forces his interlocutor to say something that means something (the interlocutor who refuses to speak is no better than a “plant”), because to mean something a word, however arbitrary, has to be able to communicate a meaning (“what he says should at least mean something to him as well as to another” 1006a21-22). Aristotle’s conclusion is that that is possible only if X cannot be and not be at the same time, in the same respect, etc. Univocal meaning is possible because of the principle of non-contradiction. Subject matters are prior to language rather than vice versa.
That univocal meaning is possible does not mean that Aristotle thinks all words have univocal meanings, as sometimes seems simplistically assumed in criticisms of Aristotle. Metaphysics book 5 considers 30 philosophical terms, each of which has multiple meanings. Aristotle routinely distinguishes multiple meanings of the terms he uses. Put paradoxically, for Aristotle one word can have multiple univocal meanings.
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Many thanks, Bob, for this philosophical background. Although I am going offline for the evening right now, I will study it carefully tomorrow.
Footnotes to post #186:Regarding the Kant reference, Bender and Wellbery credit Kant with making "the obsolescence of rhetoric explicit, banishing it in a famous paragraph in Critique of Judgment." This passage appears in section #53, p. 171 in the J. H. Bernard translation, NY: Hafner, 1966,
Derrida's use of the term "rhetorics" in the passage I referenced is significant not just because he uses the term but because he uses it to refer to a structure that goes to the heart of his rhetoricizing of philosophy, albeit in a passage that is extraordinarily dense even by Derrida's standards. It is the kind of passage that one could spend an hour discussing in a seminar. In this passage, Derrida also equates "rhetorics" to "strategies," "ethics," and "politics."
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As I have indicated in previous posts, Academia.edu essays, and my book Free Will and Human Life , I consider secular teleology to be very important for ethical and political philosophy. Modernity, starting with Bacon and Hobbes, rejected Aristotelian teleology because of its association with medieval theology, and Luther and Calvin rejected it because their emerging Protestant theology emphasized original sin and predestinarianism rather than the classical Greek glorification of the ideal human being. Modernity cashiered Aristotle, but it was an Aristotle modified by medieval theology that modernity opposed. An argument can be made—and, in fact, has been made—that Aristotle, the great empiricist, was the founder of modern science. Otherwise put, the original is still the greatest.
It is often thought that Darwin demolished teleology with his theory of natural selection. This ignores the fact that Darwin, in both published and unpublished writings, often spoke of his system as being teleological. For a very interesting scholarly paper discussing such facts, see James G. Lennox, “Darwin Was a Teleologist,” Biology and Philosophy 8 (1993): 409–21, https://inters.org/files/lennox1993.pdf/. Per Wikipedia, Lennox “is an emeritus professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, United States, with secondary appointments in the departments of Classics and Philosophy.”
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James G. Lennox is an intellectual Objectivist, i.e., a follower of Ayn Rand. I disagree with Objectivist ethical and political philosophy, but I find nothing objectionable in Lennox’s paper on Darwin and teleology. Objectivism was and is pro-science and, famously, atheistic. Although Rand herself sometimes simplified even her philosophy of science, epistemology, and logic into something like rigid dogma, Lennox’s essay does not, in my view, exhibit such defects. So, avoiding the ad hominem fallacy, I don’t find it necessary to go beyond the actual contents of the above-referenced article. It should be evaluated on its own merits vel non. In this connection, his citations and quotations of Darwin’s writings themselves are instructive.
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Reason and Human Ethics argues that a secular, biological, teleological basis of human ethics exists and that reasoning and critical thinking about both ends and means are essential to human ethics. It examines how these principles apply in the contexts of individual ethics, social ethics, citizen ethics, media ethics, and political ethics.
This is the second book of my planned philosophical trilogy on free will, ethics, and political philosophy. The first in this series, Free Will and Human Life, was published in 2021. The third, titled Reason and Human Government, is in progress.
Synopsis
Chapter 1 (“What Is the Basis of Human Ethics?”) discusses the various theories of the basis of ethics over the millennia. It concludes that ethics is properly founded on a secular, biological, teleological understanding of human nature.
Chapter 2 (“Human Reason”) begins with a discussion of how reason relates to secular teleology. It argues that reason is—contrary to much of modern philosophy and science—properly directed to human ends as well as means. It explains the differences between abstract and practical reasoning and between formal and informal logic. Unlike mathematics and physics, ethics involves practical reasoning and informal, nonsymbolic logic. The chapter concludes with an extended discussion of common fallacies and the importance of critical thinking.
Chapter 3 (“Individual Ethics”) addresses the appropriate ethical orientation toward ourselves as individuals. It explains why we should want to be rational, how human reason is related to cerebral maturation, the life of reason, and general departures from a rational life. It concludes with a discussion of the ethical mean of Confucius and Aristotle and how that mean properly applies to such moral virtues as courage and moderation.
Chapter 4 (“Social Ethics”) considers how individuals should think and act regarding other human and nonhuman beings. This chapter discusses when we should or should not express ethical judgments about others, the merits and limitations of the Golden Rule, prejudice and discrimination, veracity, friendship, romantic relationships, family, work, business ethics, environmental ethics, the ethical treatment of nonhuman animals, and issues regarding force and fraud.
Chapter 5 (“Citizen and Media Ethics”) discusses, among other things, the long-forgotten concept of public virtue, the ethical imperative of reason in public discourse and conduct, ideologies of the far Right and far Left, and media ethics.
Chapter 6 (“Political Ethics”) is about the ethics of political leadership. The first major section is on authoritarian, tyrannical, and totalitarian political leaders, with a discussion of Plato’s account of oligarchical and tyrannical rulers in his Republic and Seventh Letter and the examples of Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, and Vladimir Putin. The second section addresses irrational democratic-republican political leadership, with examples being the self-acknowledged “gut instinct” leadership styles of U.S. presidents George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump and the latter’s advanced flirtation with authoritarian ideology and practice. The concluding section is about rational democratic-republican political leadership: what it would be and a possible example in President John F. Kennedy’s leadership during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
An epilogue sums it all up, and the appendix discusses the theological and violent conflicts among the claims to revelation.
Many thanks, Alan for your great and good work as always. I have ordered the new version on Amazon.
Mod
Thanks, Peter. I appreciate your interest.
Alan, I will be ordering a hard copy and Kindle version as well.
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Thanks, Brad. The Kindle edition should be available within a week or two. I'll post a notice when it is available.
In #192, Alan wrote: I am pleased to announce the publication of the paperback edition of my latest book, Reason and Human Ethics....Many congratulations!, Alan, & many thanks too for the informative synopsis.
Mod
Many congratulations!, Alan, & many thanks too for the informa..."
Thank you, Bob. You and I agree on some important principles, and I accordingly cite your writings, with approval, at endnotes 191n71 (chapter 1), 193nn7, 8 (chapter 2), and 211n18 (chapter 5) of the book. I greatly appreciate your elaboration of these points, which, in the case of biological teleology (the citations in chapters 1 and 2), I have long held but which you and a few others (for example, Terrence Deacon and Stuart Kauffman) discuss in a more scholarly or scientific manner. And your discussion of postmodernism (which I cite in chapter 5) is spot on.
I have, in a sense, been working on this book for over fifty years. My first written effort, First Philosophy and Human Ethics: A Rational Inquiry (2000), was defective in many ways, though I extracted the valuable portions of that work, in a revised form, for Reason and Human Ethics. My excuse for the 2000 book is that I was working full time as a lawyer (approximately fifty hours a week) in the late 1990s and early 2000, when I wrote it, and I simply didn’t have time to study and formulate my final perspectives. Another 20–25 years, including almost ten years of retirement from gainful employment, has made it possible for me to write Reason and Human Ethics. I don’t think I will have much more to say on the subject of ethics. This book is, at last, my definitive statement.
Alan, congratulations on part 2 in your trilogy. Very ambitious. I second Bob's comment on the value of the synopsis.
Mod
Thanks, Bob. I debated in my own mind whether to do the synopsis, thinking that perhaps no one besides me would think it worthwhile. So I'm pleased at the favorable reaction to it.
I am currently reading (at a slow pace, since I am spending most of my time writing my book Reason and Human Ethics) Wayne Booth’s book Now Don’t Try to Reason with Me: Essays and Ironies for a Credulous Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). The online article is an excerpt from the title essay, “ ‘Now Don’t Try to Reason with Me!’ Rhetoric Today, Left, Right, and Center.” That essay was, in turn, a revision of a speech given by Booth to students in 1967. It constituted chapter 1 of the book, and I am only a few pages into it, though I have looked through the entire chapter.
By “honest rhetoric,” Booth appears to mean rhetoric that is based, ultimately, on reason and reasonable arguments but is nevertheless attractively packaged for people who are not scholars. He gives Churchill’s wartime speeches as an example. Lincoln and JFK are others. What he opposes is applying reason only to means and not ends—to which I devote many pages of Reason and Human Ethics—as well as the reason- and fact-free emotionalism of demagogues of all times and places. Here is an excerpt from page 21 of Booth’s book:This is what I have always thought—from the time I was a high-school debater and speaker to the present. My own thoughts about the situation that was occurring in 1967 at about the same time that Booth gave his speech are set forth in my 1967 essay “Hippies and Pioneers,” which I have posted at https://www.academia.edu/23082421/Hip.... What I wrote in August of 1967 was remarkably similar to what Booth said at about the same time, including the critique of Marshall McLuhan. However, I was totally unaware of Booth’s speech until recently, and I’m sure he was unaware of my essay, which was not published until I posted it on Academia.edu in 2016. At the risk of seeming egotistical, perhaps it was a case of great minds thinking alike. At the time I was not aware of anyone else having views so similar to my own.
Needless to say, these same principles apply today to such phenomena as the alt-Right and the postmodern Left.