Public Discourse Needs Rhetoric, Not Philosophy
In this post - extremely political, be warned - I weigh the shortcomings of mainstream philosophical discourse in relation to contemporary popular politics, and offer an avenue to some alternative.
It's no great secret that our era is experiencing a massive political crisis throughout the Western world. The formulations of this crisis vary. Some, like Fukuyama for instance, would frame it as a crisis of liberal democracy. Others, like Müller, tend to categorize the crisis in more technical terms as popular politics. Nevertheless, for our purposes, it's important to understand in relation to what most of these thinkers experience the current situation as a crisis. Here the picture becomes somewhat more complex. A certain picture can be extracted from the extensive writing in the 1990s after the dissolution of the former USSR which spoke – sometimes by the same speakers – in different ways about "the end of history" in the liberal camp, and about "the complete takeover of capital in the neo-liberal program" in the more socialist camps. A relatively sober view was offered by Habermas, who as early as 1993 in his speech "Citizenship and National Identity" saw the buds of political problems that everyone is concerned with today, such as the tension between nation-states and the international order, or the problem of Third World immigration to Europe, as issues that would gain increasing significance. Habermas explains simply that during the Cold War there was a general feeling of political stagnation in the West. He quotes Gehlen who called this feeling "post-history." This feeling changed, especially in light of the great victories of liberalism in the 1990s, and led Habermas to attempt to discuss the problems of tomorrow's politics. In this sense, it's no coincidence that Habermas is probably the last classical public intellectual in our world.
For our purposes, Habermas admits that at the historical level, liberal democracy is the offspring of the centralized nation-state. However, Habermas himself believed that the nature of political authority had changed over time. The romantic and reflective view held that the basis of political authority lies in common origin, in ethnos, while the perspective of Enlightenment philosophers held that political authority is a product of voluntary agreement regarding the decision-making process by those subject to the law. In these respects, Habermas hoped that the political problems facing Europe – such as the refugee issue – could be solved through means of acclimatization to the replication of existing state and supra-national institutions through the identification of immigrants with the historical tradition that gave birth to these institutions, an acclimatization that would not demand full republican commitment, but rather the immigrants' appropriation of the need for universal institutions. This fantasy has gone bankrupt, as has the fantasy of a European Union that is not merely economic and a civil citizenship that exists on a continuum with "world citizenship." Nevertheless, this fantasy largely shaped the shared intellectual imagination of the bureaucratic ranks, which largely embodied "democratic" rationality, opposed to the romantic popular authority that grows from the family and extends outward –
According to this image of things, "only the unanimous and united will of all – where each decides for all and all decide for each the same thing [...] can be legislative" (Kant). This does not refer to the simple embodiment of the will of the people, owing its unity to a primordial homogeneity of origin or way of life. The consensus achieved in the confrontations of free and equal disputants who have united is ultimately based on the unity of a procedure about which there is agreement. This democratic process of opinion-forming and decision-making is embodied and detailed in the constitution of the rule of law. In a pluralistic society, the constitution expresses a formal consensus. [...] As we can see, the founding republican idea of the formation of "community" from the political self-awareness of [subjects] who are free and equal is too concrete and simple for modern conditions, especially when thinking about a nation, [...] where the binding glue is shared traditions. Fortunately, law and legislation are a medium that permits a significantly more abstract image of civil autonomy. The civil sovereignty of the people has now retreated to legally institutionalized procedures and to informal processes – which basic rights make possible – of the discursive formation, more or less, of opinion and will. [...] This is a model of deliberative politics. It does not assume the great subject of the collective community, but discourses which an anonymous hand has woven together. [emphasis in original]
I quote here somewhat extensively to give some idea of the mindset that, in my humble opinion, formed the immediate background to the rise of populist politics around the world, politics that preferred, in most cases, the authoritative figure that reflects at least some shadow of concrete national interests on one hand, and an attack on the bureaucratic establishment of all kinds – in this case, the judicial – that presumed to render "the collective subject" obsolete. Even at the level of style, in my opinion, populist politics should be seen as a reaction to the Leninist discourse expressed, among other things, in what Habermas said then.
However, I don't want to create the impression that populist politics is entirely just a reaction to liberal institutional corruption. On the contrary. Without a doubt, the rise of new technology, combined with the cultural influences of the globalist economy, created the conditions for this movement's powerful maturation. I am committed to the position that if we want to understand not only what enabled populist politics, but what constituted the reason why good people are mobilizing to its side, then this reason lies in a real political problem.
According to Habermas's method, legal logic is supposed to fulfill the civic function of supervising capitalism and subjugating it, as much as possible without damaging its fundamental processes, to the civic agenda. Moreover: this civil-legal logic has formal civic principles (as mentioned) that transcend any particular national consideration. Thus, for example, on the issue of immigration, Habermas finds that among the existing approaches – communitarian, reciprocal, and utilitarian – it is precisely the Rawlsian procedural logic that should dominate in the following manner:
As is known, John Rawls presents the thought experiment imagining a preliminary state, where everyone is in a state of ignorance regarding the questions of which society they were born into and what position they hold in that society. In relation to our problem [immigration], the results of the moral deliberation regarding global society are self-evident: "Beyond the 'veil of ignorance,' if considering possible limitations to freedom, one adopts the viewpoint of those whom the limitation would deprive to the greatest extent, namely – in this case – the viewpoint of the foreigner seeking to immigrate. In the preliminary position, they would insist that the right to immigrate is included in the system of basic liberties just as the right to religious freedom is included in this system: this right may be essential to someone's life plan."
I bring these words at a time when their relevance has been significantly undermined. Contrary to Habermas's expectations, it seems that Muslim immigration to Europe (unlike, apparently, Pan-Hispanic immigration to the U.S.) did not adopt the strategy of replicating the legitimacy of the continent's historical political institutions, and a radical portion of it even chose to establish competing Pan-Islamic institutions to European ones (for example, in education in England). Larger sections of Islam across the continent did not find, contrary to his expectations, a way from within their tradition to legitimize political institutions, but rather see them simultaneously as a funding source and a threatening infidel factor, while adopting a distinctly occidentalist rhetoric.
On the other side, many good souls understood that the free right to immigration might mistakenly include Palestinians from Gaza where the war initiated by Hamas destroyed at least 40% of the buildings there, and approximately another twenty percent of buildings that aren't safe to live in. The European and international emphasis returned to the realms of nationalism, in this case Palestinian, through the back door: it turns out that Europe cannot expect free immigration to be a general overarching principle mandated by rationality itself, since the real problems ultimately lie in national arenas. Such immigration, even if it were possible (which it isn't), would have sealed the fate of the Palestinian national project.
Either way, Habermas's observation rests on a solid truth in reality. Indeed, there is no way to conduct classical republican politics in modern mass politics. The last stronghold of modern (and therefore mediated) republican politics, the institutionalized "public opinion," has also undergone unrecognizable corruption. We received a demonstration of this recently in Israel: even in the reactionary camp that supposedly relies on alternative media to the classical established media in Israel, "Channel 14," they recently began to criticize Miriam Adelson for promoting political candidates for the day after Benjamin Netanyahu, the authoritarian ruler beloved by the channel. In response to what was apparently a threat to move several millions that the livelihood of those sitting in the channel depends on – the channel's chief caricature, Yinon Magal, was required to publish an embarrassing apology full of flattery to the lady who holds the purse strings.
The bottom line is that Western political institutions have undergone deep corruption on one hand, and on the other hand, the rise of populist politics around the world means a pendulum movement against institutionalism itself. It means political moves aimed at uprooting the historical-political institutions of the West from the root in favor of a narrow and childish conception of tight-majority politics that fails to consider even basic historical norms to preserve the governability of Western countries. This situation is fertile ground for radicals of various types who naturally tend to see in situations of this kind an "opportunity" to realize their utopian and totalitarian plans.
As we have seen, the role of philosophy in the past was, among other things, in embedding this damage of the corruption of political institutions. The political philosophy of Rawls, in particular, expressed corruption of this kind. Therefore, it seems important to me that precisely the people who are entrusted with philosophy internalize in some way a concept of the limitations of philosophy. The best way to get such a concept is to return to healthy skepticism regarding the role of philosophy in the public arena. On this subject, fortunately, we can use, among other things, the broad criticism expressed by Bernard Williams as early as the 1990s towards Rawls's philosophy.
Williams argues that Rawls's theory offers us a possibility for rational resolution of conflicts. In fact, he says that in his opinion, this is an exceptional achievement of Rawlsian theory. But to reach this exceptional theoretical achievement, it uses a currency that is difficult to redeem in reality – very strong assumptions that have no correspondence in factual reality.
(1) All agents are determined to reach agreement on important ethical questions, more determined in this than they are to express their conception of ethics (which might include, for example, subjugating others to one private conception or another that they have).
(2) They are determined to live in one society.
(3) In the agreement they will reach, they are not interested in everyone having the same beliefs.
(4) The principles must be possible to formulate publicly.
(5) They want the agreed principles to guide them in resolving future conflicts.
In this context, Williams argues, it is entirely logical that agents would try to save as many of their ethical intuitions as possible while producing principles according to which they will have to cancel a certain portion of their ethical intuitions or change them in a process of feedback. In other words, this is Rawls's conception of reflective equilibrium.
Williams tries to show not only that some of these assumptions are in tension with others, but that some of them become impossible if we take into account even simple things we know about human beings. For instance, it is indeed true that every society needs some uniform set of beliefs and an authoritative way to resolve violent conflicts. But Rawls's theory goes beyond this minimum when it demands that this way should be, in the vast majority of cases, a product of consensus in discussion (the "liberal assumption"). It is really not a social necessity that there be such a way. Williams doubts whether even as a possible ideal for human beings, this is an absurd idea. The implication of these assumptions is that in every case there needs to be a way to make the sum of beliefs that enable this society to live together explicit enough for the purpose of joint discussion (the "rationalist assumption") on principles. Williams finds this too to be impossible. Finally, the assumption that even the discussion relating to consensual resolution of new conflicts, even if making the assumptions underlying the discussion explicit were possible, is certainly not a possible extension as we know human society.
According to Williams, rationalism does not necessarily follow from being rational. Williams finds the root of the problem in the Enlightenment's ideal of transparency, which in his opinion distinguishes not between liberals and those who are not, but between enlightened radicals of a certain kind (including Marxists) and those who are not. According to Williams, even if we recognize the ideal of transparency, this does not automatically lead to the possibility of systematic resolution of explicit beliefs (enhanced rationalism). In general, I highly recommend Bernard Williams's book "Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy" to anyone with an academic education.
The understanding of the limitations of theory in relation to the public arena should produce within philosophy a self-awareness broad enough to preserve the classical distinction between theory and practice. This distinction, which was honorably abandoned in modern philosophy, was largely responsible for the political moderation of philosophers before the rise of the modern era. But in my opinion, we can and should go a step further. Liberal institutions were founded from the outset on non-republican ideals, or what amounts to the same thing, the appropriation of republican ideals as theoretical tools whose correspondence relates mainly to thought experiments. If we return to Hobbes, the role of liberal institutions is primarily to prevent violent conflict in the form of civil war.
What strengthened Western political institutions in practice was also a concept that developed in English thought, "public opinion." Public opinion is not simply identical with the institutionalized media, but this undoubtedly gives it part of its voice. Public opinion is actually the embodiment of social consensus around the necessity of state institutions – corrupt as they may be – against more centralized political authorities. By the nature of things, social consensus is conservative. The interesting example of Israel returns here. In 2023, with the rise of the populist government in Israel and the announcement of Levin's regime coup plan, the demonstrations that until then numbered at most a few thousand individuals who opposed Benjamin Netanyahu's populist rule turned into demonstrations of hundreds of thousands almost every week. These demonstrations were a dangerous moment, as they clearly showed that the government was undermining political and legal institutions without broad social agreement – and the government's immediate and ongoing negligence created an opportunity that allowed the enemy to harm the state.
So then, where are we left? The purpose of fundamental reform in bureaucratic institutions is still valid and existing, but so is the necessity to approach it with the required political and social caution. Beyond that, there is a necessity to politically generate a movement of centralizing political authority, which can rebuild that broad social consensus that will leave the delusional on the margins. To do this, there is no point in engaging them in arguments – anyone who takes seriously the limitations of philosophy understands that there is no way to convince radicals, rationalists (from right and left), or simple racists, of the necessity to maintain a broad social consensus at all costs at such a dangerous moment in national and international politics. The form of address needs to be different.
In the classical tradition, political speech was not originally the domain of philosophy. There was an entire sub-discipline of philosophy that was entrusted with producing healthy political discourse called rhetoric. Unlike the straw men that sometimes jump up in the writing of Habermas or modern communitarians, the classical city-state (especially if we think about Athens in the fifth century BCE) was large enough that already within it, direct deliberative participation of all those present in the decision-making process was impossible. The discipline of rhetoric, which survived into the Roman Empire, allowed the formulation of speeches aimed in advance at the basic assumptions that the audience was already working with. Contrary to the conception that prevailed, for example, in Plato's Academy, Aristotle showed that in many ways this rhetorical activity, when done correctly, is of primary importance to the proper political functioning of the city-state. Embedded in it is actually an implicit normative assumption, that addressing the pre-opinions of the audience not only appeals in advance to prejudices that exist within it, but it itself works to stabilize prejudices that contribute to social cohesion and the advancement of the interests of the city-state. Beyond that, we are not talking here about some nostalgia for a political structure that has disappeared from the world, but an operative proposal to learn from the existing literature around the rhetorical tradition, from Aristotle's rhetoric to Quintilian and beyond – to the Renaissance.
A possible concern is that in the absence of philosophical support, there is no guarantee that the proposed alternatives will indeed be better than, for example, populist alternatives. But this objection seems to me to be wrong on at least two levels: (1) It assumes that until now, philosophy has indeed made it possible to draw practical-political conclusions that led to the promotion of the public good. (2) It assumes that the only purpose of philosophical discussion in relation to the practical sphere works at the operational level. Regarding the first argument, it seems to me that a broad discussion in the twentieth century will reveal how much philosophy actually harmed the public good, rather than contributed to it. As for the second objection, it stems from a misunderstanding. The Aristotelian reflection on the good political order is a full and consolidated reflection. Whoever studies it – or another political philosophy – will gain a deep enough understanding to identify what can somehow be understood as good in itself. But the real good can only be realized through public dialectic, a dialectic that, as anyone who has studied Aristotle's Politics knows, is not without laws, and theoretical understanding only adds to it volume to ensure that it comes (within the limits possible for a human being) from the right place, not from cheap manipulation. In any case, it is important that this dialectic is not subordinate to the public good, but it itself expresses a certain guarantee of the quality of the outcome.
In this sense, the various analyses we hear day and night of populist rhetoric are accurate. The populist rhetoric that involves a revolutionary attack on government institutions and various segments of society itself creates severe social polarization that threatens the legitimacy of state institutions, and therefore the integrity of the state and its ability to survive in a way that is strong enough to deal with the challenges yet to come. In fact, one can learn a lot from populist rhetoric and understand exactly which political figures speak in rhetoric aimed at unifying. And note: such rhetoric will not be able to return to the rationalist discourse that created, in many ways, the populist crisis itself. It will have to promote its own reformist program that recognizes the fundamental problems on which populism grew – from the a priori preference for universal rights to the pushing of elected institutions (apart from the government) outside the framework of the democratic game.
My proposal is ultimately operative: if you create political content, learn a little classical rhetoric. Classical rhetoric contains instructions for how to address a wider audience. By a wider audience, I don't necessarily mean numerically – social networks are good at generating this by themselves – but rather qualitatively. People at different places in their lives and in society. This kind of address itself, I believe, offers a more practical and successful role for the use of philosophy or research in general in the public sphere.