In A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues, the French moral philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville attempts to define tolerance, taken as a moral virtue, and to describe its most important features. Sponville defines tolerance as, to paraphrase, “active forbearance for the sake of another.” And he regards tolerance as a “limited,” “small,” and “necessary” virtue (Sponville 1996, pp. 157-172). Once properly understood, this definition and these descriptions strike me as spot on (after a minor modification to the definition).

Sponville also claims that it makes sense to consider tolerating something – say, the disrespectful tone of your colleague – only if you are uncertain whether your negative judgment – ‘his tone is disrespectful’ – is true. As Sponville puts it, “When a truth is known with certainty, tolerance is irrelevant,” and “Tolerance comes in only when knowledge is lacking.” In other words, if you “know” someone’s behavior is objectionable, tolerance has, as Sponville puts it, “no object.”

I’ll argue that this ‘uncertainty thesis’ falls to counterexamples, is unsupported by Sponville’s arguments, and is inconsistent with the other important features Sponville attributes to tolerance. The uncertainty thesis suggests that the only moral motive that might properly lead someone to choose to forbear is intellectual humility. Contrary to this thesis, the virtue of tolerance can be exercised, and properly so, from other moral motives, and even when we “know” the other person – your colleague, say – is in the wrong.

1. Am I Being Tedious?
A Small Treatise, Sponville tells us, is a book about “practical morals,” not intended merely for a scholarly audience (Sponville 1996, p. 4). In this book, Sponville’s central aim is to give practical advice that is not only sound and incisive, but also highly engaging and easily put to use by thoughtful readers, academics or not, who aim to live a moral life. In his brief chapter on tolerance, what Sponville wants to get right is the big picture. Broadly speaking, what is tolerance? Why, and when, is it important to exercise this particular virtue? How important is tolerance compared to other moral virtues? What difficult decisions will a thoughtful person, trying to live a tolerant life, often confront? In a few words, too much distinction-making could simply get in the way of a sensible balance of careful thought and useful practical advice.

This raises the question whether my objections hold Sponville’s discussion of tolerance to standards of theoretical rigor and analytic precision that a popular book is not required to meet. My objections aren’t, I submit, tedious quibbles. As I said, Sponville very much wants to get right the big picture about tolerance, and the uncertainty thesis threatens to put this big picture seriously out of focus and so to obscure Sponville’s otherwise very insightful and very helpful remarks about tolerance.

2. What is Tolerance?
Sponville provides his general definition of tolerance in the following extended quotation:
To tolerate means to accept what could be condemned or allow what could be prevented or combated. It means renouncing some of one’s power, strength, or anger. Thus we tolerate the whims of a child or the positions of an adversary, but such forbearance is virtuous only if it involves self-control, the overcoming of personal interest, personal suffering, or personal impatience. Tolerance has value only when exercised against one’s own interest and for the sake of someone else’s (Sponville 1996, pp. 159-160).

According to Sponville, the question whether to exercise tolerance arises in situations in which, confronting behavior that you find objectionable, you discover in yourself a desire, to one degree or another, to “condemn” or “prevent” or “combat” it. In his view, to tolerate is to put up with the relevant behavior, and so – through self-control – to suppress whatever inclinations you have to act out against it. For this exercise of self-restraint to count as an instance of virtuous behavior, you must forbear for the right kind of reason: for the sake of another, and not merely out of self-interest, indifference, or cowardice. To paraphrase, tolerance is “active forbearance for the sake of another.”

This definition is a good start. It fits with clear cases of tolerance. For instance, consider the father of a teenage daughter who bites his lip when her new boyfriend talks to him in overly familiar terms. He feels a strong inclination to chastise the boy, but chooses not to – not out of selfishness, indifference, or fear but – because he doesn’t want to embarrass his daughter. The father’s behavior clearly counts as an instance of tolerance, as Sponville’s definition prescribes.

Sponville’s definition should be broadened, though. Imagine an American public official who has both the power and the desire to use her political office to suppress a torrent of obnoxiously unfair, anti-government rhetoric, but chooses not to exercise this power out of respect for the moral and legal right to free speech. In this case, she exercises self-control to put up with the obnoxious speech, but she doesn’t do this “for the sake of another.” Her decision to suffer fools is done out of respect for liberal democratic values. Accordingly, we should modify Sponville’s definition. Though tolerance can be done from a concern for another person’s feelings, reputation, or welfare, it can also be done from other moral motives, such as respect for rules or a sense of duty.

Here, then, is our working definition of tolerance: the moral virtue of tolerance is a disposition to actively forbear, prompted by moral motives – presumably, when the agent thinks the balance of moral considerations calls for forbearance instead of acting out.

3. Three Important Features of Tolerance
Sponville intends to provide a general account of tolerance and its proper role in a well-lived, moral life. Here are several features he attributes to tolerance.

First, Sponville emphasizes that tolerance is a moral virtue with “limits.” There are times when morality requires us to act, not to forbear. For instance, it isn’t a moral virtue to be disposed to put up with grievous moral wrongs: “Must we deem virtuous someone who tolerates rape, torture, or murder? Who could find virtue in a disposition to tolerate the worst?” The basic idea is that a good person would have an exceedingly strong inclination to act out against grievous wrongs, and she would generally do so “when they could be prevented or fought against by means of a lesser evil.” Sponville puts the point this way: a person who practices “universal tolerance” – who always, as a matter of moral principle, chooses to forbear – is guilty of “an atrocious tolerance” that is tantamount to “forgetting the victims, abandoning them to their fate, and perpetuating their martyrdom.” And so, tolerance has limited application; in those instances – not exactly rare – in which the balance of moral considerations favors action, we should eschew tolerance and act.

Second, Sponville regards tolerance as a “small” virtue. It’s not as “exalted” as respect, generosity, or love. Think about friendship. Almost certainly you want your friends to respect you, to feel warmly affectionate feelings for you, and – to one degree or another – to actively look out for your interests. You want more from them than merely tolerance. A relationship made up of two people who do little more than suffer each other is far from ideal. A similar remark can be made about the relationships between citizens in a broader community. Though I don’t think everyone is morally required to feel warm affection for everyone else, I wouldn’t find it attractive to be a member of a community in which people consistently displayed no more than a willingness to put up with each other. Of course, a merely tolerant society is preferable to a society in which neither tolerance nor respect nor compassion nor kindness nor mercy is present. But an ideal moral community would include citizens who aim for, among other things, mutual respect and not merely tolerance. Accordingly, in the hierarchy of moral virtues, Sponville ranks tolerance lower than respect, compassion, and generosity. As Sponville puts it, tolerance is “not a maximum but a minimum.” In our moral lives, we should really aim for more.

Third, Sponville regards tolerance as “necessary,” at least for people such as us, in a world such as ours. Tolerance, though a “minimum,” is necessary in at least two scenarios. First, there are cases in which a particular person deserves no more than tolerance from you. At least with respect to his racial attitudes, the white supremacist simply doesn’t deserve your respect. Second, there are instances when the problem is not with the other person, but with you. An old friend is groaning under the weight of real suffering and deserves your compassion. But in an episode of moral weakness, you simply can’t summon it. To your dismay, all you feel is cold-hearted impatience. If the best you are able to muster by an effort of will is to suppress your impatience, it might be morally required for you to do at least this. When we are prone to undue impatience, choosing tolerance is “only a beginning.” But whereas generosity and magnanimity are hard to come by, tolerance is often an “accessible wisdom” for those of us who are not moral saints.

Sponville’s big picture – his description of tolerance as limited, small, and necessary – strikes me as compelling and useful. But before I move on to discuss the uncertainty thesis, it will be helpful for me to draw out several important points from Sponville’s descriptions of tolerance as a small but necessary virtue.

Theorists of tolerance often point out that the phrase ‘I tolerated him’ has, as Sponville says, “something condescending, even contemptuous about it that is disturbing.” What disturbs, at least in part, is that an act of tolerance implies what I’ve called a ‘negative judgment’. To tolerate is to put up with behavior that you find in some way objectionable. And so, an act of tolerance suggests, we might say, a “breach” in the relevant relationship.

You might have noticed that Sponville thinks about the morally virtuous life in highly communal terms. In this vein, Sponville quotes Vladimir Jankelevitch approvingly:
Tolerance – though the word is hardly exalting – is therefore a passable solution; while awaiting better – that is, until men become capable of loving one another, or simply of knowing and understanding one another – let us count ourselves fortunate if they can at least suffer each other. Tolerance, then, belongs in the interim period (Jankelevitch 1986, p. 93).

Similar to Kant’s discussion of the “kingdom of ends” and the Christian tradition’s thinking about the “eternal harmony,” the kingdom of God, that will follow Christ’s second coming, Sponville attempts to describe what kind of people we ought to aspire to become by describing what an ideal moral community would be like. In his view, living the morally virtuous life is a matter of aspiring to become (more and more like) the type of people who could live in morally healthy relationships, in a morally healthy human community. A morally virtuous person makes it a central aim, in Sponville’s view, to become more and more neighbor-loving.

Given this emphasis, consider tolerance. An instance of tolerance is, in the very least, not a model of an ideal human interaction. A society in which people continually suffer each other is a society in which there are divisions. Thinking someone else in the wrong is not, of course, essentially or invariably condescending, let alone contemptuous, but it does suggests a suboptimal (episode in a) relationship. A relationship in which one person suppresses a desire to act out against another does not mimic the behavior and attitudes of citizens in the Kantian-Christian “kingdom of ends,” which is, Sponville thinks, community at its best.

No doubt, in some instances the breach between the tolerant and the tolerated is minor. Say your toddler has become tired and cranky, and you judge it best – an “accessible wisdom” – to put up with his present outburst. This act of patient forbearance won’t call into question the viability of your long-term relationship with the child. It’s a minor episode, a momentary breach in what might very well be a wonderful relationship. Even so, an episode of toleration isn’t, morally speaking, a paradigm of human interaction. The practice of tolerance will be disturbing to us to the degree that we hope for much better.

4. What Does the Uncertainty Thesis Really Say?
According to Sponville’s uncertainty thesis, we cannot properly tolerate behavior we “know” to be wrong. In his thinking, uncertainty is, we might say, a prerequisite for tolerance. If you “know” that your negative judgment about someone else’s behavior is true, it is not “valid” – not apt – for you to even consider putting up with the behavior. Otherwise put, it’s only if you are uncertain that your negative judgment is correct, that the question whether to tolerate, whether to choose to forbear, even “comes in.”

It’s natural to wonder what Sponville means by “know” when he is expressing his commitment to the uncertainty thesis. Whenever a philosopher speaks of knowledge in the context of a treatise on moral virtue, metaethical questions arise: Is there even such a thing as moral knowledge? Do normative judgments (such as ‘his tone is disrespectful’) have truth-values? Can they be the proper objects of knowledge? “How,” you as a reader might wonder, “would Sponville answer these questions?”

My brief answer is, “I’m not sure.” Recall, Sponville’s main concern is not theoretical, and so he minimizes his discussion of metaethical questions. Also, his remarks about the possibility and the reality of moral knowledge, which are sprinkled throughout A Small Treatise, are complex, and my brief essay isn’t the place to work them out. In response, I’ve decided to make an interpretive assumption. I will read Sponville as employing the word ‘know’ in the same “unpretentious” sense that Simon Blackburn uses the word in the following quotation:
So is there such thing as moral knowledge? Is there moral progress? These questions are not answered by science, or religion, or metaphysics, or logic. They have to be answered from within our own moral perspective. Then, fortunately, there are countless small, unpretentious things we know with perfect certainty. Happiness is preferable to misery, dignity is better than humiliation. It is bad that people suffer, and worse if a culture turns a blind eye to their suffering. Death is worse than life; the attempt to find a common point of view is better than manipulative contempt for it (Blackburn 2001, p. 134).

In his book Being Good, from which this quotation is taken, Blackburn attempts a modest defense of this “unpretentious” moral confidence. He thinks that those of us who make moral judgments such as ‘culture should not turn a blind eye to suffering’ should continue to hold and to express such judgments. Upon reflection, he argues, we are justified in this confidence. In fact, Blackburn spends much of his book arguing against common “threats” to the sense that this “perfect certainty” is justified. I see some of the same spirit in Sponville’s book.

So, here is my proposal. When Sponville says that “Tolerance comes in only when knowledge lacking,” I will take him to mean that if you are confident in your negative judgment, and you have strong reasons to think that your negative judgment is justified, the question whether to tolerate the relevant objectionable behavior is not apt. It is only if you are uncertain of your negative judgment that tolerance might be called for.

Recognize that if my attribution of the uncertainty thesis (so understood) to Sponville is incorrect, this would not mean that my arguments about tolerance and intellectual humility are unsound. It would merely mean that they aren’t arguments against Sponville’s views.

5.  Why the Uncertainty Thesis is False
The primary reason to reject the uncertainty thesis is that it falls to counterexamples. There are cases in which a person knows (in the relevant sense) that his negative judgment is true, and yet he clearly exercises the moral virtue of tolerance. We’ve already come across two such cases. The father of the teenage daughter is clearly justified in thinking that his daughter’s boyfriend should not speak to him as though he were one of his teenage buddies. And yet (as Sponville’s own, unmodified definition prescribes) the father’s question whether it is best, all things considered, to suppress his inclination to chastise the boy is valid. Also, the public official who chooses not to exercise all of the power vested in her by the state to suppress the obnoxiously unfair political rhetoric is clearly practicing tolerance. She can be confident, even justifiably confident, that the rhetoric is deeply unfair and yet choose to put up with it out of respect for the right to free speech.

Notice, when you evaluate my purported counterexamples, the salient issue is not whether you think the father and the public official have chosen, all things considered, the best possible course of action. Perhaps in one or both of these cases, you happen to think that the moral reasons for acting out were stronger than the moral reasons for forbearing. Even so, the central question is whether it is valid for these two agents to consider putting up with objectionable behavior, even though they each knew that the behavior they confronted was objectionable. They needn’t, I submit, lack knowledge for the question ‘Is it best, morally, for me to forbear?’ to be appropriate.

Here is a third counterexample. Say a fundraiser for a properly well-regarded anti-poverty group is in a meeting with a wealthy potential donor. The fundraiser’s presentation has clearly impressed the would-be philanthropist; his checkbook is on the table, his pen is in his hand.  But then, shockingly, utterly out of the blue, in a casual, offhand manner, the would-be philanthropist makes a racially insensitive remark about the people the charity benefits. The fundraiser is offended by the remark, as she should be. Accordingly she feels a strong inclination to speak up against it. Let me stipulate that the fundraiser is not a moral coward; she has often spoken up against racism before. But this situation presents her with a particularly difficult and consequential question: ‘Is it better, all things considered, for me to let this particular slur go unremarked?’ It is perfectly sensible for her to worry that if she were to speak up, the checkbook would be put away. If she chooses to forbear on the grounds that such restraint is likely to preserve the donation and all of the public good it will do, she clearly counts as having exercised tolerance.

To put the point bluntly, for the question ‘morally speaking, is it best for me to put up with this?’ to be apt, the fundraiser need not first wonder whether her negative judgment – ‘racially insensitive comments are morally wrong’ – is really true. If we are justifiably confident in any moral judgments – and I certainly agree with Blackburn and Sponville that we are – we know racial slurs are morally wrong. In summary, the fundraiser knows the would-be philanthropist is in the wrong, and – contrary to what the uncertainty thesis implies – she exercises tolerance.

These counterexamples reveal that the uncertainty thesis is false. They also suggest a broader lesson. In the end, the question whether or not to practice tolerance should be answered through what Sponville himself calls a “casuistry of tolerance,” in which the reasons to forbear are weighed against the reasons to act out. The father, public official, and fundraiser are not prompted to forbear, and need not be, by intellectual humility or by any form of uncertainty.  They are driven by, respectively, a sensitive concern for someone’s feelings, a deep respect for moral rights, and a strong desire to promote the public good.

6. Why Sponville’s Argument for the Uncertainty Thesis is Unsound
In support of the uncertainty thesis, Sponville appeals to an example: “One would not tolerate an accountant’s refusal to correct mistakes in his calculations.”

We are to imagine, I suppose, a case in which an accountant has not only made an arithmetic mistake in his work, but this mistake has been pointed out to him by, say, his boss. In response, the accountant refuses to correct the mistake.

Sponville regards the accountant’s obstinacy to be intolerable. In his view, the accountant should be reprimanded, sanctioned, or even fired by his boss. Sponville seems to think that the salient feature of this case, the reason that the accountant’s obstinacy cannot be tolerated, is that the boss knows (with certainty) simple arithmetic claims (such as ‘3 + 5 = 8, not 9’). Since the boss does not have any reason to hesitate to judge the accountant’s behavior as in the wrong, he doesn’t have any reason – Sponville infers – to hesitate to “condemn” or to “combat” it. It is from this example that Sponville draws the conclusion, “The right to error applies only a parte ante: once an error has been proven, the right no longer applies.” In brief, if your behavior has been proven to be objectionable, you have no grounds to request tolerance.

I don’t deny that the accountant’s boss knows – is justifiably confident – that the accountant is in the wrong. Not only is the accountant’s arithmetic calculation demonstrably wrong, but the accountant’s unwillingness to correct his mistake is deeply unprofessional and violates his profession’s code of ethics. This is true whether his obstinacy is caused by a shocking level of arithmetic incompetence, laziness, petulant ill-will, or something else. In conclusion, I agree that this is a case, as Sponville suggests, in which the relevant agent, the boss, knows his negative judgments are true.

Even so, Sponville’s argument is unsound, for several reasons. First, there is a basic logical concern. An appeal to one instance in which a known wrong is intolerable simply does not establish that uncertainty is a prerequisite for tolerance. If Sponville is to effectively establish the uncertainty thesis, what he really needs to argue is that purported counterexamples against the uncertainty thesis, such as my three, do not work.

Second, Sponville is mistaken when he claims that the boss’s knowledge makes the question of tolerance irrelevant. Under some circumstances, surely it does make sense to consider tolerating an accountant’s demonstrable mistake, and even an accountant’s obstinate refusal to correct a demonstrable mistake. If the accountant’s mistake is insignificant, but the costs of correcting it would not be, it might be best to put up with the error. And though there is in the very least a strong presumption in favor of reprimanding or punishing a strikingly obstinate employee, there are circumstances in which forbearance is called for. Say the accountant has had a long and stellar career, and he has recently gone through personal struggles that would strain the fortitude of even the most resilient and responsible human being. In light of this, the boss might sensibly choose to put up with the accountant’s recent episode of poor behavior.

Again, in a context in which you find behavior objectionable and are thinking about acting out against it, what is called for is the casuistry of tolerance. For the question whether to forbear to be apt, there simply needs to be (weighty) moral reasons for the agent to consider suppressing the desire to condemn, prevent, or combat the relevant objectionable behavior.

Here is an important point, especially relevant to this discussion of the uncertainty thesis. Say that you notice some evidence against your negative judgment ‘my colleague’s tone is disrespectful’, and so you lose some confidence in it. This loss of confidence does provide you with some reason to “hesitate” to act out against your colleague. If your colleague is not guilty of disrespect, then he certainly doesn’t deserve the cold treatment. (He might not deserve it anyways. Must a disrespectful tone always be punished?) Hence, a humble recognition of the fallibility of your negative judgments might properly prompt you to hesitate to act out. But however wise this insight – Sponville cites Montaigne and Voltaire, approvingly, when they make this point – this sense of fallibility is not the only consideration that might call for forbearance. As I’ve been arguing, in some cases, it is concern for another’s feelings, respect for rules, or a desire to preserve a donation to a good cause that should prompt restraint.

7. Why the Uncertainty Thesis is Inconsistent with Sponville’s Big Picture
Recall that Sponville claims, when describing the uncertainty thesis, that tolerance has “no object” if you know that another person’s behavior is objectionable.  But given my arguments, this simply can’t be correct. To illustrate, let’s say that at first you believe your colleague spoke to you in a disrespectful tone. But prompted by intellectual humility, you begin to reconsider: “Maybe I’m wrong; I’m fallible.” And let’s say that as you continue to reflect on your fallibility you decide to revoke the negative judgment. You change your mind. You no longer believe he disrespected you. It is actually in this type of situation, a situation in which you’ve completely lost your confidence in your negative judgment, that tolerance has “no object.” If you think someone’s behavior is objectionable, there is something for you to consider putting up with. But if you do not accept a negative judgment, such as ‘his tone is disrespectful’, there is nothing for you to forbear.

Of course, your feelings of irritation with your colleague might persist even after you no longer find these feelings justified, in which case you will need to make sure you do not act on them. But your “hesitation” to act on these lingering, but rejected feelings – even if it mimics the self-restraint involved in tolerance – doesn’t count as an act of tolerance. In restraining your desire to act out, you aren’t “putting up with him.” Instead, you’re attempting to act in line with your present best judgments. Your hesitation to act is a matter of simple integrity, of doing what you actually think is best. You have to think the other person has done something objectionable for the question ‘should I tolerate him?’ to be apt. And so, the uncertainty thesis does not cohere with Sponville’s definition of tolerance, which implies the presence of a negative judgment.

The exercise of intellectual humility does have, it is worth noting, a tendency to undermine tolerance’s small stature. I agree with Sponville that tolerance can be prompted by intellectual humility, for humble thoughts might weaken a person’s confidence in her negative judgment rather than lead her to utterly reject it, and this weakened confidence might factor into her decision to forbear: “I continue to think he’s in the wrong, and I’m very annoyed with him; but I’m not confident enough in my judgment to justify act out against him.” This is tolerance in action.  But in cases such as this, the presence of humble thoughts in the agent tends to undermine the very type of negative judgment, and so the type of relational “breach,” that actually is a prerequisite of tolerance.

REFERENCES
Blackburn, S. (2001). Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics. Oxford.
Comte-Sponville, A. (1996). A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues: The Uses ofPhilosophy in Everyday Life. (C. Temerson, Trans.). New York: Metropolitan/Owl.
Jankelevitch, V. (1986). Traite des Vertus. Paris: Champs-Flammarion.

1. Introduction
When Frans van Eemeren surveyed the state of argumentation theory in 1995 he concluded, “argumentative discussion is the main tool for managing democratic processes” and suggested that “argumentation should be valued as the elixir of life of participatory democracy” (p. 145). In the fifteen years since this statement, many studies have emphasized connections between argumentation and participatory democracy (e.g., Bohman 2001, Gutman and Thompson 1996, Keith 2007). For example, Hicks’ (2002) research illuminates how argumentation procedures not only govern political deliberation, but also “constitute … the reflexive, self-correcting agents who are able to create and sustain deliberative democracy” (p. 139). Hicks and other contemporary scholars examine and emphasize the value of the practice and study of argumentation in civic organizations (Forester 1996, Keith 2007, Weitzel and Geist 1998, Zompetti 2006), suggesting that one of the most effective ways to promote political skill and reduce inequality among citizens is to promote the use of formal methods of argumentation in municipal assemblies, clubs, and voluntary organizations (Hicks 2002, p. 234).

Yet other scholars such as Robert Roy Reed and Elsa Barkley Brown question the potential of the study and practice of formal methods of argumentation to foster equitable deliberation and democracy, particularly in civic organizations. In fact, several recent studies show that the use of parliamentary procedure, a method designed to aid groups in the efficient and democratic conduct of business, effectively limited participation–particularly the participation of marginalized citizens–in civic organizations and public debate. For example, Brown’s (1994) analysis of artifacts of civic organizations in the nineteenth century United States, reveals that when these organizations adopted Robert’s Rules of Order, a popular form of parliamentary procedure, “questions of qualifications for participation in the external political arena and internal community institutions” shifted dramatically (p. 135). In particular, these questions challenged the right of female and African Americans members to participate by pointing out “their unfamiliarity with parliamentary procedure or their inelegant ways of speaking” (p. 135). Thus, the introduction of parliamentary procedure precipitated a significant decline in the participation and power of such citizens.

Similarly, Reed’s (1990) investigation of the effects of formal rules of debate in late twentieth century Portuguese municipal assemblies shows that the implementation of Robert’s Rules of Order created a sharp divide between those who had experience with the Rules and those who did not. Those familiar with and adept at using parliamentary procedure gained greater control of assemblies and public prestige, while those who found Robert’s Rules to be a “strange, confusing, and artificial way of organizing debate” disengaged from debate and lost power (p. 137-138).

Historical case studies such as these support the broader claims of Iris Marion Young (1990 and 2001), who theorizes that the valorization of formal rules of debate is a form of “cultural imperialism” that too often has undemocratic effects, particularly for historically marginalized groups. Even those who valorize argumentation’s potential to increase civic engagement seem to question the value of parliamentary procedure to that end: As van Eemeren (1995) concludes, true democracy “cannot be achieved by enforcing imitation of formal procedures” (p. 153).

In light of recent case studies and findings, scholars such as Young press us to consider whether the practice of formal methods of argumentation such as parliamentary procedure can cultivate skills and constitute identities in ways that foster equity and the political participation of marginalized people. My current work explores this issue by analyzing the use of parliamentary procedure by civic organizations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century United States. Although it is clear that the use of parliamentary procedure can constrain democratic participation, my research shows that in certain contexts such formal methods of argumentation can improve the participation and status of marginalized citizens. Specifically, I find that through methods of argumentation such as Robert’s Rules of Order, disenfranchised women in the United States not only cultivated argumentation skills but also constituted themselves as political participants and challenged exclusionary norms. In the context of the turn of the twentieth century United States –where it was illegal for women to vote and a violation of cultural norms for women to engage in public speech and debate – such achievements were remarkable.

In brief, the practice of formal argumentation in civic clubs created forums in which women had a voice and vote in matters of collective concern. As they participated in meetings and activities, members cultivated skills that were essential to participation in the public realm, such as parliamentary techniques, public speaking, research and argumentation, and deep understanding of democratic process. Instead of public silence, activities such as asking questions, debating issues, advancing arguments, and voting became normal for women in the club forum. As they engaged in these discursive activities, women demonstrated that the language of politics and power that had appeared to be the exclusive domain of men was in fact available to them; moreover, as they practiced parliamentary procedure and worked to enact the majority will, women found ways to make democracy work for them, rendering it something other than a politics of exclusion practiced by men in power.

2. Practicing Deliberative Democracy
In 1895, more than 800,000 U.S. women belonged to women’s clubs in the United States (Blair 1980, p. 61). These local civic organizations, which numbered in the thousands, existed in communities throughout the country and often adopted Robert’s Rules of Order to manage their meetings (Blair 1980, pp. 69, 114, 117; Scott 1992, pp. 81, 101, 120). In fact, the high rate of adoption of Robert’s Rules by women’s clubs prompted the publication of bestselling books that offered guidelines for clubwomen seeking to learn parliamentary procedure (Fox 1902, Prichard 1894, Roberts 1914, Shattuck 1891, Shattuck 1898, Shattuck 1915, Strong-Tracy 1909). Although the excellent historical work of Blair and Scott establishes the widespread adoption of parliamentary procedure among turn of the century women’s clubs, it offers little insight into the use and impact of this formal method of argumentation. To better understand the dynamic between clubwomen, parliamentary procedure, and participatory democracy, I examined records – which included more than 700 pages of meeting minutes, roll books, presentation manuscripts, and resolutions – of women’s clubs in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. In particular, my archival research and analysis focused on the Woman’s Club of Portland, the Woman’s Club of Olympia, the Spokane Sorosis Club, and a Seattle African American woman’s club originally known as the Clover Leaf Art Club, because there exist clear records of these organizations’ activities and accomplishments. It is important to note that although there are a number of differences among these clubs – such as the ethnic and economic status of their members – together they well represent the club movement. Moreover, these clubs share two common and significant features. First, when these clubs were founded their members lacked experience with parliamentary procedure, and second, their mission statements affirmed traditional – apolitical – roles for women.

The express purposes of such clubs were to “make better wives and mothers” and “to lift homes to higher levels” (Woman’s Club of Portland Minute Book [WCPMB] December 1895-March 1900, p. 1). Such objectives were in keeping with norms of the time, which emphasized that women were to preside over family life and model piety in the private sphere, not to participate in public speech, debate, or politics. Yet even as the expressed mission of women’s clubs suggested that they did not intend to challenge cultural norms, club activities did exactly that, developing new and broader roles for their members, transforming women from individuals ensconced in the private realm to skilled political participants.

This evolution was swift and significant: between 1895 and 1912, clubs that initially devoted their time to activities such as music and the practice of parliamentary drills reshaped themselves as powerful political organizations and achieved an impressive array of public reforms, including the passage and enforcement of progressive labor laws, establishment of state libraries supported by new tax measures, the implementation of land use laws, the effectuation of pure food regulations and appointment of market inspectors, the election of women to school boards and city offices, and ultimately the remarkable achievement of voting rights for women in Washington and Oregon. To provide a synopsis of four ways in which parliamentary procedure empowered disenfranchised clubwomen to engage in public life and politics, I will focus my analysis on the specific case of the Portland Woman’s Club.

The second official meeting of the Portland Woman’s Club was called to order in room 321 of the Portland Hotel at 2 o’clock on January 14, 1896. Just a few minutes later, club members voted to adjourn the meeting temporarily and to relocate to the hotel lobby, as their room was “altogether too small to accommodate the 100 more ladies who were crowding into it” (WCPMB December 1895-March 1900, p. 4). After the group settled into the large lobby, it turned to the business of the day: enrolling new members, debating and voting on a club constitution, appointing a committee to select a name for the club, and voting to meet again. This meeting, like every other official gathering of the Woman’s Club, was governed by parliamentary procedure, a deliberative method designed to aid groups in the efficient and democratic conduct of business. In fact, this form of communication was used to decide virtually every matter that came before the club. In the club’s early years, these included questions such as whether members should sign their own or their husbands’ given names in the record book; the choice of location, time, and subjects for club meetings; the selection of a club flower; the price of membership dues; the allotment of club funds; the formation of committees and departments; the acceptance of invitations to collaborate with other women’s organizations; permission to publish papers that were presented by club members at meetings; the creation of memorials to the state legislature; the organization of a state federation of women’s clubs; and the generation of protests to the U.S. Congress (WCPMB December 1895-March 1900; WCPMB April 1900-December 1902; WCPMB January 1903-May 1905).

From the beginning, parliamentary procedure was not only a form of discourse that clubwomen used to manage activities; it was also a subject that they actively studied, practiced and discussed. Club records note that women frequently devoted afternoons to parliamentary drills, that they organized discussions on the topic, “The Science of Government as Applied to Parliamentary Law,” and that they established a permanent department for the study of “Expression and Parliamentary Law” (WCPMB December 1895-March 1900, pp. 42, 82). Such engagement with parliamentary law and procedure was characteristic of most women’s clubs in the Pacific Northwest. The founders of the Olympia Woman’s Club in Washington, for example, perceived the practice to be so important that before initiating any club meetings, they copied fifteen pages on parliamentary procedure from the Encyclopaedia Britannica – by hand – to use for guidance (Haarsager 1997, pp. 134-35). Similarly, African American clubwomen in the Pacific Northwest spent large amounts of time studying and practicing the rules of parliamentary procedure. Women’s clubs throughout the region had parliamentary drills as a regular feature of their meetings, and they often appointed a member to serve as a parliamentary critic and keep the rules straight (Dickenson 1987, p. 67; Haarsager 1997, pp. 134-135).

The Woman’s Club of Portland employed Robert’s Rules of Order, which was touted as “The Standard Parliamentary Authority” at the turn of the century (“Advertisements and Reviews” 1899, p. 1). Members believed that Robert’s Rules well suited the goals of the club, as it instructed leaders “on how to run the meeting, but also gave the least experienced member on the floor the skills necessary to participate fully in that meeting” (Doyle 1980, p. 18). The Rules provided procedures for conducting meetings in a way that enabled all members to be heard yet retained the right of the majority to decide questions (Robert 1915, pp. 178-202). In addition to providing clubwomen – most of whom were inexperienced in public forums – with guidelines for participation, the study and practice of parliamentary procedure contributed to the development of women’s political participation in four specific ways: it enabled them to develop speaking abilities while retaining a sense of propriety, it cultivated their faith and ability to participate in the democratic process, it fostered their public authority, and it challenged negative cultural assumptions about women.

In regard to the first achievement, it is important to recognize that it was profoundly difficult for women to speak out in public gatherings in the turn of the twentieth century United States, even gatherings that consisted entirely of women. Sandra Haarsager (1997) proposes, “one reason for the club movement’s success” at this time “was that clubs offered safe settings, not only a haven for women to study and deliberate issues of importance, but also a safe ‘platform’ from which to speak to an understanding and supportive audience” (p. 58). Building on Haarsager’s scholarship, I suggest that clubs were important sites to foster women’s development as public speakers, not simply because they offered an opportunity to speak to audiences that were generally all-female and supportive, but because they provided members with clear and realizable guidelines for discursive participation in a group. By teaching and practicing parliamentary procedure, clubs offered women an opportunity to learn to speak “properly” in a public forum, thereby providing a structure in which women could voice arguments without necessarily violating norms of decorum. In short, by establishing clear guidelines for propriety within the context of debate, parliamentary procedure liberated women to speak.

In fact, as clubwomen practiced parliamentary procedure, speech rather than silence became the norm for women’s behavior in the quasi-public forum of the club. In order to carry out Robert’s Rules, members of the Woman’s Club had to speak at each meeting, even if it was simply to voice a yea or nay vote. Beyond the practice of voting vocally, Robert’s Rules provided instructions that made it feasible for club members to participate in forms of discourse that ranged from reading aloud to extemporaneous debate. Members could and did engage in a variety of speech acts as parliamentarians: voting, sharing club minutes, presenting information, making motions, and contributing to debate about an issue before the group. In an organization governed by parliamentary procedure, women could progress through various kinds of speech acts at their own pace or comfort level, while maintaining an equal vote in club business. Moreover, they had the opportunity to observe other women engaged in forms of public discourse; through this combination of activities, club practice of parliamentary procedure established alternative norms for feminine propriety and agency, norms that affirmed women’s public speech.

Second, for clubwomen, Robert’s Rules provided training in deliberative democracy and cultivated faith in the democratic process. Conducted according to the norms of parliamentary procedure, club meetings reflected what English (1961) defines as “the five steps of democratic action” (p. 17). Minute books show that club members fulfilled these five steps as they 1) voted to assemble, determining the time, location, selected and a subject matter for each meeting, 2) had an idea or argument presented to the group by members, 3) engaged in consideration and debate of the argument, 4) proposed, voted on, and accepted a majority decision in regard to a response to the argument, and 5) carried out the majority decision. Simply put, working according to this pattern offered training in democratic action as it encouraged women to speak, debate, vote, and enact the will of the majority.

The minutes of a March 1896 club meeting offer insight into the democratic practices of the organization. The meeting began with the reading of meeting minutes and the admission of new members, and then turned to performances by club members. This portion of the program featured a presentation entitled “Dante – Sketch of His Life and Review of Some of His Best Works” by Mrs. M. E. Young, an instrumental solo by Mrs. W. E. Thomas, a reading of the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem “Divinia Commedia” by Miss Mary A. Rockey, and a vocal performance of a song entitled “Dawn” by Mrs. J. Cader Powell. These cultural activities were followed by a formal presentation on the practical question of the day entitled “Some Defects in Our Educational System,” by Mrs. R. H. Miller. After Miller’s lecture, the club engaged in a discussion of “the inferiority of public schools to the training and fitting of youth for the battle of life.” At the conclusion of the lengthy discussion, a member moved that the club send a letter to the Oregonian, requesting that the newspaper publish the text of Miller’s presentation on the issue. The motion carried, and a committee was appointed to send a letter on behalf of the club to the popular local newspaper, the Oregonian (WCPMB December 1895-March 1900, p. 13-14).

As they addressed issues that ranged from the educational system to food safety, clubwomen performed as democratic citizens, researching problems, making public presentations, debating the merits of issues, voting on courses of action, and electing representatives to lead initiatives and act on behalf of the group. In the club forum, women voted, and their votes were the force that authorized collective action. In the club setting, women discovered that democracy could work for them – that it could be something other than the model that dominated U.S. politics, the model that promised a government of, by, and for the people yet denied the franchise to more than half of the adult population.

Third, the use of Robert’s Rules fostered a sense of agency and authority among clubwomen, who described parliamentary procedure as “the language of democracy and power, spoken by men” (Haarsager 1997, p. 138). As members of the Portland Woman’s Club “pursued parliamentary usage with a view of having a more accurate knowledge of one’s rights upon the floor and one’s duty in an assembly,” (Club Life 1902, p. 3) they demonstrated that the mode of deliberative exchange that governed political arenas such as the U.S. Congress was one that could be learned, applied, and mastered by women. Knowledge of and skill in parliamentary tactics supplied women with a sense of accomplishment, and a realization that they were qualified not only to participate in political deliberation but also to provide public leadership.

In her 1897 address as club president, for example, Mrs. J. C. Card theorized, “the reference to parliamentary law leads to the suggestion that there is always danger in a deliberative body of making parliamentary rules into some sort of fetish. Lawyers are not the only people who lose sight of the merits of a cause in the technicalities of its management. Witness the way in which ‘the rules’ have tied half the business of our Congress hand and foot” (p. 1). This passage made a remarkable assertion: as it warned of dangers that existed for practitioners of parliamentary procedure, it compared its audience of disenfranchised clubwomen to congressmen, suggesting that women had the skill to avoid the deliberative dangers that snared powerful men and U.S. government. In short club records suggest that women’s mastery of parliamentary techniques led them to believe that they could behave as democratic citizens as well as – if not better than – men.

Moreover, clubwomen’s expertise in parliamentary procedure created opportunities for them to assume positions of leadership in the wider public realm; for example, the Portland Woman’s Club taught and demonstrated Robert’s Rules before large audiences at fairs and other gatherings (Portland Woman’s Club Records, Willamette Valley Chautauqua Records, Eva Emery Dye Papers). As clubwomen led men and women in parliamentary exercises, mock debates, and real debates from these public stages, they performed as public authorities. In this sense, expertise in parliamentary procedure occasionally served as a surrogate for political power, connoting women’s authority and providing a means to assert women’s qualifications for increased participation in the public realm.

Fourth, as it cultivated public speaking skills, democratic experience, authority and agency, the use of parliamentary procedure by the Woman’s Club of Portland challenged negative cultural assumptions about women. Clubwomen consciously worked to “supplant a popular image of chatty, illogical matrons with that of businesslike reformers,” and their argumentation method contributed to this end. According to local newspaper reports, women’s skilled use of parliamentary procedure demonstrated that they “were capable of being independent citizens rather than subject to undue direction by priests, husbands, or other authorities,” and that women could engage in rational public deliberation (Club Life 1902, p. 3). By 1916, women were so well known for their excellent use of parliamentary procedure that Henry M. Robert, the author of Robert’s Rules, declared, “In this country, a knowledge of parliamentary law [is] an essential part of the education of every manly man, and now this is equally true of every woman who wishes to live up to her responsibilities” (Robert 1916, pp. 1-2).

Ultimately, participation in the Portland Woman’s Club and experience with formal argumentation equipped women to transform the cultural and political landscape of the U.S. West. In addition to altering women’s own civic identities and skills, clubwomen’s discursive activities altered existing law and political practice. Newly confident in their ability to utilize “the language of democracy and power,” clubwomen in the Pacific Northwest led increasingly significant campaigns that redefined government priorities and participation. For example, after organizing and winning an electoral campaign to establish a tax-funded state library system in Oregon in 1901, members of the Woman’s Club quickly pursued and achieved an impressive array of initiatives that made space for women in government and made certain forms of social welfare – such as labor regulation and public education – functions of government (Haarsager, p. 227). By 1909, their achievements included the construction of playgrounds; the establishment of a school for girls; the appointment of a prison matron and the separation of women prisoners from male inmates; speaking positions for women and African Americans at the largest chautauqua in Oregon; the preservation of local forests; the passage of pure food laws; the election of one of their own members as Portland’s market inspector; the election of Mrs. S. M. Blumauer, who was not a club member, to the city school board; the passage of labor laws designed to protect women and children; and effective enforcement of those laws (Portland Woman’s Club Records; Willamette Valley Chautauqua Records; Eva Emery Dye Papers; History of the Woman’s Club of Portland).

This movement of women into the political realm did not occur without resistance, but the achievement of their initiatives and legislative bills demonstrated to clubwomen and to the general public that women were capable of influencing public debate and policy. In 1910, in light of such evidence – and with the confidence and skills developed through club activities – the Woman’s Club of Portland decided to officially endorse and campaign for woman suffrage. Northwest clubwomen’s participation in controversial campaigns for equal suffrage in Oregon and Washington capitalized on the very things cultivated by their discursive practices since 1895: forums for women’s voices, public authority, experience in campaign organization, an extensive network of women, and civic ties to men in power including legislators, newspapermen, and businessmen.

In addition, the record of achievement by women’s clubs in the Pacific Northwest well served the campaigns for equal suffrage. Most fundamentally, that record of achievement challenged the traditional assumption that women were not prepared for, interested in, or capable of political participation. By 1910 women had made impressive contributions to Northwest culture and politics through club work. They had behaved as capable citizens – carrying out orderly meetings, engaging in rational debate, speaking publicly, lobbying representatives, organizing public programs, shaping legislative agendas, and serving in public office – even while operating in a sphere that did not recognize them as qualified participants or voters.

In light of the achievements of clubwomen, it was possible for proponents of equal suffrage to argue that the enfranchisement of women in the Northwest was not a radical experiment or revolution but rather a simple recognition of a pre-existent fact: that women were capable, consequential participants in deliberative democracy. During the 1910 campaign, clubwomen themselves drew on their discursive training and abilities to advance such arguments in the public sphere, arguing in newspapers and from platforms that:
We are all in politics! Willy-nilly. Politics is the regulation and government of a nation or state, for the preservation of its safety, peace, and prosperity. All our water, our food, our clothing, even the trees we plant in our garden, the house we build, the materials we put into it, the street cars we ride in, the schools our children attend, the detention house we build and the woman in charge, the juvenile court and the judge thereof, the police matron, the humane officer, the pure food inspector, the safeguards that we would place around our children and the home – these are all in politics, and that is why women want to vote (Biggs).

Such arguments suggest, in distilled form, the degree to which club activities empowered women to engage in deliberative democracy, to claim a place for themselves in the public realm, and to make a better way of life in the New Northwest. To women who established clubs in the interest of becoming better mothers – not to get mixed up in politics – this transformation was nearly miraculous. As club president Viola Coe observed:

Such a thing as a discussion of public issues by the general membership of the club was absolutely unheard of, and indeed no one could have expected that without the interposition of a miracle, the frightened and unready women of that time, who, clinging to a chair for support, and with eyes chained to the manuscript, uttered in husky tones their halting thoughts, could ever be transformed into the really skilled debators [sic] and campaigners that they have become. In fact the transformation has been brought about by a miracle, the miracle of … persistent practice and methods (p. 1).

3. Conclusion: Democracy, Equality and Formal Argumentation
As they reflected upon their achievements, members of civic organizations such as the Portland Woman’s Club credited the practice of formal methods of argumentation with the development of new skills and identities, developments that altered members’ expectations for and ability to participate in democratic politics. Through practices such as parliamentary procedure, women realized that the “language of politics and power” that once appeared to be the exclusive domain of men was available to them as well, and women used that language in innovative and effective ways to expand their role in public life.

Ultimately, rather than functioning to impede their participation or entrench inequality, parliamentary procedure was a formal method of argumentation that facilitated the political development and empowerment of clubwomen in the turn of the century United States. Through this method of argumentation, women in that context discovered that silence was not necessarily a virtue. Rather than being made to feel “unfeminine” or improper for engaging in debate, women who used Robert’s Rules found it productive speak out, to cultivate public identities and assert their authority in the public realm, and to challenge norms that limited the promise of participatory democracy in the United States. In fact, this study reveals that formal argumentation procedures such as Robert’s Rules can be used to challenge exclusionary cultural norms even when those excluded operate within the parameters of such norms.

In light of this study and others, it is clear that the relationship between the practice of parliamentary procedure in civic organizations and the cultivation of equity and deliberative democracy bears further exploration. Although it is apparent that the practice of parliamentary procedure can facilitate the participation of traditionally marginalized citizens, it is not yet perfectly clear what conditions separate the successes of organizations such as the Portland Woman’s Club from the difficulties encountered by groups such as those examined by Brown and Reed. As a starting place for further research, it may be useful to note four key differences between the women’s clubs examined in this study, and the cases studied by Brown and Reed.

First, whereas members of the organizations examined in this study were of relatively similar political status, the political status of members of the organizations examined by Reed and Brown was far more diverse. Members of the organizations considered in this study were all disenfranchised female citizens, prohibited by law and custom from participation in deliberative democracy; in contrast, the organizations examined by Reed and Brown included among their members women and men, and traditionally marginalized citizens as well as experienced politicos.

Second, whereas members of the organizations examined in this study uniformly lacked experience with parliamentary procedure at the time their clubs adopted Robert’s Rules, members of the organizations examined by Reed and Brown had variable amounts of experience with parliamentary procedure – some possessed no prior experience, while others were very familiar and adept with Robert’s Rules.

Third, whereas parliamentary procedure was adopted at the inception of the organizations examined in this study, the organizations studied by Reed and Brown implemented parliamentary procedure well after their formation, and in the context of sharp disagreements about their memberships and missions.

Fourth, whereas the organizations examined in this study were quasi-publics, whose meetings were rarely observed by non-members and thus offered a relatively protected forum for learning and development, the assemblies analyzed by Reed and Brown were publics, whose operations were open to general observation, critique, and intervention.

Ultimately these four differences, together with the central findings of this study, suggest that formal argumentation practices such as parliamentary procedure are themselves politically neutral forms of discourse. Although the valorization of formal rules of debate can function as a form of “cultural imperialism” that has undemocratic effects (Young 1990), history reveals that the practice of formal argumentation also has the power to foster equity and participation in deliberative democracy. Indeed, the use of parliamentary procedure by women’s organizations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Unite States improved the political skill, status, and power of marginalized citizens. In light of historical cases that demonstrate formal argumentation procedures are not inherently inclusionary or exclusionary – that such procedures can be used to facilitate or impede deliberative democracy – scholars and practitioners would do well to further explore methods and conditions that “render argumentative discussion [the] main tool for managing democratic practices,” (van Eemeren 1995, p. 145) in a way that is accessible to all.

REFERENCES
“Advertisements and Reviews.” (1899). Henry Martyn Robert Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
Biggs, A. M. “Women Vote for President and All Other Officers in Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and Colorado—Why Not Here?” Bellingham Sunday Herald Suffrage Edition, October 9, 1910.
Blair, K. (1980). Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868-1914. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc.
Bohman, J. (2001). “Deliberative Democracy and Effective Social Freedom: Capabilities, Resources, and Opportunities,” in Deliberative Democracy, 321-4.
Botan, C. H. & Ziegelmueller, G.W. (1986). The procedural perspective on argument: Parliametary procedure in organization. Southern Speech Communication Journal 51, 166-177.
Brown, E. B. (1994). “Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom.” Public Culture 7, 107-146.
Mrs. J. C. Card, “President’s Address,” First Annual Report, 1897, 7, Portland Woman’s Club (Or.) Records, Oregon Historical Society, Portland. fe. October 1902.
Coe, V. (1901). “President’s Annual Address,” Portland Woman’s Club (Or.) Records, Oregon Historical Society, Portland, OR.
Dickenson, L. F. (1987). “Toward a Broader Angle of Vision in Uncovering Women’s History: Black Women’s Clubs Revisited,” Frontiers 9, 62-68.
Doyle, D. H. (1980). “Rules of Order: Henry Martyn Robert and the Popularization of American Parliamentary Law,” American Quarterly 32, 3-18.
Eemeren, F. H. van. (1995). “A World of Difference: The Rich State of Argumentation Theory,” Informal Logic 17, 144-158.
English, R. W. (1961). “Five Basic Steps in Democratic Action.” Today’s Speech 10, 13-17.
English, R. W. (1963). Meaning and importance of parliamentary procedure. Today’s Speech 11, 17-18.
Eva Emery Dye Papers, Mss 1089, Oregon Historical Society, Portland, OR.
Forester, J. (1996). “Beyond Dialogue to Transformative Learning: How Deliberative Rituals Encourage Political Judgment in Community Planning Processes,” Pozna’n Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and Humanities 46, 295-333.
Fox, E. A. (1902). Parliamentary Usage for Women’s Clubs. New York: Baker & Taylor.
Gutman, A. & Thompson, D. (1996). Democracy and Disagreement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Haarsager, S. (1997). Organized Womanhood. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Hicks, D. (2002). “The Promise(s) of Deliberative Democracy.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 5, 223-260.
History of the Woman’s Club of Portland. (1941). Portland, OR: Works Progress Administration.
Keith. W. (2007). Democracy as Discussion: Civic Education and the American Forum Movement. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Portland Woman’s Club Records. Mss 1084, Oregon Historical Society, Portland, OR.
Prichard, M. F. (1894). Parliamentary Usage for Women’s Clubs. Cincinnati: R. Clarke & Co.
Reed, R. R. (1990). “Are Robert’s Rules of Order Counterrevolutionary? Rhetoric and the Reconstruction of Portuguese Politics.” Anthropological Quarterly 63, 134-144.
Robert, H. M. (1915). Robert’s Rules of Order. Chicago: Scott, Foresman & Co.
Robert, H. M. (1916). “Lecture on Parliamentary Law,” Henry Martyn Robert Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
Roberts, K. L. (1914). The Club Women’s Handybook of Programs and Club Management. New York: Fund & Wagnalls.
Scott, A. F. (1992) Natural Allies: Women’s Associations in American History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Shattuck, H. R. (1891). The Women’s Manual of Parliamentary Law.  Boston: Lee and Shepard, Publishers.
Shattuck, H. R. (1898). Advanced Rules of Parliamentary Law. Boston: Lathrope, Lee & Shepard.
Shattuck, H. R. (1915). Shattuck’s Parliamentary Answers. Boston: Lathrope, Lee & Shepard.
Strong-Tracy, E. (1909). The Club Women’s Friend. Houston: J. V. Dealy Co.
Valadez, J. (2001). Deliberative Democracy, Political Legitimacy, and Self-Determination in Multicultural Societies. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Wallace, K. (1955). “Rhetoric and Politics,” The Southern Speech Journal 20, 195-20.
Weitzel, A. & Geist, P. (1998). “Parliamentary Procedure in a Community Group: Communication and Vigilant Decision Making,” Communication Monographs 65, 244-259.
Willamette Valley Chautauqua Records. B 137, University of Oregon Special Collections, Eugene, OR.
Young, I. M. (2001). “Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy,” Political Theory 29, 670-90.
Young, I. M. (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Zompetti, J. P. (2006). The Role of Advocacy in Civil Society. Argumentation 20, 167-183.

1. Introduction: The Rapprochement of Medicine and Argumentation
A fortuitous rapprochement of the epistemological foundations of medicine and the kinds of communication and argumentation involved in its dissemination to patients is currently underway (Jenicek, 2009; Jenicek and Hitchcock, 2005). However, this rapprochement  [i] has focused primarily on mapping the various attributes of argumentation in the clinical setting under the rubric of “clinical judgment” as a practice of physicians (Feinstein, 1967; Montgomery, 2006). It has not added much by way of detailing the aspects of patient argumentation and decision-making both with physicians and in contexts beyond the clinical setting. Utilizing Joseph Wenzel’s (2006) tripartite understanding of argumentation, I argue that current theories of medical argumentation focus on the development of an adequate “procedure” (p. 16) for determining sound clinical judgments or “products” (p. 16). Despite a recognition of the relationship between medicine and rhetoric (Leach, 2009; Lyne, 2001; J. Poulakos, 1987; Segal, 2005), medical practitioners and argumentation theorists have largely ignored the “process” (Wenzel, 2006, p. 15) of medical argumentation, its rhetorical or sausive dimension, especially in terms of patient reasoning, argumentative practice, and therapeutic performance. This is a problem, especially given such central bioethical constructs as respect for autonomy and informed consent, both of which require a reasoning, arguing, and active patient (Beauchamp and Childress, 2009; Faden and Beauchamp, 1986).

What’s more, given the current rise in chronic conditions as well as their attendant modes of treatment, a conception of patient activation enhanced by communication skills and appropriate therapeutic habits of self-care seems both relevant and essential to modern medical practice. Understanding patients as mutual agents in their own health network is a central aspect of the Chronic Care Model (CCM) that has for some time been seen as the best model for delivering health care to chronic patients (Wagner, 1998) as opposed to the acute model that often seems to fail them (Kleinman, 1988; Morris, 1998). All of this points to the idea that patient skills and long-term habit formation, topics central to early debates about diabetes management (Feudtner, 2003; 2005), have not received enough attention in contemporary medical practice. Given that patients have a specific experiential relationship to their bodily states (both in times of health and when faced with disease) and that their treatment often involves more than simply following the advice of their physician, health practitioners are in need of a concept of patients as caregivers that accounts for their involvement in the clinical encounter as both decision-makers and rhetors. Such activities fall under the category of “lifestyle management” (Zylinska, 2009) through which patients seek to address their chronic disease conditions through the cultivation of skills, habits, and communicative acumen.

In this context, I argue that health practitioners are in need of an open conversation about the rhetorical or process-based elements of patient self-care. These elements include doctor-patient communication, patient self-criticism and analysis, the patient’s belief in the possibility for change, and the communication and material enactment of therapeutic options by patients in consultation with the network of health care professionals tasked with their care (McTigue et al, 2009). In this regard, I am augmenting work already done by Sara Rubinelli, Peter J. Schulz, and Kent Nakamoto (2009) to define the role of the patient as something distinct from that of the health professional (p. 308) and involving some level of self-awareness (p. 310). Throughout the rest of the paper, I agree with them that the capacities of the patient to engage in her own care “must be re-grounded in the individual’s existential experience” (2009, p. 308) rather than in the expertise of the physician.

What mode of rhetorical activity and its associated theories of knowledge and action are essential elements in describing the patient as caregiver for and of the self? Far from developing a separate notion of the “rhetorical” for the patient in the clinical setting, I instead want to argue in favor of a fusion of rhetorical activity and medical practice, thereby filling out the rapprochement between medicine and argumentation theory mentioned above. For contemporary bioethics and medical practice, the term that seems to get at this relationship is phronesis (often translated as practical wisdom). Phronesis has played a central role in contemporary debates about the nature of medicine because it is a form of knowledge that involves ethics, daily habits, lived experience, and deliberation, all essential elements of achieving and maintaining health (especially in the context of chronic disease). In discussions of this term in the context of medical practice, the primary focus tends to be on the physician as knowledge-accumulator or clinician and knowledge-producer or researcher (Beresford, 1996; Davis, 1997; Jonsen and Toulmin, 1989; Tyreman, 2000; Waring, 2000; Widdershoven-Heerding, 1987) with only a few authors acknowledging the role of the patient (Rubinelli, Schulz, and Nakamoto, 2009). The physician is viewed as the primary member of the doctor-patient dyad when it comes to medical knowledge and its application to particular cases. Therefore, adequate medical training, whether phronetic or not, is seen as the primary means through which to make medicine both more effective and more ethical in practice (Dowie, 2000; Kinghorn, 2010; Rees, 2005). The patient plays a supporting role, left to either accept or decline the description (diagnosis) of her situation and select from various options for treatment. In such a model of medical argumentation, rhetoric is rendered as a strategic tool, a means through which to produce arguments that might convince the patient to take action as opposed to enhancing the patient’s capacity for self-activation and self-care.

Of course, there are risks associated with critically interrogating the role of the patient in her own care and viewing the patient as equal partner in the rhetorical domain of the clinical encounter. The more we interrogate the rational basis of patient decision-making, the more we potentially bolster arguments against the widening scope of patient autonomy in contemporary bioethics research (D.H. Smith, 1996). However, given current trends in disease etiology and epidemiology, the gap in contemporary medicine in terms of implementing medical practices that allow the patient to act as a co-creator of her own health must be addressed. I believe that phronesis can contribute to filling this gap. I side with the defenders of phronesis as one part of medical practice but see their lack of concern for patient phronesis as an invitation for theoretical and practical innovation. In the next few sections, I engage in a kind of “casuistic stretching” (Burke, 1984, pp. 229-232) of the concepts of phronesis and the patient in order to articulate a mode of medical praxis specific to the patient and helpful in contemporary efforts to address chronic disease.

2. Defining Phronesis as Rhetorical Action
In this section, I endeavor to uncover the relationship between phronesis, rhetorical action, and the material performance of the healthy life as constitutive elements in the overall good life for patients. I do this because one of my goals is to more adequately describe the rhetorical encounter between patient and physician as well as define the discrete communicative, suasive, epistemic, and ontologic parameters for both. Put another way, thinking of phronesis rhetorically allows for the theorization of patient performance of good communication about her health, of health activities as such, and of habit formation through self-reflective modes of deliberation. Of course, the topic of phronesis has been discussed in a variety of fields, most notably in rhetorical studies where a vast array of different perspectives can be found (Aune, 2008; Farrell, 1993; Hariman, 2003; Self, 1979; D.L. Smith, 2003; Zickmund, 2007). However, despite this extensive work, the direct connection between medicine and rhetoric at the site of phronesis and in terms of patient decision-making and self-care has not been adequately articulated. However, a conception of patient phronesis with which I largely agree has found space in discussions of patient pedagogy. Rubinelli, Schulz, and Nakamoto (2009) argue in favor of a model of patient phronesis that is not a “pale shadow of the professional’s expertise” but rather one that “allow[s] the patient to be a patient; interacting with health professionals effectively (asking the right questions) so as to enhance their health and, in a real sense, taking ownership of it” (p. 310). The rest of this section details a conception of phronesis largely in agreement with Rubinelli, Schulz, and Nakamoto (2009), in order to set up what I view as the theoretical contribution of this paper – patient phronesis as a form of rhetorical interaction and habit formation necessary for the production of health, especially in terms of chronic disease.

According to the classical Greek tradition, there are at least three forms of knowledge: episteme or scientific knowledge, techne or craft knowledge concerned with the production of things, and phronesis or practical wisdom concerned with decision-making in the realm of contingency (Jonsen and Toulmin, 1989; Nussbaum, 2001). It is Aristotle who gives us the most robust conception of phronesis or practical wisdom fitted for everyday experience. Following Martha Nussbaum’s (2001, p. 120) articulation of Aristotle, I argue that phronesis is an “anthropocentric” conception of knowledge based on the notion that individuals can and do have access only to those things that can be perceived by human beings, a revival of the Protagorean teaching that “of all things the measure is man” (Protagoras, trans. 2001, Fragment 13). Living as a human means seeing as a human, acting as a human, and accessing knowledge of the world as a human. Nussbaum (2001), speaking about the important distinction between phronesis and episteme in Aristotle, writes that “truth in appearances, is all we have to deal with; anything that purports to be more is actually less, or nothing” (p. 291). While Aristotle does speak of craft knowledge (techne) and knowledge that goes above and beyond the world of contingency (episteme) throughout his work, he utilizes substantial space in his treatises on rhetoric, ethics, and politics to deal with phronesis or that particular brand of human understanding that is based on navigating the appearances and contingencies of daily life. Many scholars have noted the Aristotelian concern with appearances or phainomena and their relationship to the conception of phronesis that he defends (see, e.g. Farrell, 1993; Nussbuam, 2001). While such a form of knowledge is principled in the sense that it often involves a kind of application of generally accepted frames and guiding concepts (Jonsen and Toulmin, 1989, p. 307), it is fundamentally about deliberative excellence, about the capacity for argument and rhetorical skill in deliberating about decisions that must be made, “in a concrete situation pervaded by uncertainty” (Davis, 1997, p. 186). As Aristotle points out in his Nicomachean Ethics, “the prudent man in general will be the man who is good at deliberating in general” (trans. 2003, VI. v. 2), and “things whose fundamental principles are variable are not capable of demonstration, because everything about them is variable” (VI. v. 3). In other words, phronesis deals with the general good for individuals in their context as human beings (i.e., contingency). This is a category of knowledge that does not admit of absolute certainty (as in the case of episteme). Most important, following Nussbaum’s (2001) understanding of Aristotle’s vision of phronesis, is its connection to eudaimonia or human flourishing (for her translation of the term, see p. 6).  Phronesis, on this view, is fundamentally about excellent deliberation, decision-making, and action in moments of contingency in pursuit of the good life.

Given its concern with deliberative excellence and the world of phenomena, it should come as no surprise that many scholars (Farrell, 1993; Nussbaum, 2001) see connections between phronesis, deliberative excellence, and the art of rhetoric. Writing about this connection, Lois Self (1979) notes that “there are important theoretical and practical relationships between rhetoric and phronesis and it is the man of practical wisdom who has both the capacity and incentive to be an ideal practitioner of the Aristotelian art of rhetoric” (p. 143). Below, I show that the architecture of both the art of rhetoric and the application of wisdom in moments of contingency (phronesis) are fundamentally related. To do so, I draw on Trevor Melia’s (1992) tripartite definition of rhetoric that involves ontological (“world view”), analytical, and productive elements (p. 100). What I offer is a description of a rhetorically inflected conception of phronesis that is best fitted to a discussion of medical decision-making and care from a patient perspective. I do this in order to show that at least one crucial element of treating patients in the clinical setting, whether dealing with a chronic or acute condition, is the ability of the patient to engage in suasive communication, excellent deliberation (both self-other and self-reflective), and the formation of adequate habits for the production and maintenance of health. Of course, many others have articulated the connection between phronesis and rhetoric. My hope is to offer a rendering of the concept that is best fitted to patient care of the self.

Phronesis is an ontological state. Rhetoric has an ontological scenery or “world view” that roots human existence within the realm of contingency (Melia, 1992, p. 100). It involves an ontology concerning “things which seem to admit of issuing in two ways” (Aristotle, Rhetoric, trans. 2000, I. ii. 13). It therefore demands a certain character in the form of the rhetorician who accepts her existence as contingent upon an ever-changing world. Likewise, phronesis involves a certain character or disposition (hexis) that allows the individual to make informed choices and act upon them (Nussbaum, 2001, p. 324). As Aristotle points out in the Nicomachean Ethics, knowledge of deliberation as well as its excellent manifestation in action are essential for the phronimos (or that individual that is wise). Therefore, phronesis involves the adoption of a view of the world from a human perspective in moments that admit of being otherwise. For these reasons, phronesis involves ontology in two senses: (1) the phronimos exists in a state of being in contingency (a point that it shares with rhetoric) and, (2) the phronimos exhibits a disposition or character that is constantly being revised due to new experiential inputs (involving knowledge of the good life as well as excellent deliberative skill).

Phronesis is a method of analysis. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle defines the art as fundamentally analytical: “its function is not so much to persuade, as to find out in each case the existing means of persuasion” (I. i. 14). Here, rhetoric is viewed as a method for sizing up a situation and/or audience (Bitzer, 1968). In a very similar sense, phronesis deals with internal deliberation and considered action as well as the application of experiences to individual cases. One can see a clear connection here between Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric and his conception of ethical and medical deliberation in his Nichomachean Ethics. In the case of rhetoric, one is looking for the elements of persuasion. In the case of phronesis and for that matter the art of medicine, one is looking for the elements of right action in response to the particular case, both in terms of human biology and ethics. In my rhetorically inflected version of phronesis, supported by Aristotle’s own conception of phronesis (as involving the skills of deliberation), this form of knowledge is about finding the right course of action in a particular case through self-persuasion and the persuasion of others. This requires the capacity to correctly size up a situation and compare it to other situations experienced in the past. As Joseph Dunne points out, “each new act [of the phronimos] arises within the terrestrial magnetism of our past acts which lie sedimented in our habits” (p. 111).

Phronesis is a mode of production and performance. Among other things, rhetoric involves the creation of suasive discourse for a specific audience. Phronesis is also about performance, but in this case we might think of it as the performance of good character and excellent deliberation (Hariman, 1991; Nussbaum, 2001; Self, 1979; Schwarze, 1999). To display phronesis, one must have both the right disposition as well as the ability to act based on that disposition (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI. v. 6). It is in the work of one of Aristotle’s contemporaries, Isocrates, that we find the most compelling defense of phronesis as a mode of action and a means to build ethos (credibility) for the rhetor. Iscorates engages in just this kind of activity by writing speeches in which he, according to Stephen Schwarze (1999), performs phronesis for his audience. This understanding of Isocrates’ work as engaged in developing a theory of phronetic performance has been noted by several prominent rhetorical theorists (see, e.g. Depew, 2004; Haskins, 2004; T. Poulakos, 1997). Whether we attribute the possibility of phronetic performance to Aristotelian theory or Isocratic speech writing, the point remains the same. Phronesis is a rhetorical and embodied performance of the good life.

3. Phronesis, Health, and the Art of Medicine: The Detractors
The rapprochement of argumentation and medicine referenced earlier has been made possible, at least in part, due to the cooperative work of Milos Jenicek and David L. Hitchcock (2005) who have written a wonderful text on clinical argumentation. However, when it comes to considering the role that phronesis might play in clinical practice, they are skeptical. They define phronesis as “the process of knowing and doing, experiencing and acting, undertaken by a physician on behalf of a particular patient in a specific clinical situation and setting” (Jenicek and Hitchcock, 2005, p. 273). This seems very close to the conception of phronesis adumbrated in the previous section. It includes the necessity of experience, the changing parameters of practice based on different individual needs, and the importance of both theory and practice in the effective application of medical knowledge to the everyday happenings of the clinic. They argue that “like the basic sciences (episteme) learned theoretically and the medical art (techne) acquired by clinical training, phronesis is learned through both theory and practice, and this book aspires to contribute to it” (p. 254). So far, so good; however, they end up rejecting phronesis as a central term for the practice of physicians: “Medical examination, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment are not forms of praxis guided by practical wisdom about the patient’s ultimate good. They are exercises of a techne or art, whose goodness lies ultimately in the product (the patient’s health, comfort, etc.) rather than in the performance” (p. 203). In these few lines, Jenicek and Hitchcock put forward the primary arguments against an application of phronesis to clinical practice and for that matter, any health-related activity undertaken by physicians or their patients.

In fact, there are three primary reasons often given to reject the application of phronesis to medicine in general: (1) phronesis deals only with the good for the overall human being (as discussed in the previous section) and not the various products of life (health is understood here as a product), (2) the fact that Aristotle, Hippocrates, Plato, and many other Greeks refer to medicine as a techne rather than phronesis (on this, see Nussbaum, 2001, p. 95-96), and (3) the fact that phronesis is meant to gain meaning in its mere performance (as opposed to in the products that it might produce for the individual). The rest of this section responds to these criticisms, taking on debunkers of “medicine as phronesis” through an application of my rhetorically inflected conception of phronesis developed in the previous section. While I am not the first to engage in a defense of phronesis in the context of medical practice (see e.g. Beresford, 1996; Davis, 1997; Pellegrino and Thomasma, 1993; Tyreman, 2000), I hope to join cutting edge work that envisions the patient as engaged in the artful application of medical advice mixed with her own experiential knowledge about health (and in particular, her health), something best described through the lens of phronesis (Rubinelli, Schulz, and Nakamoto, 2009).

Jenicek and Hitcock’s (2005) criticism of phronesis as being about the overall good of humans as opposed to their health is echoed by Duff Waring (2000) who offers two primary claims: (1) that medicine is best described as techne or craft knowledge (p. 144), and (2) that the contemporary revival of medical phronesis, primarily due to the research of Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin (1989) would relegate medical knowledge and bioethics to the purview of elite phronimoi (mainly physicians) who would control the definition, appropriate practice, and ethical application of medicine (p. 148-9). I will take on both the descriptive and normative arguments being made here in my development of medicine as a phronetic art, particularly for patients. As I will show, the criticisms of physician phronesis cut against the conception of patient phronesis that I defend. For this reason, I answer these criticisms in order to complete the theoretical work of this paper.

The Descriptive Claim: Techne vs. Phronesis. Waring (2000) relies on the claim that Aristotle’s conception of phronesis describes the attributes of the good person (phronimos) as opposed to the good physician (p. 142). He is correct on this point. Even a basic reading of the Nicomachean Ethics reveals that, for Aristotle, medical practice and the physician may in some ways be analogous with ethics and the disposition and actions of the phronimos, but they are not isomorphic with them. Aristotle does not intend to argue that medicine is of necessity directly related to the activities of the phronimos (Dunne, 1985; Jaeger, 1957; Seidler, 1978). However, Aristotle was not concerned with medical ethics, with the current expansion of “lifestyle management” for the treatment of chronic disease, or with the autonomous decision-making of patients. As F. Daniel Davis (1997) points out, “phronesis is critical to the appropriate exercise of medicine’s moral virtues in the concrete circumstances of the clinical encounter with a particular patient” (187). In other words, the contemporary notion of medicine always already includes ethical action within the choices made by particular physicians and for particular patients.

It seems that Waring, and those who agree with him, are caught in a kind of double anachronism. First, they seem to believe that the vision of phronesis developed by an ancient Greek mind for a specific cultural context can and should be translated directly into our contemporary world (for a critique of this form of anachronism, see MacIntyre, 2003). Second, they seem to acknowledge an analogy between medicine and ethics but then utilize the version of medicine popular in Aristotle’s time (and written into his text) in order to prove that contemporary medicine must also remain a merely paternalistic techne, one done by physicians and enacted through the appropriate knowledge of the craft. New trends in medicine indicate the extent to which we must have a wider conception of medicine that goes beyond “general biological theories” (Jonsen and Toulmin, 1989, p. 285) and deals with the ethics as well as the science of the clinical encounter.

Furthermore, Waring and others have argued that medicine, because it deals with the external good of health, must be seen as a form of craft knowledge (techne). I argue, following Davis (1997) that medicine should not and cannot be fully described as a practice by the term techne (p. 191). In staking out his claim, Waring relies on Joseph Dunne’s (1985) definition of techne in terms of external goods (products) as opposed to character, disposition, and good living or the internal goods associated with phronesis (p. 107). However, as Dunne points out, the ethical agent (phronimos), “can never possess himself in the way that the craftsman possesses the form of his product; rather than his having any definite ‘what’ as blueprint for his actions or his life, he becomes and discovers ‘who’ he is through these actions” (p. 108). I believe that in order to adequately address the problems that physicians and patients face, especially when considering chronic care and “lifestyle management,” we need a concept closer to experience and habits of action than to procedure and learned process for the purpose of production. Dunne’s argument (as rendered by Waring) is unravelled when rearticulated in terms of my rhetorically inflected notion of phronesis as experiential knowledge performed in daily activities. When dealing with long-term conditions that must be treated based on the needs of the individual and that involve patients engaging in their own care with associated changes in lifestyle, we need a concept that can deal with bringing into action those things learned not in the classroom or even with the physician but through experientially acting them out. Therefore, while Dunne defines medical practice as a techne, his definition of phronesis seems to better describe the medical context of chronic patients (and perhaps even their physicians).

In addition, as Jonsen and Toulmin (1989) point out, philosophical concepts arise out of the particular socio-cultural milieu and social scientific understandings of the era in question (p. 293). It may be that the medicine of ancient Greece did not require or demand a conception of medical knowledge for the patient best summed up by the term phronesis; however, our age is certainly in need of just such a concept. It might be possible to suggest that the health of the patient is in some ways an external product for the physician, but it is almost impossible (for me, at least) to imagine a patient being able to see her own health, the choices concerning her own health care, which are ultimately both ethical and biological, and her activities in support of her health, as somehow external to her being. Another way of putting this point is to argue that patient phronesis involves making ethical, goal-oriented, and experience-based decisions in actualizing a healthy life. Simply because Aristotle finds reason to differentiate between health as a product and the overall good life as constitutive of the agent does not mean that we must do the same. Instead, we might come to the understanding that health is at least one part of this constitutive drive for a good life (and perhaps one of the more important parts in our bio-technological age).

The Normative Claim: Medical Phronimoi as Experts. Waring’s argument in opposition to Jonsen and Toulmin’s revival of phronesis in the context of medicine and bioethics involves a normative claim concerning the problem of expertise. He rightly points out that Jonsen and Toulmin (1989) participate in extending the paternalism of previous medical traditions by imbuing only medical and ethical experts with the power to make truly phronetic decisions (p. 313-314). However, we need not follow Jonsen and Toulmin in this regard. Given the extensive literature in medical ethics concerning the need for informed consent as well as the increasingly prevalent belief that patients will need to work on their own habits and implement their own methods of self care to successfully deal with chronic conditions, this argument seems shortsighted and problematic. As Aristotle points out in the Nicomachean Ethics, “an act done through ignorance is in every case not voluntary” (III. i. 13). In cases where patients are being asked to change their own habits, to follow a regimen, to learn about what works for them, and how to most appropriately engage in their own care, a proper understanding of informed consent requires physicians to avoid the role of phronomoi and simply detail the life goals, habits, and kind of health that the patient should and must attain. Instead, patients should be allowed to form their own consistent set of goals and values and physicians should, to the best of their ability, approach patients as decision-makers (Brock and Buchanan, 1989), as phronomoi.

How is this done? I would argue that it can and should be done as a shared, mutually deliberative, and pedagogical encounter between patient and physician in which both are engaged in phronesis. In such a model the physician applies knowledge of the good for patients in general to the specific case of the patient that confronts them (Davis, 1997, p. 182). The patient must then make a decision, based on her conception of the good life that actualizes her health (a constitutive element in their overall life) and that is based on her own experiential knowledge about how her body interacts with her world (the daily phainomena that define her existence). In this way, patient phronesis flips “the normative claim” on its head by investing individual patients with the power to make decisions about their own health, persuade their physicians about their experiential knowledge of their health, and enact their own health in their daily lives.

4. Conclusion: Patient Phronesis Articulated
Having answered the two main objections of the application of phronesis to clinical medicine and action oriented toward the production of health, I am now in a position to sketch the outlines of my conception of patient phronesis. I endorse the view, presented most persuasively by Davis (1997), that “the telos of clinical reasoning is a particular act, a right and good healing action on behalf of the individual patient – not the theoretical truth of episteme nor the production of an object in accord with eidos, as in the case with techne” (p. 191). This he articulates in the context of the physician; however, as I have already argued, the patient is now increasingly involved in the creation of her own health. The claim that patients are phronomoi may be made even more persuasively than in the case of physicians, for whom the health of the patient is an external good. In addition, as Davis (1997) points out, physicians are also engaged in the other forms of medical knowledge and activity, episteme and techne (p. 191). What really gets at the activities of patients in the clinical setting and beyond, what makes them active in their own health care, what allows them to be fully autonomous agents acting with truly informed consent, is phronesis. For the patient, health is not an external product, not simply something to be achieved through habit, but rather part and parcel of her conception and constitution of a good life. One cannot step outside one’s body and act upon it. Nor can an individual divide her health from the other elements of her life. For these reasons, acts of self-reflection, internal deliberative excellence, and the performance of health activities are and must be understood through the lens of phronesis.

Applying the tripartite understanding of phronesis charted earlier, based on Melia’s (1992) definition of rhetoric, we can see even more clearly how it is that patients are themselves engaged in phronetic activity. They must form a particular disposition or ontological viewpoint that sees the world and their identity as inherently mixed up as well as potentially mutable. They must constantly adapt to changing circumstances through the application of past experience as well as the clinical knowledge (episteme and techne) shared by their physician. In this sense, they must analyze situations and react to them utilizing all that their perceptions, experiences, and understanding of their bodily state can give them. Finally, they must perform the right kinds of activities in response to the changing conditions of their life world including their bodily states, their relational networks, and their ever-changing experiential base. They must also communicate these things persuasively not only to themselves but also to others.

Especially when considering the nature of “lifestyle management” and chronic care, patients must be able to actively engage with their physicians through the use of rhetorical and communicative prowess. Some may find the notion of patients and physicians “arguing” somewhat problematic; however, my view is that through argument and persuasion, through the process of constituting shared knowledge about goals, behaviors, best practices, and overall conceptions of the good life, patients and physicians can help to co-create this life. In this way, patient phronesis is the application by the patient, always already constituted as an autonomous agent with a sense of eudaimonia, of clinical knowledge (in the form of advice) to the specific and yet always changing dynamics of life. This mutability of life (Nussbaum, 2001, pp. 302-305) as well as the needs and practices of patients is what recommends a rhetorically inflected conception of phronesis. As mentioned earlier, it is not enough to know what is the right action to attain health. Even knowing this means only knowing it for a specific person with a specific set of needs, experiences, and biological idiosyncrasies. The individual must enact her understanding of health and a good life in order to attain them. Patients must also be prepared to engage in argument about this vision of the good life and this vision must necessarily include the health of both body and mind. Interestingly enough, this vision of phronesis and its associated concern for the good life is already partly endorsed by bioethicists, albeit without the explicit use of the term: “the capacities for deliberation, choice, and action that normal humans possess make it possible for them to form, revise over time, and pursue in action a conception of their own good” (Buchanan and Brock, 1989, p. 38). For this reason, phronesis gets at the rhetorical aspects of medicine in the body and mind of the patient in a way that clinical judgment and physician argumentation cannot. It also provides a framework for understanding patient experiential knowledge and habit formation in the pursuit of health and good living. This requires the health literacy and communication skills detailed in Rubinelli, Schulz, and Nakamoto (2009) as well as the ongoing empowerment of patients in the therapeutic performances they must enact on a regular basis to maintain their health.

Finally, patient phronesis fills out the argument-medicine merger discussed in previous sections. The role of physicians has received ample attention (although their use of persuasive communication has received slightly less attention than their use of proper argument forms and styles). The role of the patient has received less attention and certainly deserves more. Informed consent (both an ethical and legal construct) is meant to enforce the role of the patient in making decisions, but it does not explain how the patient effectively does so. Respect for autonomy enshrines the patient as the ultimate decision-maker without actually accounting for the decision-making process she must endeavor to master. Both assume rhetorical and argumentative features that are hardly ever discussed. Put another way, the rhetorical or “process” (Wenzel, 2006, p. 15) based elements of medical argumentation account for the performative activities of the physician and the patient rather than their right application of principles to cases or their adequate understanding of biology. In addition, it is these performed activities that are at the heart of contemporary efforts to deal with lifestyle changes that might impact the increasing incidence of chronic disease. This paper shows that Rubinelli, Schulz, and Nakamoto (2009) have hit on a concept that can transform not only the role of the patient but also the physician. The principles and practices of informed consent and respect for patient autonomy may need to be augmented to include a pedagogical mission for physicians in which they help patients realize and understand the need for their phronetic performance of health in attaining their conception of the good life. Finally, this paper adds to current conceptions of phronesis for both patients and physicians by articulating its attributes, defending it against techne-based accounts, and providing a rhetorical and performative foundation for understanding the patient role in the clinic and beyond.

NOTES
[i] This work was supported by the Clinical and TranslationalScience Institute Multidisciplinary Predoctoral Fellowship program,awarded through the Clinical and Translational Science Instituteand the Institute for Clinical Research Education at the Universityof Pittsburgh (grant 5TL1RR024155-04 or 05) to John Rief.

REFERENCES
Aune, J.A. (2008). Modernity as a rhetorical problem: Phronesis, forms, and forums in Norms of Rhetorical Culture. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 41(4), 402-420.
Beauchamp, T.L., & Childress, J.F. (2009). Principles of biomedical ethics (6^th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Beresford, E.B. (1996). Can phronesis save the life of medical ethics? Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 17, 209-224.
Bitzer, L.F. (1968). The rhetorical situation. Philosophy & Rhetoric, 1(1), 1-14.
Buchanan, A.E., & Brock, D.W. (1989). Deciding for others: The ethics of surrogate decision-making. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burke, K. (1984). Attitudes toward history (3^rd ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Davis, F.D. (1997). Phronesis, clinical reasoning, and Pellegrino’s philosophy of medicine. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 18, 173-195.
Depew, D. (2004). The inscription of Isocrates into Aristotle’s practical philosophy. In: T. Poulakos and D. Depew (Eds.) Isocrates and civic education (pp. 157-185). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Dowie, A. (2000). Phronesis or ‘practical wisdom’ in medical education. Medical Teacher, 22(3), 240-241.
Dunne, J. (1985). Aristotle after Gadamer: An analysis of the distinction between the concepts of phronesis and techne. Irish Philosophical Journal, 2, 105-123.
Faden, R.R., & Beauchamp, T.L. (1986) A history and theory of informed consent. New York: Oxford University Press.
Farrell, T. (1993). Norms of rhetorical culture. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Feinstein, A.R. (1967). Clinical judgment. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins Co.
Feudtner, C. (2003). Bittersweet: Diabetes, insulin, and the transformation of illness. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Feudtner, C. (2005). The want of control: Ideas and ideals in the management of diabetes. In: N.M.P. King, R.P. Strauss, L.R. Churchill, S.E. Estroff, G.E. Henderson, J. Oberlander (Eds.) The social medicine reader: Patients, doctors, and illness (pp. 41-59). Durham: Duke University Press.
Hariman, R. (1991). Prudence/Performance. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 21(2), 26-35.
Hariman, R. Ed. (2003). Prudence: classical virtue, postmodern practice. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Haskins, E.V. (2004). Logos and power in Isocrates and Aristotle. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
Jaeger, W. (1957). Aristotle’s use of medicine as a model of method in his ethics. The Journal of Hellenic Studies, LXXVII, 54-61.
Jenicek, M. (2009). Fallacy-free reasoning in medicine: Improving communication and decision-making in research and practice. American Medical Association Press.
Jenicek, M., & Hitchcock, D.L. (2005). Evidence-based practice: Logic and critical thinking in medicine. American Medical Association Press.
Jonsen, A.R., & Toulmin, S. (1989). The abuse of casuistry: A history of moral reasoning. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kinghorn, W.A. (2010). Medical education as moral formation: An Aristotelian account. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 53(1), 87-105.
Kleinman, A. (1988). The illness narratives: Suffering, healing, and the human condition. Jackson, TN: Basic Books.
Leach, J. (2009). The art of medicine: Valuing communication. The Lancet, 373, 2104 2105.
Lyne, J. (2001). Contours of intervention: How rhetoric matters to biomedicine. Journal of Medical Humanities, 22(1), 3-13.
MacIntyre, A. (2003). After virtue: A study in moral theory. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Melia, T. (1992). Review. Isis, 83(1), 100-106.
McTigue, K.M., Conroy, M., Hess, R., Bryce, C.L., Fiorillo, A.B., Fischer, G.S., Milas, N.C., & Simkin-Silverman, L.R. (2009). Using the internet to translate evidence based lifestyle intervention into practice. Telemedicine and E-Health, 15(9), 851 858.
Montgomery, K. (2006). How doctors think: Clinical judgment and the practice of medicine. New York: Oxford University Press.
Morris, D.B. (1998). Illness and culture in the postmodern age. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Nussbaum, M.C. (2001). The fragility of goodness: Luck and ethics in Greek tragedy and philosophy (Rev. Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pellegrino, E.D. & Thomasma, D.C. (1993). The virtues in medical practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Poulakos, J. (1987). Philosophy and medicine in Plato’s Symposium. In: K.J. Boudouris (Ed.) Philosophy and medicine, volume II (pp. 164-170). International Center for Greek Philosophy and Culture.
Poulakos, T. (1997). Speaking for the polis: Isocrates’ rhetorical education. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
Rees, C. (2005). Proto-professionalism and the three questions about development. Medical Education, 39, 7-11.
Rubinelli, S., Schulz, P.J., & Nakamoto, K. (2009). Health literacy beyond knowledge and behaviour: Letting the patient be a patient. International Journal of Public Health, 54, 307-11.
Schwarze, S. (1999). Performing phronesis: The case of Isocrates’ Helen. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 32(1), 78-95.
Segal, J.Z. (2005). Health and the rhetoric of medicine. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Seidler, M.J. (1978). The medical paradigm in Aristotelian ethics. The Thomist, 42, 401- 433.
Self, L.S. (1979). Rhetoric and phronesis: The Aristotelian ideal. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 12(2), 130-145.
Smith, D.H. (1996). Ethics in the doctor-patient relationship. Critical Care Clinics, 12(1), 179-197.
Smith, D.L. (2003). Intensifying phronesis: Heidegger, Aristotle, and rhetorical culture. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 36(1), 77-102.
Tyreman, S. (2000). Promoting critical thinking in health care: Phronesis and criticality. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 3, 117-124.
Wagner, E.H. (1998). Chronic disease management: What will it take to improve care for chronic illness? Effective Clinical Practice, 1, 2-4
Waring, D. (2000). Why the practice of medicine is not a phronetic activity. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 21, 139-151.
Wenzel, J. (2006). Three perspectives on argument: Rhetoric, dialectic, logic. In: R. Trapp and J. Shuetz’s (Eds.) Perspectives on argumentation: Essays in honor of Wayne Brockriede (pp. 9-26). New York: International Debate Education Association.
Widdershoven-Heerding, I. (1987). Medicine as a form of practical understanding. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 8, 179-185.
Zickmund, S. (2007). Deliberation, phronesis, and authenticity: Heidegger’s early conception of rhetoric. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 40(4), 406-415.
Zylinska, J. (2009). Bioethics in the age of new media. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

1. Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to bring to light the fundamental tenets of a text that has undoubtedly represented a relevant step in the evolution of argumentation studies: Agricola’s De inuentione dialectica[i]. My analysis is based on the first apparently “critical” edition, which appeared “post multas editiones” in Köln in 1557[ii], which not only offers a version of Agricola’s text according to the autograph manuscript of Agricola just recovered by Alardus Aemstelredamus, but also partially reproduces the commentaries of Phrissemius, Aemstelredamus and Hadamarius, compared and unified by Ioannes Nouiomagus.

After the structure of the volume, its theoretical perspective and its educational purposes are outlined, Agricola’s approach to the fundamental notion of locus is illustrated. The divergent use of the term habitudo by Agricola and by Medieval scholars and the removal from dialectical invention of maxims, which had been the central theoretical construct of the Medieval doctrine of loci, will allow us to consider and evaluate the polemical position of Agricola towards the Medieval tradition. Several innovative aspects of Agricola’s contribution are expounded: the elaboration of a new taxonomy of loci, a different, often more precise and useful, characterization of loci, in particular of the locus from definition, and the discovery of the relevant role played by loci not only in argumentation but also in exposition. Eventually we come to show that a reading of this text in the light of contemporary argumentation theory brings to light a surprising topicality and richness of concrete contributions, especially in some dialectical and rhetorical domains, like argument schemes, topical potential, presentational techniques.

2. Three books focusing on loci
In the three books on dialectical invention (Agricola, 1557), the attitude of Rodolphus Agricola towards tradition is inspired both by continuity and innovation.
In line with the late-ancient and medieval tradition, his main focus is centered on loci: the whole first (longest) book of the treatise is devoted to the investigation of the nature of loci, which are defined in general and described in detail, often by adopting punctual semantic analyses. The second book specifies the uses of loci and, eventually, the third mainly focuses on the rhetorical effectiveness of arguments and loci are again considered in this perspective.

In the Prooemium (p. 9) the three tasks ascribed by ancient rhetoric to human discourse (oratio) are mentioned: informing and teaching (ut doceat[iii]), involving (ut moveat), delighting (ut delectet). Discourse can inform without involving or delighting, but it can neither involve nor delight without informing. Therefore information proves to be its essential, ever present, function. Depending on the speaker’s intention, this informative function may alternatively assume two forms: sometimes we let the hearer know something simply to make him understand it, thus fulfilling a function of exposition, sometimes we let somebody know something in order to establish a belief in what is said, thus performing an argumentation (p. 10). The author defines exposition as a discourse that only manifests the mind (mentem = communicative intention) of the speaker, without activating anything that aims at arousing trust in the hearer. Argumentation is instead defined as a discourse through which somebody tries to build trust in the thing he is speaking about. Now, as what is uncertain cannot as such support itself, we must infer trustworthiness moving from other, better known and more familiar things. These things are arguments or, following Cicero, reasonable devices or inventions (probabile inventum) through which some uncertain things are given trustworthiness. Since not everyone is able to promptly identify such devices, in Agricola’s opinion, the identification of loci, understood as some seats or places whence arguments can be drawn, represented a particularly useful educational endeavor: as possible beneficiaries, he especially mentions people engaged in political, legal, educational, moral and religious discourse and stresses that the system of loci does not simply educate the mouth, by offering a rhetorical enrichment (copia dicendi), but it also ensures wisdom of judgment (prouidentia) in consulting and in pondering decisions (p. 12).

Following Cicero (Topica, 6) and Boethius (De differentiis topicis, 1173B), he distinguishes, within dialectic, a heuristic and an evaluative component: the latter one is identified with Aristotelian Analytics and De sophisticis elenchis (iudicii pars, cui omnis de modis figurisque syllogismorum praeceptio et cautio omnis captiosarum argumentationum, quas fallacias dixere, subseruit) and is not the proper subject of Agricola’s opus which is wholly devoted to the former component (Sed nos de priore illa parte quae ad inueniendum pertinet loquemur) (l. 1, c.18). Therefore separating the topical component from the normative one, and thus overthrowing the logically oriented Medieval tradition started by Boethius, he recovers from Roman rhetoric (in particular from Cicero and Quintilian) an approach ascribing to rhetoric a relevant role in dialectic, where dialectic, reduced to inuentio, appears to be mainly justified because it is useful for rhetoric. Therefore the program of Agricola’s dialectic, though recovering a unitary perspective comprising rhetoric and dialectic and thus somehow, anticipating the strategic maneuvering perspective adopted by extended Pragma-Dialectics (van Eemeren & Houtlosser 2002; van Eemeren 2010) could hardly be compared with it, because, being exclusively committed to the finding (discovering) of arguments, it postpones the commitment of ensuring argumentation validity.
Here, a clarification is, however, useful. The removal of the evaluative component from the general design of the work did not at all condition Agricola’s work in its actual realization, since a strong critical commitment frequently emerges from his pages. Consequently the impression prevails that dialectic and rhetoric are, in actu exercito, correctly reconciled.

But let us come back to the interpretation of the system of loci (ratio locorum) that represents the main concern of Agricola’s work. His awareness of the ontological nature of loci (see pp. 18-19) is absolutely evident: “All things that are said in favor or against the standpoint are bound together and are (so to say) connected by a sort of solidarity of nature”[iv].

The endless variety of things and of their distinctive features cannot be embraced by any discourse nor by any mind. “Inherent to all things, there is although a common habitudo and all things tend to an analogy of nature: like the fact that all things have their own substance, all things originate from some causes and, in turn, cause something; and thus the most intelligent men have drawn from that enormous variety of things these common headings (capita[v]) like substance, cause, result, and the other headings, which we shall consider in the following”. A locus is nothing else but a certain aspect characterizing the thing (rei nota), orienting us in identifying what, in relation to each standpoint, can provide acceptability.

But how should the term habitudo be interpreted? This term had played a central role in the Medieval doctrine of loci, where it was understood as the ontological relationship (like cause to effect, definition to defined, means to end etc.) binding the state of affairs exploited as argument to the state of affairs constituting the standpoint (Rigotti, 2008). In other words, every locus was understood as a particular type of habitudo in the sense of “se habere ad”[vi] (= to be related to). It is rather clear that in Agricola’s text this term does not refer to the relational nature of loci, but to the analogous functional configuration which is shared, due to a solidarity of nature, by all things. Such habitudo is identified with the net of ontological roles played in different connections by all entities: all things have their own substance, all things originate from some causes and, in turn, cause something, all events take place in a certain time and so on. Curiously, though clearly misunderstanding the medieval notion of habitudo and reading it as the nominalization of se habere” (to be in a certain way) and not of “se habere ad” (to be in a certain relation to), Agricola’s conception of loci is substantially compatible with the notion of loci elaborated by the medieval scholars. In fact, in the descriptions offered by Agricola, the headings, the loci are identified with, are relational in nature: the definition vs. the defined, the time and the place vs. the event, the efficient cause vs. the effect and so on. Nonetheless, Agricola focuses on another relational dimension of loci: they are headings (capita), to be understood as the semantic nodes building a sort of conceptual network which maps reality.

3. The removal of maxims
There are aspects for which Agricola distances himself more decidedly from the Medieval tradition. In general, a polemical attitude towards all medieval scholars is evident. They are cumulatively referred to as “qui post Boethium scripserunt” (see, in particular, p. 214), The renowned philosopher and theologian John Duns Scotus[vii] only appears in the formula “secta Scoti” (p.58). The medieval terminology is largely abandoned or even misunderstood (see above for habitudo). For important respects, his criticisms also involve Boethius from whom the Medieval tradition originates. The classification (diuisio) of loci is partially modified and, more importantly, the mediating role of maxims (maximae propositiones) is ignored. Now, as maxims are the inferential connections generated by the loci[viii] on which the actual arguments build, loci are directly bound to actual arguments. In the end of the first book (pp. 205-207) our author tries to justify the absence of maxims in his system of topics. He remembers that “Boethius and those who wrote after him (quique post eum scripserunt) added to each locus, to adopt a usual expression, a certain Maxim, i.e. a statement, comprising in a proposition many aspects, to which undoubted trust is paid, like Of whatever the definition is said, the defined is also said or Of whatever the species is said, the genus is said too”. Now, the author decided to ignore maxims not because, in his opinion, neither Aristotle nor Cicero had considered them[ix], but because he thought they were simply useless for several reasons.

Firstly, they can be construed only in relation to the loci which provide necessary arguments, but they do not fit (parum conveniunt) for loci providing probable arguments, which are the majority.

Secondly, there are many such loci in which these maxims cannot be comprised in any defined and sufficiently convenient form (in nullam certam et satis conuenientem formam concludi hae maximae possint) (p. 206). In Agricola’s opinion, sometimes Boethius appears to be at pain while trying to assign to any locus its own maxim (dum cuilibet loco maximam suam reddere cupit) as, while the locus is, as a rule, very widely extended, the maxim often receives a very narrow scope. Several examples are given, approximately rendering Boethius’ text (cf. De differentiis topicis 1189C) in relation to the loci from efficient cause (Quorum efficientia naturalia sunt, eorum effecta sunt naturalia – If the causes are natural, the effects are natural), and in relation to the locus from the matter (ibid. 1189D) (Cuius materia deest, et id quod ex ea efficitur deest – If the matter lacks, the thing made of this matter lacks too) and others (pp. 206-207). In my opinion, this criticism rather evidently depends on an imprecise interpretation of Boethius’ text: Agricola interprets maxims as rules bijectively corresponding to loci: cuilibet loco maximam suam reddere cupit. Even though Boethius’ text might suggest this interpretation because, in general, it pairs up one maxim with one locus differentia, it also manifests his awareness that maxims outnumber loci differentiae: “Atque ideo pauciores esse deprehenduntur hi loci qui in differentiis positi sunt quam propositiones ipsae quarum sunt differentiae” (1186B) and in several cases more than one maxim is given in relation to one locus differentia (see 1188D – 1189A, where for the locus a partibus two maxims are provided). Therefore, between loci differentiae and maxims, Boethius, and even more explicitly the Medieval scholars[x], establish an injective relation: one or more maxims, yet, in general, several maxims correspond to one locus, while only one locus corresponds to each maxim. In other words, each maxim focuses on one of the inferential implications of the locus and therefore does not exhaust the argumentative potential of the locus. This is the reason why, while the locus is more widely extended, the maxim shows to have a much narrower scope.

The third decisive reason is that, in Agricola’s opinion, all in all, people who have been thoroughly taught the nature of loci do not need maxims, as they spontaneously show themselves to their mind; and, if it is not the case, these people do not deserve to be taught the loci. In other words, studying maxims is useless because they spontaneously spring from a good awareness of loci.

I feel committed to concisely evaluate the arguments brought by Agricola. The three justifications for the removal of maxims from dialectical invention indeed lack the due cogency: the first one is not at all highlighted nor, all the less, argued for; the second and the third are at least partially incompatible as the second emphasizes the difficulty to assign to the locus its own maxim and the third pretends that maxims spontaneously spring from a good awareness of loci. Moreover the second is based on a premise (the bijective nature of the relation binding maxims to loci) contradicting not only the interpretation of maxims by Boethius and the Medieval scholars, but also the significant evidences brought by them. Eventually, while the first and the second reasons criticize maxims as theoretical constructs, the third one, which is possibly the most important in the general design of the work, questions the educational and not the theoretical relevance of their study.

In fact, the removal of maxims from the system of loci might be explained by the prevailingly non-theoretical, but practical and educational purpose of this work, which is consistent with the focus on inuentio, already declared in the title, but it is maybe also bound to the author’s lack of interest in and commitment to the study of the inferential configuration of arguments. Besides the inferential configuration of arguments could force him to reconsider the contributions of the Medieval scholars, who, in his eyes, were guilty of an excessive and useless formalism and, above all, of largely ignoring the relevance of rhetoric.

However, the unquestionable presence of a practical, educational concern in the design of the work should not prevent us from seizing those innovative, critical and theoretical, contributions that are offered in all three books.

4. Innovative aspects
In order to better characterize Agricola’s contribution I now focus on some innovative aspects of his doctrine, namely his critical attitude towards tradition, his treatment of loci, and the distinction between argumentation and exposition.

4.1. Critical attitude towards tradition
His autonomous, correctly critical, attitude towards the authorities of tradition (even those authorities whom he in general acknowledges and confirms) is often stressed and, even though the contributions by Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Themistius and Boethius are mentioned and brought out, a number of criticisms are addressed to each of them.

In particular, regarding Aristotle, Agricola’s judgment is inspired by esteem and admiration, but he avoids any “ipse dixit” devotion: “Ego Aristotelem summo ingenio, doctrina … summum quidem hominem, sed hominem tamen fuisse puto” (p.24) (I believe that Aristotle was a man of the highest intelligence, culture… a man of the highest level, but that he was a man). In other words, Aristotle was one whom something could escape, so that this could be discovered by somebody else (aliis post se invenienda reliquerit). Many other more specific criticisms are directed at Aristotle, in particular at the eight books of Topics. First, the scope of the considered matter is too narrow, as only the loci bound to the four predicables are tackled. Moreover, he does not describe the loci nor establish their number and their names and, very often, some matters are counted as loci that are not at all related to argumentation (like various prescriptions and suggestions to the arguer aiming at improving his performance at communicative and interactional level). Eventually, no indications are provided for the use of loci in the construction of arguments, so that the Aristotelian claim of providing an instrument which enables us to find proper arguments in favor and against every standpoint becomes vain (pp. 25-28).

Now the very hard task of implementing Aristotle’s program of Topics was not fulfilled by his followers of the Peripatetic school, but by people like Cicero, who construed a list of certain and definite loci that could be universally applied. At the beginning, Cicero limited himself to listing them (in De oratore and Partitiones), then in Topica, the book entirely devoted to the loci, copiosius omnia exsecutus est (the whole matter was tackled more in detail). Unfortunately, also in homage to the jurist Trebatius, to whom the book is devoted, Cicero draws almost all examples from civil law.

Quintilian, whom he follows on many questions, is criticized for the indeed scarce space and care devoted to loci in the fifth book of Institutio oratoria, (l. I, c. 3, pp. 28-30), but he is also sharply blamed in relation to an aspect which might appear as a modest detail, but, at a closer look, shows to constitute a fundamental theoretical tenet: “Ea [tekmeria] Quintilianus inter argumenta non putat habenda, quia nihil post se dubii relinquant” (Quintilian thinks that these (undoubted clues) should not be numbered as arguments because they do not leave behind any doubt). Now Agricola wonders how such an idea, which excludes from argumentation all mathematical reasoning, which is manifestly aimed at unquestionable conclusions, could enter the mind of such an intelligent man. Our author recalls that any argumentative activity aims “ut quam minimum dubitandi relinquamus locum” (to leave open to doubt the smallest possible space) (l. I, c. 21, p. 145).

Themistius and Boethius are also mentioned, the former for having proposed a second list of loci, and the latter for first having simply (Boethius non aliud sane uidetur egisse) reported Cicero’s and Themistius’ lists and then having compared them. This judgment is manifestly inadequate and unjust. In my opinion, it is motivated by the relevance ascribed by Boethius to the maxim (in his terminology locus maxima) and its differentiation from the locus differentia maximae (Stump 1978), Which is properly the locus. About “people who wrote after Boethius” two remarks are made by Agricola, one of which is very questionable and however not particularly relevant (they would have followed Themistius and not Boethius), while the other is profound and almost shocking: “They limited themselves to mentioning loci or to characterizing them with few words, because they considered that a deeper knowledge of loci is to be drawn from a more profound philosophy” (p. 29-30).

Particularly interesting is the conclusion of Agricola’s critical overview of the state of the art: eventually, as one who was not ready to swear by the words of anybody, he had decided to each time follow the most convincing author or, in lack of a convincing author, to simply follow reason. However, he does not claim to realize anything better, he is more modestly committed to explaining the matter, maybe with less subtlety, but more clarity.

4.2. The treatment of loci
4.2.1. The taxonomy of loci
The reflections by means of which our author elaborates the classification of loci and specifies the nature of each locus are often innovative and sharp. Moreover, especially in the second book, numerous fine examples are given. The criteria that are used are concisely reported in the scheme construed by the editor on the basis of chapter 4 of the first book. (See Figure 1).

In its whole, Agricola’s taxonomy presents a coherent tree structure: at the highest level, internal and external loci are distinguished, the former being situated either in the constituency (substantia) of the concerned thing or around it, the latter presenting a gradually decreasing closeness to the thing.

In the thing (within or around its constituency) we find the definition and the predicables (genus, species, property), the whole and its parts and the coniugates, like wise vs. wisdom, where wisdom is constitutive of the wise man not in order to be a man, but to be a wise man. Around the constituency are, in relation to a subject, those states of affairs, both static (adiacentia) and dynamic (actus), in which the subject is involved, and the subject itself.

Regarding the external loci, a strong differentiation emerges: the cognata embrace both causes (efficient and final) and outcomes (effects and destinata); the applicita comprise place, time and the connexa, which are the correlative states, i.e. the states of the thing entailing the presence of another thing (like being a married or rich man, which entails the presence of a wife and of a certain wealth respectively); the accidents gather rather different non-constitutive aspects and circumstances; eventually the incompatibles (repugnantia) comprise opposites and divergents.

If we compare Agricola’s taxonomy of loci with the taxonomy proposed by Boethius, which was later largely confirmed and deepened by many Medieval scholars, numerous similarities but also relevant differences emerge, mainly in relation to the frontier dividing internal and external loci. Indeed, even though the most general distinction between internal and external loci is confirmed, and the maximum of closeness to the thing, i. e. to the standpoint, is identified with the loci from definition and from the whole and its parts, numerous loci, like the causes and the applicita, which were traditionally numbered among the internal ones, are moved to the other class. The criterion for the belonging to the internal loci had been identified by Buridan (Summulae de dialectica. 6.2.3) with the fact that either the two terms constituting the habitudo of the locus denote the same reality (supponunt pro eodem) or the reality denoted by one is included in the reality denoted by the other for some mode of “being in” (in my opinion, in the sense that they belong to the same possible world). Thus the comparison of Agricola’s taxonomy with the traditional model shows that a strong and relevant justification of the fundamental dichotomy got lost. The classification of the applicita among the external loci might also be questioned, first because time and place are strictly constitutive of situations (adiacentia) and events (actus), which are consistently numbered among the internal loci, and then because the correlatives (connexa), like king vs. kingdom or husband vs. wife (where the first term imposes a coexistence condition on the second) prove to equally pertain to the internal loci.

However, despite some inconsistencies and a certain theoretical impoverishment, apparently due to the negligence of the relevant contributions provided by Medieval scholars, Agricola’s taxonomy constitutes a real advancement, regarding the identification and justification of the single loci and the innovative categories adopted in the construction of the major classes.

4.2.2. Definitions towards ontologies
Let us now consider some of the fine analyses elaborated by Agricola for loci. His treatment of definition is rigorous and innovative; definition is first distinguished from description (p. 42-43), because its purpose is to say what the thing is and not how it is. Agricola confirms the validity of the classical Aristotelian procedure for defining, which connects the next genus (genus proximum) with the specific difference. However, he also remarks that perfectly fitting definitions like Homo est animal rationale, where rationale really identifies the constitutive trait characterizing humans among all other animals, are not available for non-humans. For all other non-human species, which are called bruta in Latin, like donkeys, mules and horses, no specific difference in form of one predicate is available. A conjunction of predicates like auritus (long-eared), solidis pedibus (single toed) and foecundus (fertile), here plays the role of specific difference, as it enables us to differentiate the nature of donkeys from all other animals: single toed are only donkeys, horses and mules, but horses are not long-eared and mules are not fertile. Consequently: “itaque tandem velut gradibus quibusdam ad id quod definitum est peruenitur” (eventually, we arrive, by climbing a kind of steps, at the defined ). Not simply connecting genus with specific difference, but conjoining often complex sets of predicates (see complexus definitionis, p. 43) is necessary in order to define many entities or states of affairs. This way, definition procedures get very close to the ontologies[xi] elaborated in current trends of semantics.

Agricola also stresses the rhetorical usefulness to the arguer of designing such definitions / ontologies, not only in order to know the things, “which, having been made explicit by means of the definition, suggest to the mind – it is strange how it happens – some precise orientations regarding the thoughts that are being planned, but also to enhance the arguer’s authority (parat auctoritatem disserenti). The author proposes two fair examples, by defining as many social realities: ius (law) and ciuitas (political community). In both cases the definition is the result of intense considerations through which the distinctive function of each predicate of the definition is justified.

Figure 1. Agricola’s typology of loci

More in detail, a conceptual basis constituting the genus is enriched (specified) step by step, by adding all traits that prove to be needed in order to differentiate the concerned domain from all other domains. I simply report the conclusion of the second definition procedure: “Dicemus itaque ciuitatem esse multitudinem collectam, ad statum rerum suarum tuendum per se sufficientem, quae consensu sit legum uitaeque conniuncta”(p. 44) (Therefore we shall say that a ciuitas is a multitude of people living together, in itself autonomous in the defense of its goods, and that shares the same laws and the same ways of life).

4.2.3. Analysis of the domain of events and actions
In general, Agricola’s taxonomy seems to upset the system of Aristotelian categories. The loci circa substantiam (around the constituency) embrace the categories of quality and quantity under the unique label of adiacentia (covering the static states of affairs) (l. I, c.11), while the categories of action and passion are subsumed under the wider category of events or dynamic states of affairs (“Quod igitur proprie actus est, id oportet ut sit in quadam agitatione… positum”, p. 93), which are named actus (l. I, c. 12) and the locus of subject comes to coincide with the substance in which both static and dynamic states of affairs are inherent (l. I, c. 13). Within the locus of events (actus), action (actio) is specified as a purposeful behavior, (p. 35 and p. 92: “finem aliquem respicit”). Interestingly, the author makes a distinction between the purpose and the effect of an action and gives a fine example to highlight it (p. 36): shoes are the effect of shoemaker’s action, while protection of feet is its purpose.

4.3. Argumentation vs. Exposition
In the 16^th chapter of the second book, Agricola brings to light that loci, as headings of the semantic network shaping the map of reality, do not exhaust their role in the construction of arguments (see also Mack 1993), but are not less relevant in expositio, i.e. in the presentation of reality. The role played in exposition is particularly important for two main reasons: it stresses the ontological nature of loci, as it is properly understood by Agricola, and specifies the differences, without neglecting the connections, between explanation and argumentation.

Loci are not exclusively argumentative categories. They are the nodes of the ontological structure of reality and are used in its representation for describing it, explaining it and arguing for it and from it.

Moreover, Agricola, considering, in particular, causal exposition or explanation, discovers that the same state of affairs can be referred to both in explanatory and in argumentative terms. A renowned passage of Virgil’s Aeneid (p. 331) is mentioned (Urbs antiqua fuit, Tyrii tenuere coloni, Karthago … Aeneid I Book, vv.12-80), in which the poet recollects the causes why Juno hated Aeneas. In a different communicative situation, in which Juno’s hate against Aeneas might be doubted (thus becoming a standpoint), the discourse would be transformed into an argumentation and the causal relations used by Virgil in order to explain Juno’s hostile feeling would be used as arguments to prove the truth of this feeling. Another interesting example refers to the eclipse of the moon (p. 332). Let us consider the interposition of the earth between the sun and the moon. One can explain the eclipse of the moon as the effect of such an interposition, but the evidence of this particular position of the earth could, in another communicative interaction, also be interpreted as an argument allowing to predict an eclipse of the moon.

5. Conclusive remarks
Both, innovation and continuity characterize Agricola’s contribution to the study of argumentation. While breaking with the Medieval tradition and adopting in relation to it a decidedly polemical attitude, he established a critical continuity with Antiquity. Numerous innovative aspects emerge in his doctrine: his autonomous, correctly critical, attitude towards the authorities of tradition, his original classification and definition of loci, the often sharp and fertile insights through which the nature of each locus is highlighted, the richness of examples, the discovery of the relevant role played by loci in exposition.

Indeed, despite a certain theoretical impoverishment, partly depending, in my opinion, on the negligence of the relevant contributions provided by Medieval scholars, Agricola’s taxonomy represents a substantial advancement, both regarding the identification and justification of the single loci and the innovative categories adopted in the construction of the major classes. Moreover, thanks to the discovery of the relevant role played by them not only in argumentation but also in exposition, loci are no longer exclusively argumentative categories. They become, in this new perspective, the nodes of the ontological structure of reality that are available, in the construction of human discourse, for the representation of reality aiming at describing it, explaining it and arguing for it and from it.

Agricola’s work on dialectical invention indeed represents an important contribution to the development of rhetoric and argumentation theory.

However, Agricola’s work is not only an important chapter of the history of our discipline: for numerous topics it deserves to be considered in the current scientific debate.

This holds in particular for the still controversial problem of arguments schemes that may be regarded as the present day heirs of loci. Evermore, Agricola’s position represents in relation to argument schemes a very audacious challenge: by extending the relevance of loci beyond argumentation to the descriptive and explanatory discourses, he linked loci to the meta-categorial level of rhetorical relations (also called connective predicates) on which discursive congruity mainly depends (Rigotti 2005; Rocci 2005; Rigotti & Rocci 2006) Eventually, he is our legitimate interlocutor also in relation to the concept of Strategic Maneuvering (van Eemeren 2010), in particular for the invention and selection of arguments and for presentation techniques. The rhetorical dimension is certainly predominant in his approach.

However, the critical remark moved to Quintilian also proves his strong commitment to dialectical cogency.

NOTES
[i] Born near to Groningen at Baflo (natione Friso) (February 17, 1444), Agricola was a “Dutch” scholar, humanist, and musician. He is known to us mainly as the author of the book we are now considering. The original Dutch name Roelof Huusmann was translated by himself into Rodolphus Agricola. Educated first in St. Maartens school in Groningen, he then matriculated at the university of Erfurt and then at the university of Louvain, where he graduated as magister artium (distinguishing himself for the purity of his Latin and his skill in disputation). He concentrated his studies on Cicero and Quintilian, and during his university years added French and Greek to his ever-growing language repertoire.
After living for a time in Paris, where he worked with Heynlin von Stein, – a classics specialist – he went, in around 1464, in Italy, where he associated with humanist masters and statesmen. In the years 1468- 1475 he studied at the University of Pavia, and later went to Ferrara, where he attended lectures on the Greek language of the famous Theodorus Gaza (c. 1400 – 1475), also called by the epithet Thessalonicensis, a Greek humanist and translator of Aristotle, one of the Greek scholars who were the leaders of the revival of Greek culture in the 15th century. Here Agricola wholly devoted himself to the study of classical texts. He won renown for the elegance of his Latin style and his knowledge of philosophy. Also while in Ferrara he was formally employed as the organist to the ducal chapel, which was one of the most opulent musical establishments in Europe. He held that post until 1477, after which, having visited Rome, he definitively turned to his native country in 1481. Once in “Germany” again, he spent time in Dilligen. It was in Dilligen in 1479 that Agricola finished De inuentione dialectica. In 1482, on the invitation of Johann von Dalberg, bishop of Worms, with whom he had become friendly while in Italy at the university of Pavia, he accepted a professorship at the University of Heidelberg and for three years lectured there and at Worms on the Greek literature. In 1485 Agricola accompanied Dalberg, who was sent as an ambassador to Innocent III the new elected Pope in Rome, but was struck gravely ill on the journey back to home. He died in the autumn of the same year “mente in Deum porrectissima”. In the cultural history of Europe of the late fifteenth century, he is considered as the father of northern European humanism (Vasoli, 1968).
[ii] Rodolphi Agricolae Phrisii de inuentione dialectica libri omnes integri et recogniti iuxta autographi, nuper D. Alardi Aemstelredami opera in lucem educti fidem, atque doctissimis scholiis illustrati, Ioannis Phrissem, Alardi Aemstelredami, Reinardi Hadamarii. Quorum scholia exactissimo iudicio contulit ac congessit Ioannes Nouiomagus. Coloniae Anno M. D. LVII. This is the work Agricola is particularly known for. There is a recent edition by Lothar Mundt, Rudolf Agricola. De inventione dialectica libri tres (1992).
[iii] The Latin word doceo means in general contexts “to let know” or “to inform”, and in the educational contexts “to teach”.
[iv] Here and in some other passages of the paper Agricola’s Latin text is rendered through my own English translation.
[v] The term is used by Cicero (Topica 39) with a different meaning in relation to the argument from genus, which should not necessarily be identified with the ultimate genus (non erit necesse usque a capite arcessere), but simply with the immediately relevant genus.
[vi] The following passages of Peter of Spain, Abelard and Buridan clearly highlight the notion of habitudo; interestingly, while the first passage only underlines the relational nature of locus, the second also focuses on the inferential strength ensured by locus to maxim and the third moreover ascribes to locus the communicative potential of maxim:
“Locus a causa efficiente est habitudo ipsius ad suum effectum” (Petri Hispani Summulae logicales, 5.24);
“Est autem locus-differentia ea res in cuius habitudine ad aliam firmitas consecutionis consistit.” (Abaelardi De dialectica, 263);
“Locus-differentia maximae est termini ex quibus constituitur maxima et ex quorum habitudine ad invicem maxima habet notitiam et veritatem. Verbi gratia, cum haec propositio ’Quidquid vere affirmatur de genere vere affirmatur de specie´ sit locus maxima, isti termini ‘species et ‘genus´sunt locus-differentia maximae: ex habitudine enim speciei ad suum genus maxima habet veritatem et efficaciam” (Buridani Summulae de dialectica 6.2.2).
[vii] John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308) was one of the most influential philosophers and theologians of the of the 13^TH and14^TH centuries. His brilliant thought earned him the nickname “the Subtle Doctor”. Topics like the semantics of religious language, the problem of universals, the nature of human freedom were innovatively investigated by him. For a general overview of his work and his life see Gilson Ė.-H. (1952)
[viii] The role played by maxims in the inferential organization of arguments is expounded more in detail in Rigotti & Greco-Morasso (2010).
[ix] While this is the case for Cicero, it is not indeed the case for Aristotle who, though not specifying explicitly the notion of maxim, often represents the topoi in form of maxim-like rules (Braet 2005; Rigotti 2008).
[x] In Abelard’s Dialectica (264) loci (maximarum propositionum differentiae) are said to be fewer (pauciores) than maxims, because “eiusdem differentiae multae maximae propositiones esse possunt” (the same locus differentia can have many maxims).
[xi] The term ontology refers, especially in Aristotelian philosophical tradition, to the doctrine of being. Thus the traditional philosophical concept of ontology is mainly meant to deal with questions concerning what entities exist or at what conditions they can be said to exist, by what relations they are bound together and how they can be grouped and related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences. More recently, within computer science and information science, the term ontology has been used for referring to a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts, that may be used to define the domain and to reason about its (constitutive) properties. In my opinion, while, in general, loci are situated by Agricola in the domain defined by the first notion of ontology, Agricola’s understanding of definition is close to this second notion of ontology.

REFERENCES
Agricola Rodolphus (1557). Rodolphi Agricolae Phrisii de inuentione dialectica libri omnes integri et recogniti iuxta autographi, nuper D. Alardi Aemstelredami opera in lucem educti fidem, atque doctissimis scholiis illustrati, Ioannis Phrissem, Alardi Aemstelredami, Reinardi Hadamarii. Quorum scholia exactissimo iudicio contulit ac congessit Ioannes Nouiomagus. Coloniae Anno M. D. LVII.
Boethius, A.M.S. De differentiis topicis: Patrologia Latina 1173B – 1216D. (http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/resources/boethius/De_differentiis_topicis.txt)
Braet, A. (2005). The Common Topic in Aristotle’s Rhetoric: Precursor of the Argumentation Scheme. Argumentation, 19, 65-83.
Bochenski, M. (1947, ed.). Petri Hispani Summulae Logicales. Torino: Marietti.
Buridan, J. (2001). Summulae de Dialectica, an annotated translation with a philosophical introduction by G. Klima. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Colombo, S. (1967, ed.). P. Vergilii Maronis Opera. Torino: SEI.
De Rijk, L.M. (1970, ed.). Petrus Abaelardus, Dialectica: First Complete Edition of the Parisian Manuscript. Assen: Van Gorcum.
Eemeren, F.H., van (2010). Strategic Maneuvering in Argumentative Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Eemeren, F.H. van, & Houtlosser, P. (2002). Strategic manoeuvring in argumentative discourse: mantaining a delicate balance. In F.H. van Eemeren & P. Houtlosser (Eds.), Dialectic and Rhetoric: the warp and woof of argumentation analysis (pp. 131-159), Dortrech: Kluwer Academic.
Gilson, Ė.-H. (1952). Jean Duns Scot. Introduction à ses positions fondamentales. J. Vrin/Paris.
Mack, P. (1993). Renaissance Argument: Valla and Agricola in the Traditions of Rhetoric and Dialectic. Leiden/New York/Köln: Brill.
Reinhardt, T. (2003, ed.). Marcus Tullius Cicero, Topica. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rigotti, E. (2005). Congruity Theory and Argumentation. Studies in Communication Sciences (special issue), 75-96.
Rocci, A. (2005). Connective Predicates in Monologic and Dialogic Argumentation. Studies in Communication Sciences (special issue), 97-118.
Rigotti, E. (2008). Locus a causa finali. L’analisi linguistica e letteraria (special issue 2/2), 559-576.
Rigotti, E., & Greco Morasso, S. (2010). Comparing the Argumentum Model of Topics to other contemporary approaches to argument schemes: the procedural and material components. Argumentation, 24, 489–512.
Rigotti E., & Rocci A. (2006). Tema-rema e connettivo: la congruità semantico-pragmatica del testo. In G. Gobber, M.C. Gatti, & S. Cigada (Eds.), Syndesmoi: connettivi nella realtà dei testi (pp. 3-44), Milano: Vita e Pensiero.
Ross, W.D. (1958, ed.). Aristotelis Topica et Sophistici Elenchi. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stump, E. (1978, ed.). Boethius’s “De topicis differentiis”. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press.
Vasoli, C. (1968). La dialettica e la retorica dell’Umanesimo. “Invenzione” e “Metodo” nella cultura del XV e XVI secolo. Milano: Feltrinelli
Winterbottom, M. (1970, ed.). M. Fabi Quintiliani Institutionis oratoriae libri duodecim. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Vice President Joe Biden visited Jerusalem in March, 2010 to attend a series of high profile and carefully planned meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior members of his government. The visit was designed to calm Israeli anxieties about U.S. commitment to Israel and to restart the peace talks with the Palestinians. Biden has been a strong supporter of Israel throughout his political career. Upon reaching Jerusalem, he gave a speech in which he pledged continuing support for Israel stating, “Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel” (cited by Bronner 2010). Only a few hours later the Vice President was stunned by the announcement that Netanyahu’s conservative government intended to build 1,600 new housing units for ultra-orthodox Jews in East Jerusalem on land that was claimed during the Six Day War. This announcement came despite the fact that the Obama administration had been pressing the Israeli government to halt the construction of any new settlements on land also claimed by the Palestinians as necessary for the creation of a viable Palestinian state (Bronner 2010; McCarthy 2010).

Over the next few days the controversy between the United States and Israel, two close allies, grew as new statements condemning or defending the decision and the manner and timing in which it was communicated were discussed in mediated public statements issued by the respective governments and their officials and in press accounts that both reported and analyzed these statements.

The situation prompted a series of carefully choreographed arguments from both governments as they attempted to communicate to a wide array of domestic and international audiences. The incident provides an interesting example of strategic communication in foreign policy, and specifically into the role of strategic media maneuvers in media diplomacy. This essay will: 1) discuss the notion of strategic communication and media diplomacy as a macro-context and how they have co-evolved in the new media environment; 2) critically examine the arguments in this case as examples of media maneuvering by government spokespersons in this controversy; 3) identify the tensions that were exposed, created, and eventually mitigated within the multiple domestic and international audiences who see themselves as stakeholders in this controversy; and 4) offer initial conclusions regarding the “lessons learned” for media diplomacy in a global environment.

Strategic Communication, Media Diplomacy, and Foreign Policy Arguments
Strategic communication is typically defined as the study of deliberate programs of messages or arguments that are designed by organizations, institutions or other entities in order to achieve particular goals (Riley, Weintraub & Hollihan 2008).  Much of the early work in strategic communication focused on either internal organizational change strategies or on external marketing campaigns. Recently, the research and the practice of strategic communication have moved to the study of governments as they attempt to win over either domestic or international publics. The Biden visit was intended to demonstrate U.S. interest and influence in the region. The ill-timed Israeli announcement of the new housing units, however, reveals the challenge of attempting to think, act, and communicate strategically in an environment where one lacks control over the actions of one’s partners or the media. Successful strategic communication depends upon the ability to predict not just how one’s messages and arguments will be understood and interpreted, but how one’s partners and adversaries are likely to respond. When surprises occur, as they did in this instance, strategies must be adapted to the changed situation. One of the challenges of adapting to the situation,  and one of the elements most present in this case study, is determining whether the unexpected response is a result of a misunderstanding (defined in this analysis as an accident: formal communication based on premises not presented or on interpretations not intended by the other government) or whether the “misunderstanding” is itself strategically ambiguous communication (Eisenberg 2007) that is a form of strategic media maneuvering and understood differently by each stakeholder group.

Strategic communication touches on foreign policy, international diplomacy, military strategy, and domestic politics. It used to be possible for political regimes to create alternative messages for different audiences and thus to preserve a level of nuance, ambiguity, and perhaps even outright deception when they had to respond to challenging messages.  In our increasingly connected and globalized world, this is no longer possible. The messages of foreign policy must be formulated with the understanding that they are likely to be seen or heard by many different audiences, each applying their own cultural understandings, worldviews, and objectives (Klumpp, Hollihan, & Riley 2002). As Nick Cull, a key scholar in public diplomacy likes to say, “What is said in Kansas is heard in Kandahar” (2010).

Those who have studied strategic communication successes and failures have argued that it must be integrated into the policy making process and not merely appended onto that process after the important policy decisions have been made (Riley et al. 2008). An effective communication process will not compensate for failed or ill-conceived policy choices by governments. The strategic communication process should be designed in anticipation of the likely responses of both allies and adversaries, and it must involve the construction of metrics that help governments understand the effects of the messages and policies (Lynch 2009). Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and thus the nation’s highest ranking military officer, declared that he was unhappy with the term “strategic communication,” because he believed that “the essence of good communication [was] having the right intent up front and letting our actions speak for themselves” (Mullen 2009). The problem with this view, as Mark Lynch (2009) argued is that:
Everything is subject to spin, framing, and interpretation. Mullen is right to critique those who focus exclusively on the messaging and ignore the policy. But it doesn’t follow that just getting the policy right will succeed without an effective communications strategy. There is going to be an information war, a struggle over framing and interpretation, no matter what policy is pursued. This is why strategic communications can’t be ignored in the formation and execution of policy in today’s international system.

We believe that understanding the role of media diplomacy is critical in assessing the effectiveness of any nation’s strategic communication of its foreign policy objectives. The instruments of media diplomacy may include speeches, press conferences, interviews, visits, media events, or even leaks (Gilboa 1998). Media diplomacy occurs when policymakers or skilled negotiators “use the media to send messages to leaders of rival states and to non-state actors” (Gilboa 1998, p. 63). The U.S., as one example, has long been committed to the use of international media campaigns to advance its foreign policy objectives (Hayden 2006). Another important aspect of media diplomacy is that it permits those who are engaged in complex negotiations to send signals that are multi-directional and can be interpreted and understood differently by different audiences. Recent developments in new forms of digital media and social networking sites have created huge challenges as diplomats and policy makers attempt to maintain any semblance of control over their messages. Hayden (2006) posits that argument scholars are well-positioned to study how argument formations emerge in different media in order to illustrate how diverse and networked publics construct meaning about complicated foreign policy issues.

Multidirectional foreign policy arguments are consumed by publics that have different assessments about those facts and are drawn from multiple sources to provide empirical materiality to their facts. Likewise, stakeholders will value those facts differently because they will be relying upon their own unique histories, cultural memories, social knowledge, notions of what constitutes good reasons, and normative rules for argumentative praxis. In short, argument becomes less a rule governed activity of shared understanding and more a process of deliberative construction as real controversies are worked over in the public and political spheres.[i]  In this sense, political argument in the world of international relations and public diplomacy has become what Joseph Nye calls “a contest of competitive credibility” (2008, p. 100). Compared to the previous world of power politics where a nation’s military or economy decided who will win in foreign policy, international politics in a global network of information may be much more about whose story wins (Arquila & Ronfeldt 1999).

Through its focus on media diplomacy and the role of public argumentation in shaping understanding of US-Israeli relations following Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel, this study takes “. . . an approach that locates the engine of world politics in globally linked communication networks where competing ideas shape the course of events” (Mitchell 2002, p. 68). Goodnight notes that communicative argumentation is grounded in the logic of the institution and thus institutional logics are both material and symbolic and provide the formal and informal rules of action but they are also historical and evolve over time and “render state of the art practice sometimes unstable” (2008, p. 262). Such is likely the case as media diplomacy evolves to be multi-directional – coping with the multiple stakeholders that receive messages on the state of international relations.

A Framework for Analysis
Strategic communication in a global sphere is contextualized both by time and institutional logics or frames (a more detailed discussion of framing can be found in Riley, Usher & Hollihan 2009). The question is whether the goal of the argument is to respond to a particular event that is rhetorically exigent, to build international relationships, or something in between. Thai cooking shows, for example, are excellent examples of long term media diplomacy for Thailand since studies show people around the world love Thai food but these shows are not responsive to the mob violence that took place in the spring of 2010. As Gilboa explains:
Traditional public diplomacy was aimed at long-term results, but the information age required a major adjustment in the time framework. It would be useful to distinguish among three time dimensions: immediate, intermediate, and long. Each presents different purposes and means, different attitudes to the media and public opinion, a different degree of desirable association or ties with the government, and matching public diplomacy instruments. At the immediate level, the purpose is to react within hours or a few days to developing events, usually to minimize damage or exploit an opportunity through techniques of news management. Such immediate action is generally led by senior government officials. The most appropriate public diplomacy instruments for this stage would be advocacy, international broadcasting, and cyber public diplomacy. (Gilboa 2008, p. 72)

Media diplomacy goals in an intermediate time period, we believe, should be transitional and focus on identifying critical stakeholder groups – Advocates (supportive and likely to be engaged), Allies (supportive but less active), Adversaries (opposed and likely to be engaged), and Anti-’s (opposed but less active) (NPS/USC 2010) – as well as on developing message themes that further the goals of strategic communication plans and attempt to shift the argument frames for those stakeholders.

Long time period diplomacy programs are built through new institutional logics that emerge from developing new relationships, through transparency and shared goals for the future. While media diplomacy plays an important role in these programs, Cull (2010) argues that the most important communication activity is listening and that this appears considerably harder for governments to practice than most other elements of diplomacy.

US-Israel Relations
To appreciate the dynamics in this particular case, it is necessary to briefly consider the history of US-Israeli relations. The U.S. has long been identified as Israel’s closest ally. Cordesman (2010) noted: “The real motives behind America’s commitment to Israel are moral and ethical. They are a reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust, to the entire history of Western anti-Semitism, and to the United States’ failure to help German and European Jews during the period before it entered World War II. They are a product of the fact that Israel is a democracy that shares virtually all of the same values as the United States.” In the sixty years since Israel was founded, the U.S. has provided huge amounts of foreign aid. For example, in 2009, the U.S. provided more than $2.55 billion in military aid. The two nations conduct joint military planning, training, and exercises. In addition, they closely collaborate on military research and weapons development (Background Note: Israel 2009). Despite the close political, military, and economic ties, however, the relationship has sometimes been fraught with difficulty. It has arguably been a much more successful partnership when Israel has been governed by its more liberal as opposed to its conservative parties. The U.S. also wants to maintain cordial relations with the Arabic nations in the region, but its close contacts with Israel complicate this goal and are often cited as a primary cause for the current global tensions and acts of terror.

In order to reach a lasting peace in the region, and in an attempt to secure positive relationships with Arabic nations, the U.S. has since the early 1990s supported the call for a Palestinian homeland with secure borders and sufficient territorial resources to sustain a rapidly growing population (Background Note: Israel, 2009). The United States would prefer that Israel return the land gained in the 1967 and 1973 wars to the Palestinians to help create this homeland, but this is unlikely to happen. In recent years Israel has experienced a rapid growth in population as immigrants from around the world have poured in, many of whom  are profoundly religious and conservative and not eager to compromise with moderate or liberal Jews, let alone Palestinian Arabs. These immigrants typically had large families and wished to create religious communities apart from more secular Israelis. They were given the right to build settlements in disputed territory starting in 1981 during the term of Prime Minister Menachem Begin. This policy not only housed the new immigrants in areas that formed a more defensible perimeter to protect Israel from invasion, but also made it less likely that this land would ever be repatriated to the displaced Palestinians. The rapid expansion in the size and number of Israeli settlements “take up more and more of the land the Palestinians want for their state and make partition increasingly difficult. Today, nearly 300,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and 180,000 in east Jerusalem” (Joe Biden’s Snub 2010).

The U.S. government has for many years pressured Israel to stop the expansion of the settlements in an effort to make peace with the Palestinians. In November, 2009, Israel agreed to a ten month freeze on new settlement building in the West Bank. The Israelis refused, however, to halt the expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem which it captured in the 1967 war and considers part of its ancient capital (Bronner 2010).

The Mini-Case Study
The announcement of the new housing units during Vice President Biden’s visit, given how vocal U.S. foreign policy makers have been on the subject, was especially provocative.  Biden declared:
I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem. The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I’ve had here in Israel. We must build an atmosphere to support negotiations not complicate them. (cited by Hounshell 2010)

As might be expected, the Palestinian government also condemned the decision, declaring that the announcement of the new housing units was “destroying our efforts” toward negotiating a peace agreement (cited by McCarthy 2010). The construction plan was also sharply criticized by Egypt, Israel’s closest ally in the Arab world. A spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry declared the announcement “absurd” and proclaimed it “disdainful of the Arab and the Palestinian positions and the American mediation” (Joe Biden’s Snub 2010).  The announcement also drew the ire of others. The European Union reiterated its declaration “that settlements are illegal under international law,” a position shared by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Russia declared the move “unacceptable,” and Britain and Turkey said it would cause doubt regarding how serious Israel was in pursuing peace (Rabinowitz 2010, Joe Biden’s Snub 2010).

The Obama administration used the moment, and the global opposition to Israel’s actions, as an opportunity to emphasize its opposition to new settlements. But it chose very low risk and low intensity strategic responses. Vice President Biden, after having issued his statement, arrived ninety minutes late for a scheduled dinner with Prime Minister Netanyahu, forcing the Israeli head of state to endure the embarrassment of entertaining an openly rude guest (Buck 2010). The next day Secretary of State Hillary Clinton referred to the announcement during Biden’s visit as “insulting.” Her office also issued the following statement:
“Mrs. Clinton spoke this morning with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu… to reinforce that this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process and in America’s interests. . . . The secretary said she could not understand how this happened…and she made clear that the Israeli government needed to demonstrate not just through words but through specific actions that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process.” (Gandelman 2010)

President Obama’s closest political advisor David Axelrod (who is Jewish) called the approval of new housing units during Biden’s visit an “affront” and an “insult,” and added that the announcement “seemed calculated to undermine” the peace talks with the Palestinians (Gandelman 2010). Axelrod also declared, however, that “Israel is a strong and special ally. The bonds run deep. But for just that very reason, this was not the right way to behave” (Gandelman 2010).  In order to allow the impact of the story to percolate even deeper into the public’s consciousness, the White House let it be known that President Obama was personally “livid” over the humiliation (Gandelman 2010).

The transitional strategy was also clear – the bond between the nations would stretch enough to diminish Israel in the media and portray the special relationship between these two states as becoming less special over time. Through mediated arguments about Israel’s inappropriate behavior for an ally and the harmful effects on the mediation process, the messages put distance between the two nations’ perceived goals and values. And without a personal statement from President Obama, nor any visible signs of support, a new media diplomacy frame was evolving in an intermediate time period – to be our ally means “No New Settlements.”

World Leader’s Arguments in Response to the Controversy
If one goal pursued by the Obama administration was to convince Palestine that the U.S. wanted to play a more neutral role in the region, there is some evidence that they succeeded. The guardedly angry statements coming from the Obama administration were met with approval by the Palestinian Authority. Saeb Erakat, a spokesperson declared that the PA “welcomes the statements from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Quartet condemning the Israeli government decision to build settlements in the eastern sector of Jerusalem.” He further declared: “We want these positions to become binding and for Israel to scrap its settlement decisions, especially its plan to build 1600 homes in Jerusalem” (Gandelman 2010).

If the goal of all of this tough talk was to intensify the pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu and urge him to change his policy toward building new settlements, the results were mixed. Clearly, Netanyahu felt the pressure sparked by his open break with his closest ally, yet his own ideological commitments and the domestic political environment in Israel made it unlikely that he would cave in to this pressure and freeze the building of new settlements. Netanyahu summoned his closest advisors, supposedly conducting a probe to determine precisely what had happened. Netanyahu also quickly issued a statement in which he claimed to be as surprised by the announcement to build the new housing as Biden had been. Netanyahu also called German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian President Silvio Berlusconi to express regret at the incident (Gandelman 2010). The interior minister who announced the new housing development declared that the timing of the announcement was purely coincidental and that “There was certainly no intention to provoke anyone and certainly not to come along and hurt the vice-president of the United States” (cited by McCarthy 2010). The Israelis also reported that the new housing units had been previously announced, and that the timing merely indicated that the project was progressing through the permit process.

At the same time, Netanyahu’s government announced that it was not backing down, that it would build the 1,600 disputed housing units, that it reserved the right to build still more projects in East Jerusalem, and that it would remain the undivided capital of Israel (Netanyahu says there will be no concession 2010). Their media diplomacy included prefacing the “unhappy” news with positive or conciliatory statements – a common communication tactic that we call, “Two pieces of good news and oh, by the way . . .”

The stinging rebukes from the U.S. and other world leaders prompted Prime Minister Netanyahu to visit Washington, D.C. approximately a week later to illustrate that the U.S. and Israel continued to be on good terms and that this incident was merely a minor distraction. Even this visit to Washington was replete with examples of continued media diplomacy, designed to communicate to different stakeholders. President Obama met with Netanyahu twice, but signaled his continuing displeasure by refusing to admit any reporters or photographers to either meeting. As a result, there were no jointly issued press briefings and no images of the two leaders standing next to each other grinning. The argument in this case was visual but not in the usual sense – it was the absence of traditional photo opportunities with the most powerful man in the world that suggests the unequivocal power of U.S. support is less present than it was previously.

As the story evolved, Obama continued to press Israel for a freeze on all future settlements on disputed land and Netanyahu assured his conservative supporters that he adamantly refused to even consider a change in policy. He declared that he told President Obama, “from our standpoint, building in Jerusalem is like building in Tel Aviv” (cited by Ravid 2010). Through this analogy, Netanyahu sets up two positions – first, an argument to the global audience that the land is unequivocally Israel’s now (and therefore not disputed) and second, an argument positioned for his conservative home audience that claims Israel does not need to bow to the wishes of the US administration and that he will follow the policies that got him elected.

Israeli Audience (including supporters)
Netanyahu also used his visit to Washington as an opportunity to meet with a pro-Israel lobbying group and with small groups of congressmen known to be fiercely pro-Israel (Ravid 2010). Despite these attempts to manage if not fully resolve the conflict with the Obama administration, Netanyahu returned to Israel with little to show for his efforts. The Obama administration and other world leaders continued to express strong opposition to the new construction and analysts declared in the Israeli media that Netanyahu had been first surprised, then embarrassed, and finally politically weakened as a result of the strong rebuke from his closest ally. As Yossi Beilin, an Israeli peace negotiator observed: “Netanyahu understands, perhaps better than some of his Likud predecessors, that even if he believes ‘he is 100 percent right and the world is 100 percent wrong’ on Jerusalem, ‘he cannot go on and destroy the relationships with the whole world’” (Zacharia 2010).

It is not just the relationships around the world that were troublesome for Netanyahu. His handling of the affair arguably damaged him at home.  Some claimed that his center-right coalition was in danger and that he might be forced to reach out to the moderate Kadima Party to lessen the tensions with the United States (Zacharia 2010).

US Domestic
Netanyahu was not the only player in this controversy who was feeling domestic political pressure. The political climate in the United States was also deeply polarized and President Obama faced pressures of his own.  With ongoing legislative battles over health care, banking reforms and the politically volatile issue of illegal immigration, Obama hardly needed the distraction that would come if he were labeled by either his political opponents or the media as hostile to Israel.

Senator Charles Schumer (NY-D), normally an Obama supporter, but someone who also represents a state with a large and vocal pro-Israel electorate, told reporters that he worried the administration’s approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was “counterproductive” (Rogin 2010). Schumer was not the only member of the President’s own party to express anxiety about the harsh criticism of Israel.  Representative Anthony Weiner (NY-D), a member of the House Jewish Caucus said that, “The appropriate response was a shake of the head – not a temper tantrum . . . Israel is a sovereign nation and an ally, not a punching bag. Enough already”(Zimmerman 2010). Representative Steve Israel (NY-D) declared that “The Administration, to the extent that it has disagreements with Israel on policy matters, should find way to do so in private and do what they can to defuse this situation” (Zimmerman 2010). Representative Shelley Berkley (NV-D) expressed her concern that the administration had an “overreaction,” to the Biden snub (Zimmerman 2010). Representative Eliot Engel (NY- D) agreed that the response had been “disproportionate” and urged that “we all have to take a step back” (Zimmerman 2010).  Leading Republicans were even more critical. Senator John McCain (AZ-R) urged the administration to end its public criticism of Israel which would only strengthen our enemies, while Representative Eric Cantor (VA-R), the House Minority Leader warned that the Obama administration was using the incident as a strategy to change the course of U.S. policy toward Israel (Critics Accuse Administration of Exploiting Israel Dispute 2010).

Quite a number of these arguments are examples of traditional argumentative rebuttals that condemn the President’s motives and international acumen. Others are similar to the derailing and “re-railing” strategic maneuvers described by van Eemeren & Houtlosser (see 2002 for a detailed description) and other scholars, but because they do not take place in one-on-one conversations or in exchanges in Parliament, but in the mediascape, we refer to them as media maneuvers.
The context as a whole likely gave the administration additional cover for its efforts to portray the building of new Israeli settlements as the obstacle to the peace process – the Republicans and other voices of support created an alternative set of U.S. arguments that created a “Good cop, Bad cop” media maneuver for the administration in the mediascape. In other words, yes the White House is truly unhappy with Israel’s announcement, but Congress remained steadfast in its support. Thus the counter arguments by Israel’s supporters don’t necessarily remain the oppositional arguments that were delivered by various members of Congress – as they move into the global public sphere they instead provide cover while the Obama administration negotiates with Israel.

Palestine
The situation clearly suggested that both the United States and Israel walked a “tight rope” – trying to achieve their foreign policy objectives while simultaneously managing their domestic political audiences. But the other most significant actor in this controversy naturally faced his own political pressures. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas immediately announced that he would withdraw from the negotiations when Israel announced its intentions to build the 1,600 new housing units in March (Indirect Israel talks ‘called off’  2010). It seems apparent that he felt this decision was justified and necessary if he was to retain credibility with his constituents. Abbas was not persuaded to return to the bargaining table for two months. The White House convinced the Palestinians to participate with a pledge that the U.S. would at least consider allowing a United Nations Security Council resolution to come to a vote, should one be proposed, that condemned Israel for building new homes in disputed territory. The concession was noteworthy because it would mean that the U.S. was declining to use its veto power to block an attempt to sanction Israel. “The U.S. has vetoed more than 40 U.N. resolutions critical of Israel since 1972 – at least three of them explicit condemnations of Israeli construction activity in East Jerusalem” (Levinson 2010). “The Palestinians were given the impression by the American side that things are not going to be business as usual as far as negotiations are concerned,” a senior Palestinian official close to the discussions declared (Levinson 2010). It was soon apparent, however, that there was significant ambiguity regarding precisely what the U.S. pledged. As Levinson (2010) reported:
Officials involved in the diplomacy have different interpretations of what exactly was promised in the meeting between Messrs. Hale and Abbas. Palestinians briefed on the meeting say Mr. Hale read from a letter in which the U.S. said it “may consider taking action against significantly provocative settlement activity including not using the veto in the Security Council.” The U.S. refused to put their assurances in writing, according to the Palestinians briefed on the meeting.

But other officials familiar with the exchange said the U.S. threat to withhold a veto in the Security Council was limited to any further building in Ramat Shlomo. In that Prime Minister Netanyahu had already indicated that the construction of the 1600 new units  would not begin for two years,  the Obama administration would not really have to worry about honoring this pledge before 2012 (Levinson 2010).

An Israeli spokesperson minimized the significance of the pledge declaring: “This sounds very conditional . . . If the Palestinians think that this is another tool with which they can corner Israel, they may be in for a very gross miscalculation” (Levinson 2010). The media maneuver was thus a vague and tenuous pledge not to veto a resolution that is not currently before the Security Council, and that is not likely to be raised before that Council for at least two years. This timing-tactic gave all of the parties in the dispute room to communicate their own goals and demonstrate their principles and their “toughness” for their domestic audiences.

Long Time Period Diplomacy: The Saga Continues
The snub of Vice President Biden, and all of the public and media arguments created in response may have helped shape the public debate on U.S.-Israeli relations, but the complex character of the issues in the Middle East was further intensified only a couple of months later when Israel intercepted and boarded a Turkish vessel in international waters destined for the Gaza strip. The ship which was attempting to bring food, medicine, and other aid to Gaza also included many peace activists. Accounts differ as to who may have started the fighting, but when the incident was finished, nine passengers on the vessel were killed and many others were injured. Nations around the world quickly condemned the action, and further declared that the blockade of occupied Gaza violated international law (Palmer 2010). This incident again inflamed the strained relationship that the Netanyahu government had with the Obama administration and led to yet another round of media diplomacy.

Among the more sharply worded criticisms of Israel was expressed by Anthony H. Cordesman, who previously served in the U.S. Department of Defense as a director of intelligence, and holds a distinguished chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Cordesman is typically moderate on U.S.-Israel foreign policy, and his past experience in government and his prominent position in a think tank known for its influence in shaping U.S. foreign policy caused the following statement to take on extraordinary significance. Cordesman (2010) argued:
The depth of America’s moral commitment does not justify or excuse actions by an Israeli government that unnecessarily makes Israel a strategic liability when it should remain an asset. It does not mean that the United States should extend support to an Israeli government when that government fails to credibly pursue peace with its neighbors. It does not mean that the United States has the slightest interest in supporting Israeli settlements in the West Bank, or that the United States should take a hard-line position on Jerusalem that would effectively make it a Jewish rather than a mixed city. It does not mean that the United States should be passive when Israel makes a series of major strategic blunders–such as persisting in the strategic bombing of Lebanon during the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, escalating its attack on Gaza long after it had achieved its key objectives, embarrassing the U.S. president by announcing the expansion of Israeli building programs in east Jerusalem at a critical moment in U.S. efforts to put Israeli-Palestinian peace talks back on track, or sending commandos to seize a Turkish ship in a horribly mismanaged effort to halt the “peace flotilla” going to Gaza.

Cordesman’s arguments were followed by similar statements in the blogosphere and they were influential in two ways. First, his overarching argument is about a series of actions over a long period of time that require a new frame for their interpretation – one that portrays the controversy over the settlements within a pattern of Israel’s strategic errors. In this sense, the settlements are evidence in a larger story that moves Israel out of the role of a strategic asset to the U.S. to that of a strategic liability. Second, that Cordesman speaks not as a government servant but as an independent expert is crucial – the administration is allowed its relationship as the Great Friend of Israel but the new story gains credibility coming from an esteemed and independent source.

Lessons Learned:  Arguments in Media Diplomacy
The analysis of this mini-case study suggests a few important lessons about foreign policy arguments and media diplomacy in a new media age. First, the study confirms that press coverage is now truly global and that multi-directional argument strategies can be created for domestic and international audiences who will evaluate  these messages and diplomatic actions  through the cultural narratives and understandings that have shaped their varying political interests. This case study also indicates that governments or other actors need not and should not make all the critical arguments themselves in media diplomacy. A strategic communication plan allows multiple stakeholders, even those with opposing positions, to create a media discourse that, as a whole, can achieve its strategic goals. It is important to note that this is not a recommendation to say nothing as the media abhors a vacuum and will find someone happy to help fill a 24/7 news hole.

Second, the diplomats who sought to maneuver through the minefield of domestic and international political tensions in this dispute employed a variety of different types of symbolic actions. There were formal public statements both by the principle characters in the drama (Vice President Biden, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Secretary of State Clinton) and by subordinates and surrogates but President Obama himself was mostly quiet about the incident, permitting others to speak on his behalf (remember, he was said to be “livid”). The symbolic gestures themselves, may have seemed petty (for example, Vice President Biden showing up ninety minutes late for dinner and a White House meeting where no reporters or photographers were allowed), but those non-verbal messages created powerful arguments in a visually saturated media milieu. It is important to note that Biden showing up late to dinner was carefully explained in the media, not just because it was a visual rebuttal but being very late to an event would not be uncommon in many parts of the world.

Third, the strategic ambiguity of some of these arguments permitted the media to have a great deal of interpretive power in the controversy. It was typically left to the press, for example, to explain the “meaning” of no photographs being taken at Obama and Netanyahu’s White House meeting, or to create the timeline when Prime Minister Netanyahu supposedly went to Washington to apologize and seek reconciliation but also on the same visit gave a defiant defense of the new housing units before a pro-Israel lobbying group. In this sense the media becomes a stakeholder in the controversy and must be treated as such when diplomats create strategic communication plans that include developing possible scenarios and testing possible messages.

Fourth, the twenty-four hour news cycle meant that there was little time for reflection once the controversy began to unfold. As the stories entered the media they sparked quick public reactions from affected actors. It was difficult for any of the participants to manage their communication in such a rapidly developing storyline. Thus the public argument marketplace in this controversy was very similar to the arguments surrounding the recent economic crisis – emotionally charged and volatile. The need for superior risk communication assessments and post hoc analysis is clear. New research currently being conducted on presenting and responding to financial arguments may help future analyses of passionate and complex stories.

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has raged for more than sixty years and may now be more intense and entrenched than in previous years. The possibilities for peace in the region remain dim unless these nations can find new ways to negotiate and to strategically communicate with their agitated domestic audiences. In foreign policy, strategic communication plans are necessary before successful arguments can be constructed. Israel wants security and Palestine wants humane treatment for its citizens and sufficient land to create a sustainable state. These are not minor issues. The goals of diplomatic activities in the Middle East are certainly long-term and completely new frames such as the sharing of leadership or the development of alternative networks of governance might be required. Few nations can stand alone, or at least not for very long.

NOTES
[i] This process is considered more thoroughly and systematically in a paper we co-authored with James Klumpp. See:  Klumpp, Hollihan, & Riley (2002).

REFERENCES
Arquila, J. & Ronfeldt,D. (1999). The emergence of noopolitik: Toward an American information strategy. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.
Background note: Israel. (2009, December 17). U.S. Department of State.  http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3581.htm. Retrieved on May 7, 2010.
Bronner, E. (2010, March 9). As Biden visits, Israel unveils plan for new settlements.  New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/world/middleeast/10biden.html. Retrieved on April 9, 2010.
Buck, T. (2010, March 9).  Israeli housing push hits peace moves. Financial Times.com. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8098c658-2bc0-11df-a5c7-00144feabdc0.html.Retrieved on May 10, 2010.
Cordesman, A.H. (2010, June 2). Israel as a strategic liability. Center for Strategic and International Studies. http://csis.org/publication/israel-strategic-liability.Retrieved on June 7, 2010.
Critics Accuse Administration of Exploiting Israel Dispute, Aiding ‘Enemies’. (2010, March 16, 2010). FoxNews.com. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/16/obama-administration-hammered-dragging-israel-dispute/.Retrieved on May 10, 2010.
Cull, N. (2009). The Cold War and the United States Information Agency:American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945-1989. New York: Cambridge University Press, Nov. 2009.
Cull, N. (2010). Speeding the strange death of American public diplomacy: The George H. W. Bush administration and the U.S. Information Agency. Diplomatic History, 34, 47-59.
Eemeren, F. H. van & Houtlosser, P. (2002),  Strategic manoeuvring: Maintaining a delicate balance.  In F. H. van Eemeren and P. Houtlosser (eds.), Dialectic and rhetoric: The Warp and whoof of argumentation analysis, pp. 131_159. Dordrecht & Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Eisenberg, E. M. (2007). Strategic ambiguities: essays on communication, organization, and identity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Gandelman, J. (2010, March 14). White House takes harder line on Netanyahu and Israel after settlements flap. The Moderate Voice. http://themoderatevoice.com/65793/white-house-takes-harder-line-on-netanyahu-and-israel-after-settlements-flap/.Retrieved on May 10, 2010.
Gilboa, E. (1998). Media diplomacy:  Conceptual divergence and applications. The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 3, 56-75.
Gilboa, E. (2008). Searching for a theory of public diplomacy. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 2008; 616; 55-77.
Goodnight, G.T. (2008). Strategic maneuvering in direct to consumer drug advertising:  A study in argumentation theory and new institutional theory. Argumentation, 22, 359-371.
Hayden, C. (2006). Argument-driven international media campaigns: Competition of argument formations within the network society. In P. Riley, Ed. Engaging argument.  Washington, D.C.:  National Communication Association, 81-88.
Hounshell, B. (2010, March 9). So much for a friendly Biden visit to Israel. FP: Foreign Policy.  http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/03/09/so_much_for_a_friendly_biden_visit_to_israel.  Retrieved on April 9, 2010.
Joe Biden’s snub to Netanyahu as he arrives 90minutes late for dinner in middle of row with Israel over West Bank houses (2010). Mail Online.  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1256936/Joe-Biden-snubs-Israeli-PM-surprise-announcement-build-homes-war-won-land-U-S-vice-presidents-visit.html.Retrieved on May 72010.
Klumpp, J.F., Hollihan, T.A. & Riley, P. (2002).  Globalizing argument theory.  In G.T. Goodnight, Ed.  Arguing communication and culture. Washington, D.C.: National Communication Association, 578-586.
Indirect Israel talks ‘called off’ (2010). Aljazeera.net, March 10, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/201031023521904316.html. Retrieved on July 15, 2010.
Levinson, C. (2010, May 3). U.S. pledge helped bring Abbas back to talks. Wall Street Journal.  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704608104575219314095811270.html. Retrieved on May 10, 2010.
Lynch, M. (2009, August 31). Mullen’s strategic communication.  FP: Foreign Policy.  http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/08/31/mullens_strategic_communication.Retrieved on April 22, 2010.
McCarthy, R. (2010, March 9). Biden condemns Israel over homes plan.  The Guardian.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/09/israel-jerusalem-settlement-homes-biden.  Retrieved on April 9, 2010.
Mitchell, G.R. (2002). Public argument-driven security studies.  Argumentation & Advocacy, 39, 57-71.
Mullen, M.G. (2009, August 28). Strategic communication: Getting back to basics. FP: Foreign Policy.  http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/28/strategic_ communication_ getting_back_to_basics?page=0,1. Retrieved on April 22, 2010.
Netanyahu says there will be ‘no concession’ on Jewish settlements in Jerusalem after Obama snub. (2010, March 29). Daily Mail. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1259800/Netanyahu-wont-budge-Jewish-settlements-Jerusalem-Obama-snub.html. Retrieved on May 10, 2010.
Nye, J. (2008). The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 616; 94-109.
NPS/USC (2010).  Facilitatior’s Guide to strategic communication.  Monterey, CA:  NPS.
Palmer, B. (2010, June 1). Is Israel’s blockade of Gaza against the law?  Slate.  http://www.slate.com/id/2255610. Retrieved on June 11, 2010.
Rabinowitz, G. (2010, March 11). Israel seeks to patch up row over settlement plans.  Johannesburg Mail & Guardian. http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-03-11-israel-seeks-to-patch-up-row-over-settlement-plans. Retrieved on May 10, 2010.
Ravid, B. (2010, March 22). Netanyahu arrives in Washington, with aim of mending U.S. ties. Haaretz.com.  http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/netanyahu-arrives-in-washington-with-aim-of-mending-u-s-ties-1.266578.Retrieved on May 10, 2010.
Richter, P. (2010, March 9).  Biden’s visit to Israel takes a rocky turn. Los Angeles Times.  http://www.articles.latimes.com/2010.mar/09/world/la-fg-biden-israel10-2010mar10. Retrieved on April 9, 2010.
Riley, P., Usher, N. & Hollihan, T. (2009). Arguing for Survival: Strategic Communication and Narrative Accounts of Change in the News Industry. Paper presented at the NCA/NFA Summer Argument Conference, Alta Utah.
Riley, P., Weintraub, R, & Hollihan, T. (2008). Strategic Communication as Argument. Paper presented at the Venice Argument Conference, June 2008.
Rogin, J. (2010, April 27). Schumer walks back criticism of Obama’s Israel approach.  FP: Foreign Policy. http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/04/27/schumer_walks_back_criticism_of_obamas_israel_approach. Retrieved on May 10, 2010.
Winkler, C. (2002). Arguing from the public in foreign policy decision-making:  The Reagan administration and U.S. terrorism policy.  In G.T. Goodnight, Ed., Arguing communication and culture. Washington, D.C.: National Communication Association, 546-551.
Zacharia, J. (2010, March 26).  As U.S.-Israel rift continues, Netanyahu finds himself in a bind.  Washington Post.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/25/AR2010032502153.html. Retrieved on May 10, 2010.
Zimmerman, E. (2010, March 16).  Dems rebuke Obama administration for Israel criticism. The Hill. http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/87059-dems-rebuke-obama-administration-for-israel-criticism. Retrieved on May 10, 2010.

Woodrow Wilson, elected President of the United States in 1912, faced an unprecedented challenge during his time in office. With much of the European continent engaged in the largest war known to mankind, the Wilson administration was forced to make the difficult decision of whether to involve the United States in armed conflict. Initially Wilson’s stance was to remain neutral, but over time, this changed. Historians have taken various positions when accounting for Wilson’s policy decisions. Many writers contend that benevolence toward other nations was at the core of Wilson’s policy proposals. According to Patrick Devlin, economics influenced his decisions, but Wilson’s high-minded idealism ultimately guided his policy. For N. Gordon Levin, Jr., ideology served as the underlying factor that guided Wilson, but he argues that economic motives played a key role as well.

My aim is to further the debate regarding Wilson’s decision to enter the United States into the Great War. To do so, I will proceed in two ways. First, I will examine what historians have said regarding Wilson and the driving forces behind his foreign policy. Second, I will “unmask” the public discourse of Woodrow Wilson and, following Kenneth Burke (1969), engage in “the use of rhetoric to attack rhetoric” in order to show how the motivating factor behind Wilson’s policy proposals can be reduced to merely economic concerns (p. 99). In so doing, I discover the ways in which these economic motives can be couched, or eulogistically covered, by other aims. Additionally, the inherent contradictions in Wilson’s discourse – and therefore policy – become even more apparent. What emerges I shall refer to as Wilson’s “economic imperialism.”

Once the conflict began in Europe in 1914, Woodrow Wilson advocated for American neutrality. This position became difficult, however, due to the fact that large amounts of American goods were being shipped to Europe, and these goods became vital to the warring countries. Yet the American shipping practices seemed to favor the Allies, and especially Great Britain, due to the advanced British naval fleet. Eventually, even William Jennings Bryan, then Secretary of State, accused the administration of favoritism. Furthermore, the use of submarines by the Germans against American merchant ships provided a threat to American lives, and therefore to American neutrality. An especially important instance was the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, which, according to Paul Birdsall (1939), had two effects on American neutrality – the resignation of Bryan and the appointment of Robert Lansing. Lansing held a belief that the United States would ultimately become allies with Great Britain, and Birdsall (1939) argues, “it was economic pressures that overwhelmed the policy” (p. 220).

In his account, Daniel Smith (1965) makes similar observations regarding the American policy of neutrality. Smith observes how American shipping favored the British, and he contends “Normal economic connections with England were quickened by war and the need of the Allies to purchase larger quantities of foodstuffs, raw materials, and munitions. Since the British controlled the seas, at least the surface, the Allies alone had continuous access to the American market” (p. 29). Smith (1965) considers this situation to be “apparently unplanned” yet “virtually unavoidable” despite the fact that Wilson grasped the importance of American trade with the Allies since he found the “Allied leaders” to be “more reasonable and trustworthy than their opponents” (p. 29).

Although Wilson continued to believe the United States could remain out of the war, he felt that after its conclusion, “The nations of the world must unite in joint guarantees that whatever is done to disturb the whole world’s life must first be tested in the court of the whole world’s opinion before it is attempted” (Robinson 1918, p. 348). In later addresses, Wilson furthers his theme of American exceptionalism and duty to the world when he remarks about how America should set “the great example”; for the destiny of America “is not divided from the destiny of the world; . . . her purpose is justice and love of mankind” (Robinson 1918, p. 359).

As the war, and especially the German submarine attacks, escalated, Wilson’s public statements changed. In an address to Congress on April 2, 1917, he stated, “The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war against all nations” (Robinson 1918, p. 384). These remarks indicate Wilson began to question his stance on neutrality. With the American entrance into the war looming, Wilson continued to make the case for service of the world when he noted, ““We shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest to our hearts” – for democracy, for self-government, for the rights of small nations, for a concert of free peoples, for a world peace,” however when questioned by opponents on his seemingly high-minded idealism, Wilson maintains, “We have entered the war for our own reasons and with our own objects clearly stated and shall forget neither the reasons nor the objects” (Robinson 1918, p. 396).

Wilson was not without critics, however. Opponents of Wilson’s decision to intervene in the European conflict “argued that war was unnecessary and charged that the nation was being propelled into belligerency by profit-seeking industrialists and financiers. The vote on the war resolution thus revealed substantial opposition, with six voting against in the Senate and fifty (to 373) in the House of Representatives. A state of war was formally declared on April 6, 1917” (Smith 1965, 80). For these critics, motives behind the administration’s policy proposals could be reduced to one factor – economics. However, historians merely hint at economics as a principle motive.

In his account, Patrick Devlin points out that a difference between neutrality and “non-involvement” became important at the outset of war, for neutrals are able to trade with belligerents under the assumption that trade will be fairly equal. However, Devlin (1975) notes that “American pre-war trade with the Allies was ten times as much as with the Central Powers” (p.173). Additionally, Devlin (1975) distinguishes trade in contraband from trade in intercepted contraband. Interception of goods became important, and a disparity existed since the use of German submarines – their main source of interception – was restricted. Trade with the Central Powers decreased while “United States trade with the Allies was enormously increased” by an estimated “184 percent” (Devlin 1975, p.174). Devlin (1975) then contends “If Germany’s power of interception by means of the unrestricted use of the submarine had succeeded” in decreasing trade, “the American economy would have been seriously affected” (p. 174). Devlin (1975) argues that the overarching question for the Wilson administration concerned the legality of neutrality. The question of non-involvement versus neutrality once again arose, and to justify the position taken by the Wilson Administration, Devlin (1975) relies on economic conditions to bolster his claims. Despite relying on economics to support his position, Devlin (1975) maintains that Wilson acted on his sense of America’s duty to the world, rather than merely economic means.

In order for the United States to maintain a neutral position, “America had to follow the law because there was no other test of impartiality” (Devlin 1975, p. 175). However, with the supply of arms, “the United States made no concessions at all to German feelings” causing the Germans to conclude that the United States was assisting the Allies in their effort to starve Germany (Devlin 1975, p. 177). German-Americans plead for embargos to even out this trade disparity, yet, according to Devlin, Wilson followed the law which allowed the proposed embargos to die. By his reasoning, Wilson acted in accordance with the law since prohibiting the sale of arms to both sides would eventually benefit the side that had prepared for war. However, with the large trade disparity already in place, this position seems contradictory to the entire neutrality stance.

Devlin (1975) then changes course, and he argues that the United States was forced into the war through the use of German submarines, largely stemming from the sinking of the Lusitania.  However, contradictions arose between the accounts given by the Germans and the Americans regarding this ship. The Germans argued the Lusitania was armed, was used as a transport for troops, and was carrying munitions that would be used to kill German soldiers. The Americans maintained the ship was not armed, was not used for troop transport, and had no munitions on board. Yet the ship sunk quickly, and no rebuttal was offered as to why the ship sank as quickly as it did. If the United States committed any of the acts of which they were charged by the Germans, their neutral stance would have been violated according to the law.

According to Devlin (1975), “between June 1915 and February 1917 the only issue between the United States and Germany concerned the American right to travel,” a right Devlin notes, that is “surely of trifling value” (p. 341). Devlin’s characterization is correct, and, I would argue, not a true reflection of the real issue faced by the Wilson Administration. Americans were losing their lives as a result of attempting to travel, and Wilson blamed the Germans for their submarine warfare. Yet despite his posturing, Wilson did nothing to combat this loss of American lives. After the sinking of the Lusitania, he claimed he needed an “overt act” to be committed in order for the United States to enter into the War. Eventually, Wilson got the overt act he needed – two ships were sunk that resulted in the loss of fifteen American lives. Interestingly, the sinking of the Lusitania took the lives of 124 Americans, and, according to Devlin (1975), “lit a flame of indignation that swept across America,” yet Wilson did nothing (p. 216). Paradoxically, Devlin (1975) writes that “A single death could be eluded but not a massacre” (p. 216). Wilson failed to respond to the “massacre,” yet a loss of fifteen Americans was enough to enter the war.

Eventually, Wilson’s impartiality became obvious, and Devlin (1975) likens the British and the Americans to “two buddies getting together over the freedom of the high seas,” which would maintain the trade status quo since the British controlled the seas (p. 343). While he hints at economic concerns playing a part in Wilson’s decisions, Devlin (1975) remains firm in his commitment that Wilson embodied a high-minded idealism, in terms of doing right by the law, which sprung from a sense of American exceptionalism, and this idealism guided him when making policy decisions.

N. Gordon Levin, Jr. (1968) provides the most economically driven analysis of Wilson’s foreign policy. He argues that policies were “shaped decisively by ideology” and the “main thrust, from 1917 on, may be characterized as an effort to construct a stable world order of liberal-capitalist internationalism” (Levin, Jr. 1968, p. 1). Wilson’s response to German autocratic imperialism “sought to use America’s moral and material power to create a new international order” whereby “America could serve mankind from a position of political and economic pre-eminence” (Levin, Jr. 1968, p. 7). However, Levin (1968) observes how “Wilsonians feared that unless America could remain in control of all progressive international movements, Leninist revolutionary-socialism might capture Europe’s masses” in addition to destroying “all liberal values and institutions as well” (p. 8).

Analyzing policy that resulted only after the United States entered the war, Levin (1968) focuses on the paradoxical ideology espoused by Wilson; ideology which at “the heart of the matter” was “Wilson’s conception of America’s exceptional mission” which “made it possible for him to reconcile the rapid growth of the economic and military power of the United States with what he conceived to be America’s unselfish service to humanity” (p. 8). However, Levin (1968) points out that this reconciliation worked better “in the realm of theory than in the universe of political and diplomatic action” (p. 8). Although Levin (1968) provides a critical account in terms of economic interests, his analysis, in the end, gives Wilson too much credit. Levin (1968) argues that Wilson was acting in response to German atavistic imperialism, and in making this claim, he provides a rationalization for Wilson’s policy proposals under the guise of using liberalism to curtail revolutionary-socialism. Despite the increased level of abstraction, Levin (1968) allows Wilson off the hook, largely on the claim that “in a large sense, it could be said that the decision to bring the United States into the war solved the problem of finding a method of actualizing the President’s world view by firmly wedding American military strength to Wilson’s missionary liberal-internationalism” (p. 44).The appeal to American exceptionalism ensnares Levin in much the same fashion as it did both contemporaries of Wilson as well as later historians.

Yet the motives behind Wilson’s foreign policy can – and I argue should – be reduced to mere economic decisions. According to Kenneth Burke (1969), “rival ideologies are said to compete by “unmasking” one another” (p. 99). In this process, a “speaker can gain an easy advantage by picking out the most favorable motive and presenting it as either predominant or exclusive” (Burke 1969, p. 99). Focusing on the best motives allows the others to be, what Burke (1969) calls, “eulogistically covered,” whereby the emphasis is deflected from the unfavorable. Burke (1969) gives the example of how “love of power can be eulogized as love of country,” and this seems to be an element of Wilson’s strategy (emphasis in original) (p. 100). Burke (1969) also discusses what Bentham said regarding the use of “vague generalities” as “covering devices”; “since “order” is a more inclusive word than the term for any particular order, it may include both good order and bad, whereby a call for order can cloak a call for tyranny” (emphasis in original)  (p. 100). Burke (1969) then offers two methods of cloaking, or masking, true intentions – either by focusing on positive aspects of something such as foreign policy proposals, or by using necessarily vague language. In Wilson’s case, he utilized both strategies. Wilson appeals to an American sense of duty to the world, of its moral obligation to serve mankind, while at the same time, appealing to new international order, but only one led by the United States.

Levin (1968) gives Wilson a pass, and he does so on the grounds of Wilson’s ideology. James Arnt Aune (1994) argues “ideology is false or deluded speech about the world and the human beings who inhabit it,” and in his analysis of the rhetoric of Marxism, he points to Elster, who contends “false speech can be explained either in terms of a speaker’s position or interest” (emphasis in original) (p. 28). Arguments from position produce ideology that “emerges generally from faulty seeing in historical time” while “in an interest-explanation, ideology – and by extension rhetorical action – becomes the transparent expression of a person’s economic or occupational interests” (Aune 1994, pp. 28-9). Wilson’s public discourse reveals the use of both types of arguments. His appeal to the exceptionalism of the United States was based largely on America’s economic position in the world, a position that was fueled in no small part by the outbreak of war in Europe. Additionally, economic motives played a vital part in the decisions of the administration, as evidenced in the historical analysis presented.

By “unpacking” Wilson’s rhetoric, it becomes clear that high-minded idealism, criticized by his opponents, served to mask the intentions of the administration to further the power of the United States and, at the same time, its economic interests, via economic imperialism. Despite the existence of other reasons offered for the American policy proposals, the prime motivation for Wilson’s foreign policy regarding the war can be narrowed to economics. In terms of national security, the United States was not at risk, and a clear threat did not appear imminent. Regarding American “exceptionalism,” the economic motive behind the ideology can be seen from whence the American status derived. The position of power afforded the United States came as a direct result of its economic fortunes – fortunes that were accumulated largely over the high seas under the guise of neutrality. According to Levin (1968), “the competitive advantage in world trade which America possessed due to her technological and productive efficiency was, for Wilson, not a threat to other nations, but rather a godsend” (p. 17). Additionally, echoing a Weberian analysis of Puritanism’s influence on the rise of capitalism, Levin (1968) writes, “the commercial health of America was, for Wilson, the visible evidence of underlying political and moral strength” (p. 17).

Further, the call for the United States to enter the League of Nations was merely another way by which America could cement itself at the top of world politics since “the President saw the League of Nations as the fulfillment of his long effort to use America’s moral and material power to move the world from a warlike state of nature to an orderly global society governed by liberal norms” (Levin, Jr., 1968, p. 9). Using the guise of moral obligation, which resulted from a superior morality based on economic good fortune, Wilson sought to strengthen America’s hold on its economic supremacy. Unfortunately, advocating for the League of Nations ultimately killed Woodrow Wilson. Blinded by idealism, the President wanted the United States to hastily rush into a confederation of nations that could have proved problematic in the long run.

If my analysis of Wilson’s foreign policy seems overly harsh or cynically shortsighted, some implications exist that deserve examination, notably how Wilson paved the way for high-minded idealism as a cover for future wars. The war in Iraq, started by the second Bush administration in 2003, provides a good example. George W. Bush maintained that liberty for the Iraqi people was the principle goal of the war since Saddam Hussein, possessing an already poor record on human rights, could no longer be trusted. Further, Hussein was accused of accumulating weapons of mass destruction. When armed conflict seemed inevitable, opponents of the war created slogans such as “No Blood for Oil,” which reduced the motive for war to mere economic principles. While this reduction fails to account for more complex issues that may have influenced America’s participation in the war, the slogan does have merit. Stripping back the public discourse of the Bush administration reveals the underlying economic motive for the 2003 war in much the same way as for Wilson’s war in 1917.  Had the Iraqis not been sitting on the largest oil reserves in the world, they likely would not have been linked to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, or accused of possessing weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.

By taking such an approach to understanding Wilson’s foreign policy and America’s entry into World War I, the motives behind policy proposals can be reduced to economic interests, which allows for a certain testable hypothesis. Through the process of unpacking the rhetoric of the Wilson administration and accounting for the use of ideology, we may gain further insight into how leaders are able couch motives behind idealistic policy proposals, which then allows us to be more fully equipped to understand contemporary policy. In the words of Robert Ivie (1997), “No less than other rhetors, critics are partisans of various causes, but the goal they serve in common is to point toward ways of envisioning better realities” (p. 78).

REFERENCES
Aune, J. A. (1994). Rhetoric and Marxism. Boulder: Westview Press.
Birdsall, P. (1939). Neutrality and economic pressures, 1914-1917. Science and Society 3, 217-28.
Burke, K. (1969). A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Devlin, P. (1975). Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilson’s Neutrality. London: Oxford University Press.
Ivie, R. (1997). Cold war motives and the rhetorical metaphor: A framework of criticism. In M. Medhurst (Ed.), Cold War Rhetoric: Strategy, Metaphor and Ideology. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
Levin, Jr., G. (1968). Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America’s Response to War and Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Robinson, E. & West, V. (1918). The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson 1913-1917. New York: Macmillan.
Smith, D. M. (1965). The Great Departure: The United States and World War I, 1914-1920. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.