Prudent Rhetoric: Implications of Justifying Means Over Ends in Hillary Clinton's Foreign Policy

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Abstract

Rhetoric and phronesis have long been theoretically linked due to their shared faculties of judgment and contingency. However few rhetorical studies have examined invoking practical reasoning as a rhetorical strategy. This paper demonstrates how Hillary Clinton, in a speech outlining global human rights, uses practical reasoning, as opposed to ideology, as an explicit rhetorical appeal to justify American foreign policy. In doing so, Clinton focuses on the means of policy as opposed to the ends.

Author

• Gregory Dorchak, University of Massachusetts, Amherst