priorities or behaviors.
What is lacking in the one-off, business ethics course is the clear connection between “selfhood and morality.” Any course starting with a hyphenated sense of selfhood, self-as-businessperson, inevitably leads to a truncated view of ethical obligation. Burke touches on the nature of the relationship between identity and ethical obligation in the process of defining his central notion of “identification.”
The human agent, qua human agent, is not motivated solely by the principles of a specialized activity however strongly this specialized power, in its suggestive role as imagery, may affect his character. Any specialized activity participates in a larger unit of action. ‘Identification” is a word for the autonomous activity’s place in this wider context, a place with which the agent may be unconcerned. The shepherd, qua shepherd, acts for the good of the sheep, to protect them from discomfiture and harm. But he may be “identified” with a project that is raising the sheep for market. (Rhetoric 27)
By the same token, corporate management may be consciously acting in interest of its stockholders to increase the return on their investment by performing acts that simultaneously “identify” them with the degradation of the environment their stockholders require to sustain themselves.
Even brief consideration of the connections between the modes of thought promoted by both ethics and rhetoric underscores the advantages of incorporating the teaching of ethics into an argument class One of the most important traits shared by ethics and rhetoric is their focus on process and procedural understanding—“how to”—over declarative knowledge—“what is.” It is this concern with process that allows the two to involve themselves with “specialized activities” of every sort and to move easily between the personal and professional realms. In either case, the processes that ethics and rhetoric are both concerned with involve two stages: a process of selection—identifying the best argument/the most defensible choice—and a process of communication—formulating a justification for the argument or choice and/or promoting its wider adoption. According to most popular views of rhetoric, the first process ending in the choice, is all that is required. There is no further obligation to articulate one’s reasons for making the choice or for sharing the process by which one arrived at the choice. But just as there are arguments for given ethical choices, there is an ethics of argument that requires one to make a case for one’s choices. The difference here between ethical arguments and other sorts of arguments is one of degree rather than kind. While it’s always useful to articulate reasons for one’s choices and while it is prudent to do so whenever one is soliciting others’ support of one’s choice, one is compelled to do so when one’s choice is ethical. The source of this compulsion lies in the nature of ethical choices. In evaluating, say, a college to people who are in the process of choosing a college, we would articulate our criteria in order to help them decide if the college is for them. But if we are making an ethical choice, about, say, justifications for torture, we are saying something much stronger. In making ethical choices we are choosing not just for ourselves in the here and now, but for others and for ourselves in future similar situations. When we term an act ethical, we are not simply saying “I did this,” we are saying, “This ought to be done.” If one, for example, claims that the American government is justified in using torture on enemy combatants, one is opening the way for a shift of the burden of proof from those who pronounce torture unjustifiable to those who support its use, and for the possibility that torture will be tolerated in a variety of other situations, including those situations involving the torture of American troops.
If one is first obliged under an ethic of argument to articulate a rationale for one’s ethical choices, the second obligation one incurs is to ensure that one’s rationale is candid. That is, for the rationale to be helpful, for it to guide further ethical acts, it must not only be truthful but extensive. One must be prepared to acknowledge the full range of choices—not necessarily every one, but all that might seem plausible or probable to those whom one addresses—that one considered prior to making one’s selection. One’s reasons for dismissing or subordinating likely alternatives and for selecting one’s final course of action should be clearly indicated. The principles that guided one in evaluating those choices and the evidence in support of that evaluation should be clearly enumerated. The degree to which one is certain that one has made the best choice should be explicitly registered. (These caveats, along with the term “candor,” are derived from Stephen Toulmin’s treatment of argument to be more fully discussed in the next chapter.) While there is no formal code of rhetorical behavior under which one is obliged to offer a rationale that is both truthful and candid in one’s argument, it is assumed that one could offer such a rationale if challenged to do so. Moreover, the failure to be candid in an argument may potentially render one’s argument less efficacious. A competing argument that revealed what one had left unsaid or that called attention to alternative points one had glossed over could weaken audience adherence to one’s own as readily as if it had shown a falsehood.
The process of selection in ethics is homologous with what rhetoricians sometimes call the invention stage. The process of discovering and evaluating choices comprises much of the techne of rhetoric and ethics alike. As we saw earlier, Hans Blumenberg has associated this process with the “retardation” of time, including a concern to account for “circumstantiality,” the particular differences between one’s given situation and others to which one looks for guidance. While we previously emphasized the cognitive rewards associated with this rejection of parsimonious means of understanding, we would here emphasize the ethical compulsions for such a move. Where automaticity prevails, there is no place for either ethics or rhetoric. One can only do or say “what a person’s gotta do or say.” Without hesitation. Ethics and rhetoric require choice and choice implies deliberation. In reaching this conclusion we do not reject the notion that the proper end of ethical instruction is to render virtue a habit. Ethical habits of mind, as opposed to mere knowledge of ethical theory and history, are certainly proper ends of ethical instruction. But that is not to say that such habits are best exhibited by the alacrity with which people make their ethical choices. One can construe the notion of habit more broadly, rejecting a behaviorist emphasis on habit as im-mediate response to a familiar stimulus; one can include under ethical habits of mind the inclination to seek out the ethical dimension of one’s choices, the consideration of as many plausible alternatives as possible, and the thoughtful evaluation of those choices. By combining ethical instruction and rhetorical instruction with the latter’s emphasis on “procedural inventiveness” and disciplined examination of alternatives we can hope to improve ethical choices by complicating and increasing the number of choices our students have to select from. Instead of focusing on the rightness of one’s final choice, a rhetorically influenced ethic would emphasize the alternatives invented or discovered in the selection process and the unique responsivenes of the final choice to the particulars of one’s ethical dilemma. It’s here that the controversial nature of rhetoric is most obviously apparent.
For some, the test of ethical instruction lies precisely in helping students arrive in the most parsimonious manner possible at the Right Choice which is there and waiting for them; whatever detains one from recognizing and making that choice results from deficiencies in one’s character. Only if one believes that the best choice may be a product of the deliberations rather than an a priori that pre-exists those deliberations can a “retardation” of time, a refusal to “reduce entities beyond necessity,” be justified. At which point those who equate virtue with an unerring, quick twitch rejection of temptation will accuse one of relativism. For the moral absolutists—and certainly moral absolutism is an ethical position that significant numbers of people can and do take, however different their absolutes may be—the tests posed by Satan are true/false tests, not essay exams. One prepares for such a test by familiarizing oneself with the right answers, repeating them, memorizing them and then recalling them instantly when challenges present themselves. Only dullards have to deliberate and only infidels imagine that they might, by their own power of reason, come up with a better choice than the one prescribed by absolutes transmitted by some high priest’s literal reading of holy writ.
The failure of absolutism from the perspective of ethics qua
