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| Morning sun and last ice, Lake Leelanau |
When
President Obama announced on March 16 his nominee to fill the vacancy on the
Supreme Court, he noted that the nominee, Judge Garland, is well known and
widely respected for (and I’ll have to paraphrase here, not having written down
the exact words) “understanding before disagreeing” and “disagreeing without
being disagreeable.” If you missed what amounted to a fully prepared speech
from the president on the occasion of his announcement, it’s worth taking time to
catch the whole thing.
I
must admit I’ve been rationing my news listening of late. So little is “new”
from one day to the next, and very little encouraging, let alone inspiring.
Listening to the president on Wednesday, however, I did feel encouraged. I
also felt proud to be an American and to have such a president in office, a man
who has had one of the most difficult jobs in the world and has endured
acrimonious hostility and partisan opposition at every turn, yet one who
continues to believe, despite its shortcomings, in our country and its form of
government and to be a model of civility to the nation and the world. I had
been happy to read [in Rolling Stone, Oct. 2015] that he understands the
“failures” of his administration are not exclusively presidential failures. He
could and would have accomplished more with Congressional cooperation. The
Congress wouldn’t have had to cave to his every demand, either -- just have been
willing to engage constructively and compromise creatively. But “compromise”
has become a dirty word to ideologues, both those in political life and all too
many of those who elect them, Americans who have convinced themselves (or
pretend they have) that political compromise is nothing less surrender to evil.
Really?
Angels vs. Devils? Jehovah vs. Satan? Really?
In
his essay on “The Future of Tragedy,” Camus wrote that tragedy differs from
drama or melodrama in that, “the forces confronting
each other in tragedy are equally legitimate, equally justified.” This
is what makes tragedy difficult, if not impossible, to grasp in adolescence. In
high school I could only see Creon as a tyrant, Antigone as a heroine. And yet,
for the playwright and his Greek audience, the entire situation was ambiguous.
There was reason, as well as blinding passion, on both sides. Thus,
Antigone is right, but Creon is not wrong. Similarly, Prometheus is
both just and unjust, and Zeus, who pitilessly oppresses him, also has right on
his side.
Camus
gives the formula for tragedy as follows: “All can be justified, [but] no one
is just.”
Ah,
we keep our little minds so busy, we humans, justifying our lives!
And
this is beside my point, too, but as Camus understands tragedy, the present
American political scene may well be tragic, although Congress and the American
public in general lack the basic insight of the Greek playwrights and audience.
In all too many minds, we do not have tragic conflict but a morality play. If
you see where I’m coming from. But that was an aside....
Slowly,
in roundabout fashion, I am coming to my topic for the day, which is not
tragedy but rhetoric. How the two may be related (if they are) will perhaps
emerge before the end of this exploratory foray.
What is Rhetoric?
Before
agreeing or disagreeing with any social practice it’s important to get clear on
just what the practice is, so before I ask if rhetoric is good or bad, I
need to be clear on what I take the term to mean. It helps to look at the
origin of the practice. Then, does the term carry nonstandard but legitimate
meanings, or are there nonstandard but legitimate ways of understanding the
practice? Finally, has rhetoric changed (improved or degraded) over the course
of history?
So
tedious!
I know! But what is the point of speaking or writing at all, if not to
understand and be understood?
Well,
the term is Greek, and so, like tragedy, rhetoric has Western European origins.
More important in the context of present-day American politics is the fact that
rhetoric grew up alongside Greek democracy. In the fifth century BCE, when
ordinary citizens first had the opportunity to argue legal claims against other
citizens, teachers of oratory offered their services for hire. They were not
lawyers but speech coaches for citizens acting as their own lawyers. These
teachers then devised theories about what made for successful speech. Finally
philosophers got into the act, with concerns for truth and morality that went
beyond having a winning argument. Perhaps we should note that all this was
taking place in the early days of the decline of “the glory that was Greece.”
Roman
rhetoric (Romans copying everything Greek for their own purposes) broke down
the process of rhetoric into five components: analysis and research (the
marshalling of facts); arranging of the material; putting the argument into
effective language; delivering the speech (the performance); and committing its
ideas to memory (for, one presumes, future use).
Having
flowered in the Greek polis and law courts, it is hardly surprising that
rhetoric became nearly synonymous with debate. The idea that
truth emerges from adversarial verbal combat continues in our American courts
and political campaigns today.
As
Americans with differing perspectives, some of us may believe strongly in
justice and politics as competition while others hold a modified or even
entirely different view. For now, my point is simply that rhetoric and debate, like
it or not, are
1)
adversarial
in nature;
2)
closely
allied historically, if not almost identical; and
3)
serve
a function in American society much like the function they served in ancient
Greece.
One
course required of all first-year undergraduates back when I was a freshman at
the University of Illinois was Rhetoric. In that class we learned to take and
argue for controversial positions, although, as I recall, our arguments were
handed in as written papers rather than delivered to the class as speeches, so
there was never an opposition ready to jump up with objections. The instructor,
however, assigned positions to each of us, often not the positions we
would have chosen for ourselves, and so to do the job we necessarily had not
only to give support for our assigned position but also to imagine, anticipate,
and respond to potential serious objections. That was rhetoric as it was taught
to me – not debate, as such, but the clear statement of a position and solid
supporting argument for holding the position.
This,
in fact, is how I continue to understand the term “argument” -- as a reasoned
exchange. Shouting, name-calling, high-horse refusals to explain with a
patronizing “Trust me!” – none of that is argument, as I see it. Argument
demands accepting one’s opponent as a moral equal, deserving of respect.
But
is “rhetoric,” my stalking horse, something else? Is it something more – or
(gulp!) less?
I
can’t get the question out of my head because voices on the radio keep using
the term “rhetoric” in a way to suggest that the practice is less than
desirable in the political arena – ironically, the very arena that gave it
birth. Rhetoric, they imply, is obfuscation at best, and inflammatory bombast
at its present-day worst.
Suspicions
of rhetoric are as old as rhetoric itself. John Ralston Saul, in The
Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense, presents under his
heading “Sophists” the following description (his own opinions apparent in the
other bold-faced terms he defines elsewhere in his book):
SOPHISTS The
original model for the twentieth-century TECHNOCRAT; more
precisely for the BUSINESS SCHOOL graduate and the ACADEMIC
CONSULTANT.
These
fifth-century BC teachers wandered around Greece selling their talents to
whomever would hire them. Their primary talent was rhetoric. They were not
concerned by ethics or the search for truth. Long-term consequences, indeed
reality in most forms, did not interest them. What mattered was their ability
to create illusions of reality which would permit people to get what they
wanted.
Clearly,
reservations about rhetoric today are nothing new. Back at the root of
reasoning’s public practice, rhetoric was used by the Sophists for gain, their
own as well as that of their clients, and victory was the sole relevant measure
of rhetorical quality. Serious examples of debate today (in my opinion,
American political campaign matches hardly merit the term, although they
certainly employ rhetoric), e.g., the “Oxford-style” debates we hear on public
radio, while neither monetary award nor political office is at stake, are still
concluded with winners and losers, as decided by audience vote.
Sample
question: Has religion contributed, over the course of history, more good or
evil to human society? Two teams argue, each taking a side of the question. In
the end, the audience votes for one team or the other. Truth decided by vote: a
strange Western notion.
And
there’s the sorry truth of it: outside a classroom led by a instructor with
high standards of argument, rhetoric as persuasive reasoning can include just
as many straw men, bandwagon appeals, camels’ noses, and other informal logical
fallacies as can be put over on an audience. And that’s not all. Innuendo,
empty claims, and outright falsehoods, if said with sufficient conviction and
repeated often enough, can be – and here we must sigh over having to use a
perfectly inoffensive word in such a ghastly context – effective.
Where Does That
Leave Us?
Because
argument presupposes an attempt to influence, if not an outright conflict of
opinion, it makes a lot of people uncomfortable, whether or not there’s yelling
involved. But can we imagine a human society that made no attempt to influence
the thinking of its members? Fear and force are one way to urge social
conformity. Reason, which presupposes freedom and works through argument, is
another.
But
suppose you are not comfortable with conflict, perhaps also fearful of “losing”
– what are your options if you decline to engage in debate?
Here’s
one possibility: Refuse to listen. Walk away. Get on your high horse and take
what you see as the high road. Follow the example of Senate Republicans, who
say to the president, “We don’t care who you nominate for the Supreme Court. We
will not meet with your nominee, and we will not hold hearings.”
Am
I the only one reminded by this strategy of fifth-grade girls? “Come on, let’s
walk away. We’ll just ignore her!” Did we really elect people to Congress to
play this game instead of doing their job? Well, perhaps we can be thankful
Senate Republicans are not acting like fifth-grade boys, slugging it out
(wordlessly, of course) on the playground after school!
Other
options?
Sometimes
people are yelling because they think no one is listening. Listening could be a
course of action taken in place of debate. I say “in place of” deliberately,
because although in a true debate only one person can speak at a time, we have
all seen the others making notes and preparing their rebuttal during the other
side’s speeches. Understanding is not the goal in debate, much less working
together – only “winning.”
I’ve
said that reason -- that is, argument -- demands and presupposes freedom and
equality. I’m thinking now about listening and wondering what, if anything, it
presupposes. There is, unfortunately, a frequent perception, shared by speaker
and listener, that the speaker is in a superior, one-up position (see Tannen
reference at the bottom of this post). Can a listener take a different
perspective on the relationship? If so, might the speaker’s perception also
shift? Not necessarily. But possibly?
I
haven’t found a wide, clear path yet but am searching through the forest.
Judge
Garland’s way, as President Obama characterized it, of “understanding before
disagreeing” tells me that the judge must be a good listener. I can
psychologize and/or demonize an opponent, based on his or her positions, but I
can’t understand the reasoning that led to those positions unless (1) the other
person is willing to explain his or her reasoning, and (2) I am willing to
listen. Possibilities that follow listening are multiple rather than binary:
o
I
may find I agree with the speaker, after all. Perhaps we were simply using
different language and not realizing we were aiming in the same direction.
o
I
may agree with some of the speaker’s reasons but don’t see that they entail the
conclusion the speaker has drawn. Maybe we can talk this through together.
o
Our
positions may be incompatible but not marked by enormous pragmatic distance.
Perhaps we can each move a little closer.
o
I
disagree more strongly than ever and now understand more clearly where our
disagreement lies. Understanding allows me to aim my own explanation to the
heart of the matter, in hopes of changing the speaker’s mind or modifying her
or his position.
o
I
might change my
mind!
These
are possibilities that immediately occur to me, not a list I see as exhaustive.
Do you see other possible outcomes?
Maybe,
as Bergson says of the future, the path to bring us together isn’t lying
somewhere in the woods, waiting for us to stumble upon it. Maybe we have to
clear that path ourselves.
As
for the Senate blocking the President’s nominee for the Supreme Court, the
following idea comes from my friend Michael Roth:
"Recent history suggests there
are no adverse consequences for this style of political maneuvering. So perhaps
an alternate form of questioning might be to investigate what the opposition's
options are.
"Suppose the president could
get a federal court somewhere to find that the submitting the name is
sufficient for fulfilling his constitutional duty and since the Senate has
chosen not to weigh in, he can go ahead an seat his nominee.
"The senate might then chose to
appeal this to the supreme court. Assuming the appeal results in a 4-4 tie, the
lower court's ruling would hold and the Justice would be seated.
"Is that possible. What are the next steps for getting it
done?"
That
Michael! He was definitely one of the smartest of our graduate school
philosophy cohort!
Suggested reading: The Argument Culture: Working from Debate to Dialogue, by Deborah Tannen; The
Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense, by John Ralston Saul
