In a previous post about Thucydides’ description of the “Debate at Sparta,” I pointed out that the Corinthian speaker is in a vexed rhetorical situation. Corinth was at war with its former colony Corcyra, and they were fairly evenly matched. If Corinth could get Sparta to take its side, it could win. But there’s no real reason for Sparta to take Corinth’s side—Corcyra isn’t a threat, and it’s all about yet a third city-state (Potidea) in which Sparta has no compelling economic or political interest.
In addition to unnecessary, intervening would be risky. It would be a clear violation of a treaty with the other major power in the Hellenic region—Athens—and it would start war. The outcome of that war was far from obvious, and potentially disastrous. As Archidamus—the Spartan King, and an experienced general—says, it could be a war they would hand on to their children. (They did.)
What makes this debate interesting for us now is that the Corinthian, who has a specific kind of weak case, uses four rhetorical strategies that speakers in that situation often use—a set of strategies that’s usefully called a “politics of identity.” And, while those strategies are often effective, they really shouldn’t be. If the Corinthian actually had a reasonable case, he could have made it in a reasonable way. He couldn’t because he didn’t. Instead, he deflected away from the weakness of his case in the four ways that others with weak cases do—recognizing those strategies can help us make better decisions. Instead of finding a politics of identity compelling, we should recognize it as someone with a weak case.
First, he presented Athens as an existential and inevitable threat. He framed the conflict between them as outside of the realm of pragmatic, contextual, and negotiable policy issues, instead claiming the specific conflicts came from the essentially aggressive and expansionist nature of Athens, and, therefore, it was just a question of time till Athens took over all of Hellas, including Sparta. (That outcome was improbable, at best.)
Since war was inevitable, according to the Corinthian, it was a question of Sparta choosing the most opportune moment to start that war (or allow Athens to start it). He claimed urgency, with no evidence at all. That is, his second move was to make the argument that is now called the “closing window of opportunity” frame for going to war immediately. If we go to war right now, we win; if we let them get stronger we lose.
Third, he tried to shut down all deliberation about the war by saying that the situation was obvious, and there was only one possible solution—his. That is, he argued as though acknowledging the need (Athens’ expansionist nature) necessarily meant agreeing with his plan (joining the Corinth/Corcyra conflict right now on the side of Corinth).
Fourth, he tried to shut down all deliberation through what’s now often called “motivism”—a kind of ad hominem that is surprisingly effective. Motivism follows from the claim that there is only one possible solution. If there is no choice other than the plan he is adopting, why are there people who disagree? And the answer is: because they’re bad people. When rhetors make this move—prohibiting reasonable deliberation by dismissing (rather than engaging) every dissenting voice—they generally do so either through motivism or asserting out-group membership (they’re only disagreeing because they’re cowards, or they’re only disagreeing because they aren’t really in-group). [1]
If each of those moves were effective, then Sparta would go to war immediately, goaded by the Corinthian’s calling them ditherers and cowards.
And I want to emphasize: part of what makes the Corinthian case likely to be simultaneously rhetorically effective and completely unreasonable is that he’s muddled the need and plan. Even were Athens an existential threat, that doesn’t mean that intervening in this conflict right now is a good plan. And, really, how do you show that Athens is essentially and implacably committed to exterminating Sparta? Even assuming that Athens has done everything he says it has (it hadn’t), that doesn’t mean it’s going to be marching on the gates of Sparta (especially since it was a naval power).
But, to the extent that he’s been successful, anyone who stands up and disagrees with him about any point he makes is framed, even before speaking, as a dithering coward blind to the obvious facts.
How does someone get an assembly back on the deliberative track? How can someone redirect from a politics of identity?
One of those ways is through what’s sometimes called identity politics. Archidamus, who was dubious about the Corinthian’s plan, began his speech by refuting the foundational part of the argument—that doing anything other than intervening in Corinth’s squabble was motivated by dilatory slow-footed stupidity if not cowardice. And he does so by pointing out that he’s an experienced general, and that others who share that lived experience probably agree with him.[2] He says it’s important to take your time to deliberate carefully before you get into war, or you might find yourself in one it’s hard to get out of. He says that acting without thinking now means you’ll be able to repent at your leisure (I.84). The Penguin translation puts it: “If you take something on before you are ready for it, hurry at the beginning will mean delay at the end.” He reframes the behavior that the Corinthian tries to frame as dithering (that is, not getting easily provoked) as sophrosyne; that is, temperance, reasonableness, and self-control.
He goes on to propose a counterplan—Sparta should object to Athenian violations of the treaty, build up a war chest, make allies, and prepare for war while trying to make war unnecessary.
One of many serious problems that comes from our tendency to turn every disagreement into “two sides” is that arguments like Archidamus’ are easily dismissed, especially if we talk about disagreements regarding war policies as “pro-“ or “anti-“ war. Archidamus’ position is not “anti-war,” nor was he. His lived experience is a logical refutation of one of the claims the Corinthian was making—that everyone who disagreed with him was a dithering procrastinating coward.
Archidamus’ appealing to his lived experience—his appealing to his own identity—doesn’t end the argument. It’s an attempt to open the argument back up, to bring the community back to deliberation. Appeals to lived experience are datapoints.
It wouldn’t have been a reasonable argument had Archidamus said, “I’m a general, and anyone who disagrees with me knows nothing about war and should be ignored.” Arguments from identity reasonably add to deliberation, and they can refute “all” or “no” statements, but a single lived experience doesn’t reasonably support an “all” or “no” statement. That Archidamus is an experienced military leader doesn’t prove that all experienced military leaders have one position.
The Corinthian speaker tried to hide the extent to which it was a war of choice by deflecting from the pragmatic policy issues (could compromises be reached with Athens, or Corcyra, what would a war with Athens be like) by pretending that this war of choice was a war of self-defense.
That’s a common move. And it’s common to do it the way that the Corinthian speaker did—claim that issue is not a pragmatic issue open to compromise, negotiation, deliberation because there is an Other (in this case Athens) always already at war with Sparta. Pro-slavery rhetors, the Weather Underground, John Muir in the Hetch Hetchy debate, Hitler, Earl Warren about Japanese Americans, Planned Parenthood, and all current GOP rhetors engage(d) in that rhetoric to some degree. In other words, no matter what your policy affiliation or your hall of heroes, you admire someone who deflected from pragmatic policy deliberation by claiming that an enemy determined on our extermination has already declared war, and so we need to stop deliberating. There isn’t an Other who argues badly; there is an Us who reasons badly.
And, even were the Corinthian’s need argument true—even were Athens determined on exterminating Sparta—that doesn’t mean that intervening in the Corinthian/Corcyra conflict at that moment was the only possible response. I’m perfectly willing to grant that both Stalinism and Maoism were disastrously bad, but—even if that’s true—that doesn’t mean that our Vietnam policy was correct. That there is a legitimate, and even urgent, need doesn’t mean that we can’t usefully disagree about the plan.
Identity politics is an approach to policy deliberation that says that who we are—what our identity has meant we’ve experienced—has given us a perspective important for reasonable and ethical deliberation. A politics of identity—what the Corinthian advocated—is profoundly authoritarian. Identity politics—what Archidamus enacted—is profoundly democratic.
Whether he was successful or not is a complicated question, and not really relevant to my point. My point is that a politics of identity says that we are never facing pragmatic questions about how to assess our various policy options in a world of uncertainty. It says that politics is really a zero-sum conflict between identities, and that policy argumentation, let alone the normal practices of democratic policy determination (compromise, mediation, bargaining) are cowardly and/or corrupt submissions to evil. It’s always authoritarian, regardless of where it is on the political spectrum. Identity politics says that who we are matters, and the experiences related to our various identities must be taken into consideration if we are going to come to good decisions. Identity politics is an approach to deliberation that insists on inclusion. It is profoundly democratic.
Who we are, and what we have experienced, and how we see things—what our identity means in terms of our perspective—all of that is crucial to reasonable democratic deliberation. Policy deliberation can’t be either reasonable or democratic if it isn’t informed by the perspectives of the people—perspectives that are different.
Policy deliberation can’t be either reasonable or democratic if we assume that it’s all just a zero-sum battle between two groups.
[1] English is weird. When I say that motivism means we dismiss every single person who disagrees us without engaging their argument, I’m often heard as saying that we have to engage the argument of every single person who disagrees with us. And I’m not saying that. I’m saying that it’s extremely unlikely that there really is only one possible course of action, and so there are almost certainly some good arguments out there that we would do well, as a community, to consider.
[2] Aristotle would probably have characterized it as an appeal to ethos. Since he also said that one of the ways we can argue is appeal to logos, many people—including argument textbooks and teachers of argument—assume that an appeal to ethos is not a logical argument, but that isn’t what Aristotle meant at all. It certainly isn’t how any scholars of argumentation think about the issue. Ethos is a datapoint, and there are more and less reasonable ways of appealing to ethos.
