The Rhetoric of Empathy: Ethical Foundations of Dialogical Communication

Abstract

In contrast to the doubting game, which involves rational, skeptical, critical analysis, and argumentation to persuade or defeat others, the believing game might seem uncritically naive, as an effort to listen, affirm, and non-judgmentally understand others. However, the believing game cannot be dismissed so easily. Genuinely engaged, the believing game can function as a profoundly ethical strategy within a larger conceptual framework of what I have called for some years “the rhetoric of empathy.” The necessary condition for honestly playing the believing game is an empathic stance, and the goal is to engage in ethical dialogue. Peter Elbow’s continual insistence on the value of the believing game, and the fact that it does not go away‐given the need for empathic understanding and ethical practice in our private and public lives‐calls our attention to the pragmatic and operational usefulness of the dialectical interplay of this constellation of ideas. When we focus on Elbow’s dialectic of belief and doubt, however, we should clarify the role of games. Years ago, I was initially put off by Elbow’s labeling of his strategies for believing and doubting as games because this could imply that they are merely play, recreation, frivolous, as in “child’s play.” Yet game and gaming can be deadly serious, as in war game, or gaming as a strategy, the gaming industries, or the prey in the hunt. And games certainly are taken seriously in regard to sports and on-line gaming, as any player, spectator, fan, or detractor knows. However, Elbow’s games are not in the same league with those based on the cynical or ironic attitudes that call life or politics games. Underlying Elbow’s games there is the sincere, ethical assumption that we play the roles of belief and doubt honestly, openly, and thoroughly. This idea of role-playing in Elbow’s games requires, literally, recreation, in keeping with its meanings of recreating and refreshing mentally as well as physically. Thus, role-playing in the believing game is literally “to create anew” and “entertain” (a term implying play and civility; see Huizinga 1-27) the thoughts, opinions, feelings of others and suspending criticism or judgment for the purpose of better understanding, even mutual understanding among all parties. For role-playing ethically, empathy is primary. While this could be just a game, it’s also more than just a game. So let the games begin.