With the debt ceiling ruckus now quelled, and a bipartisan agreement in place that pleases no one but nervous stock brokers, we can all take a deep breath and reflect on those competing passions – or at least the passions of a number of Republican congressman, principled or otherwise – which came close to forestalling any rise in the debt ceiling. During the debate, when congressional intransigence seemed insurmountable, some in the media frequently leveled charges of “fanaticism” or “irrationality” at dissident Republics who had the temerity to demand meaningful promises of cuts in government spending (or at least cuts in the rise of government spending).

In a convenient spin on the role of rationalism in politics, the liberal media designated uneasy compromise as the unerring path of reason. But standing on principle? That way madness lies. Philosophy professor Gary Gutting, in a masterstroke of innuendo, wrote a nominally disinterested, impartial – and innocently context-free – blog post on the New York Times website. Grounding his thoughts in ancient Athenian philosophy, he ruminated on what might constitute a “rational,” as opposed to an immaculately “logical,” approach to political practice. The final paragraphs lend an Aristotelian flourish to his argument (it must be noted that throughout he designates differing political standpoints as “pictures”):

My point can also be helpfully expressed in some terminology due to Aristotle. Sophia (roughly, theoretical knowledge), he says, grasps universal truths, whereas phronesis (roughly, good practical judgment) is required to properly apply these truths to particular instances.  Although Aristotle might disapprove, we members of a deeply pluralistic society need to admit the availability of diverse, even conflicting sources of sophia — the rival pictures I’ve been talking about.  Discussions about the theoretical truth of pictures are important, but of little immediate value in the trenches of practical policy-making. Policy-making does, however require Aristotelian phronesis, particularly in the form of an ability to recognize salient facts that require invoking the exception-clause of a guiding picture. When participants in a political dispute show themselves to lack phronesis, then we are entitled to judge them irrational. I leave readers with the exercise of applying this analysis in their own ways to the recent debt-limit debate.

Any idea which side Gutting might be referring to? Nope, me neither.