Reason, Rhetoric, and Narrative in the Formation of Community

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

John Locke had it that reason could be “our only star and compass” for providing guidance to political life. But even enlightened reason might need a sweetener to make it politically efficacious: persuasion, rhetoric, poetic myth-making. This panel takes its bearings from the historic place of rhetoric at the center of political life—the need for persuasion to obtain over compulsion in decent politics—and the challenging questions this raises about the reasonability of politics. Here the dark side of rhetoric is also relevant: its role as the instrument of demagogues and dictators, an interest now renewed in an age of “post-truth” politics and the perils of populism, the theme of APSA’s 2019 conference. Our panel explores the ubiquity of this problem by bringing thinkers from the gamut of Western political philosophy—from Xenophon and Aristotle to Machiavelli and Rawls—together to illuminate the limits and dangers of persuasive speech in political life and the challenges it poses to the idea of a rational politics as such. Dustin Sebell explores the impossibility of political science in the Xenophontic understanding of political life while Jeremy Mhire highlights the importance of rhetoric and honor to the argument of the Nicomachean Ethics. Alexander Duff examines the weakness of deliberation and rhetoric—the irrelevance of reasoning—in Machiavelli’s account of the Ciompi revolt in his Florentine Histories. Ramon Lopez focuses on competition among narratives in establishing viable forms of public reason in the Civil War era. By seeing the diffusion of diagnoses and prescriptions for the perennial need of reason for persuasive supplementation in political life we think that we can better appreciate our present circumstances, where the place of truth in populist and ever more divisive politics is at stake.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 1: Political Thought and Philosophy: Historical Approaches

Individual Presentations

• Through a Keyhole or an Open Door? Rhetoric and Pedagogy in Aristotle’s Ethics - Jeremy J. Mhire, Louisiana Tech University

• The Weakness of Reasoning in Machiavelli’s "Florentine Histories" - Alexander Duff, University of North Texas

• Narratives in Political Crisis: Slavery and the Founding in Antebellum America - Ramon Edgardo Lopez, Furman University

Chair

• Michelle Tolman Clarke Dartmouth College