The Rhetoric of an Ordinary Political Argument: Liberalism and Zionism

Abstract

TW A HAT ARE the standards for a good political argument? A lesson learned from reading liberal political theory is that the conduct of everyday or ordinary political arguments does not provide adequate answers to that question. Notwithstanding their diversity, theoretical efforts to say what constitute good reasons always challenge the reliability and precision of ordinary standards for persuasiveness or reasonableness. From Hobbes' Leviathan to Rawls' A Theory of Justice, a liberal theoretical epistemology presumes that ordinary arguments about rights, freedom, justice, equality, and other like concepts are too vague, ambiguous, or liable to bias to be the basis for evaluating political claims. Anxieties about the lack of reliability and accountability of reasonableness lead theorists to adopt standards of a more abstract origin from philosophy or mathematics (the rational). This preference for the rational over the reasonable implies that good reasons only arise from epistemological standards which transcend ordinary language and meaning. The most familiar and accomplished attempt to transcend reasonableness is utilitarianism. Its rational epistemology and vocabulary system of Pareto optimality, marginal utility, indifference, and statistical calculations constrains common-sense and has almost monopolized our confidence in what counts as a good policy argument. Still, its theoretical and practical success has not removed doubts about how well the rational rises above the reasonable.