The ethics of rhetoric

by Richard M. Weaver

The danger for him in this laudable endeavor seems twofold. First, one must remark that the language of definition is inevitably the language of generality because only the generalizable is definable. Singulars and individuals can be described but not defined; e.g., one can define man, but one can only describe Abraham Lincoln. The greater, then, his solicitude for the factual and the concrete, the more irresistibly is he borne in the direction of abstract language, which alone will encompass his collected facts. His dissertations on human society begin with obeisance to facts, but the logic of his being a scientist condemns him to abstraction. He is forced toward the position of the proverbial revolutionary, who loves mankind but has little charity for those particular specimens of it with whom he must associate.

In the second place and more importantly, the definition of non-empirical terms is itself a dialectical process. All such definition takes the form of an argument which must prove that the definiendum is one thing and not another thing. The limits of the definition are thus the boundary between the things and the not-thing. Someone might inquire at this stage of our account whether the natural scientists, who must also define, are not equally liable under this point of the argument. The distinction is that definitions in natural science have a different ontological basis. The properties about which they generalize exist not in logical connection but in empirical conjunction, as when “mammal,” “vertebrate,” and “quadruped” are used to distinguish the genus Felis. The doctrine of “natural kinds” thus remains an empirical classification, as does the traditional classification of elements.[156] Consequently the genus Felis has a reality in the form of compresent positive attributes which “slum” cannot have. The establishment of the genus is not a matter of negating or depriving other classes, but of naming what is there. On the other hand one could never arrive positivistically at a definition of “slum” because its meaning is contingent upon judgment (and theoretically our standard of living might move up to where Westchester, Grosse Point, and Winnetka are regarded as slums). Thus “slum” no more exists objectively than does “bad weather.” There are collections of sticks and stones which the dialectician may call “slums,” just as there are processions of the elements which he may call “bad.” But these are positive things only in a reductionist equation. Of course, the natural scientist works always with reductionist equations; but the social scientist, unless he is an extreme materialist, must work with the full equation.

It is a grave imputation, but at the heart of the social scientist’s unsatisfactory expression lies this equivocation. Remedy here can come only with a clearer defining of province and of responsibility.

II

Is social science writing marred by “pedantic empiricism”? The natural desire of everyone to carry away something from his reading encounters in this literature curious obstacles. Its authors often seem unduly coy about their conclusions. After the reader has been escorted on an extensive tour of facts and definitions, he is likely to be told that little can be affirmed at this stage of the inquiry. So it is that, however much we read, we are made to feel that what we are reading is preliminary. We come almost to look for a formula at the close of a social science monograph which takes an excessively modest view of its achievement while expressing the hope that someone else may come along and do something with the data there offered. Burgess and Cottrell’s Predicting Success or Failure in Marriage provides an illustration. After presenting their case, the authors say: “In this study, as in many others, the most significant contribution is not to be found in any one finding but in the degree to which the study opens up a new field to further research.”[157] Again, from an article appearing in Social Forces: “The findings here mentioned are merely suggestive; and they are offered in no sense as proof of our hypothesis of folk-urban personality differences. The implementation of the analysis given here would demand a field project incorporating the type of methodological consciousness advocated above. Thus we need to utilize standard projective devices, but must be prepared to develop, in terms of situational demands, additional analytic instruments.”[158] And Herman C. Beyle in a chapter on the data and method of political science, which constitute the underpinning of his whole study, can only say that “the foregoing comments on the data and technology of political science have been offered as most tentative statements intended to provide a background for the testing and application of the technique here proposed, that of attribute-cluster-bloc identification and analysis.”[159] “Most tentative” becomes a sort of leitmotiv. Everything sounds like a prolegomenon to the real thing. Exclamations that social scientists are taking in one another’s washing or are only trying to make work for themselves are inspired by this kind of performance.

But, even after one has made allowance for the fact that social science is not one of the exact sciences and that its disciples work in a field where induction is far from complete, their fear of commitment still seems obsessive. They could at least have the courage of the facts which they have accumulated. Virtually everyone who is seeking scientific enlightenment on this level knows that conclusions are given in the light of evidence available, and that hypothesis always extends some distance beyond what is directly observable. Indeed, everyone makes use of the method of scientific investigation, as T. H. Huxley liked to assure his audiences, but not everyone finds necessary such an armor of qualifications as is likely to appear here: “On the basis of available evidence, it is not unreasonable to suppose”; “It may not be improbable in view of these findings”; “The present survey would seem to indicate.” All these rhetorical contortions are forms of needless hedging.

It would be a different matter if such formulas of reservation made the conclusion more precise. But in the majority of cases it could be shown that the conclusion is obvious enough in terms of the discussion itself, and they serve only to make it sound timid. These scholars move to a tune of “induction never ends,” and their scholarship often turns into a pedantic empiricism. They seem to be waiting for the fact that will bring with it the revelation. But that fact will never arrive; experience does not tell us what we are experiencing, and at some point they are going to have to give names to their findings—even at the expense of becoming dialecticians.

If the needlessly hedged statement is one result of pedantic empiricism, another occurs in what might be called “pedantic analysis.” This is analysis for analysis’ sake, with no real thought of relevance or application or, indeed, of a resynthesis which might redeem the whole undertaking. Just as it is assumed that an endless collection of data will necessarily yield fruits, so it is assumed that a remorseless partitioning will illuminate. But analysis can be carried so far that it seems to lose all bearing upon points at issue. The writer shows himself a sort of virtuoso at analysis, and one feels that his real interest lies in demonstrating how thoroughly a method can be followed. Let us look, for example, at a passage from an article entitled “Courtship as a Social Institution in the United States, 1930-1945.” The author has said that activities of courtship show different patterns and that sometimes the patterns need to be harmonized:

To be compatible, patterns should be adapted to the following components: (1) the hominid component, which is the biological human being; (2) the social component, which includes the potentialities for social relations as they are affected by “the number of human beings in the situation, their distribution in space, their ages, their sex, their native ability to interstimulate and interact, the interference of environmental hindrances or helps, and the presence and amount of certain types of social equipment”; (3) the environmental component, or all the “natural” features of the situation except the hominid, the social, the psychological and artifactual components; it includes topography, physiography, flora, fauna, weather, geology, soil, etc.; (4) the psychological component, defined as the principles involving the acquisition and performance of human customs not adequately explained on purely biological principles; (5) the artifactual component, which consists collectively of the material results and adjuncts of human customary activities.[160]

It is not always safe for the layman to generalize about the value of specific sociological findings, but I am inclined to think that this is verbiage, resulting from analysis pushed beyond any useful purpose. There is a real if obscure relationship between the vitality of what one is saying and the palatability of one’s rhetoric. No rhythm, no tournure of phrase, no architecture of the sentences could make this a good piece of writing, for its content lies on the outer fringe of significance. It is the nature of such pedantry to habit itself in a harsh and crabbed style.