fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Akribeia And The Ethics Of Rhetoric

In a recently released multi-contributor volume including the papers of the 2002 Spring Symposium on Byzantine Studies, Byzantine Orthodoxies, the late Sergei Seregeevich Averintsev discussed one of the central features of the Byzantine mind, namely the drive for akribeia, which is most closely rendered as ‘precision’ or ‘exactitude’.  Of the Byzantines and akribeia he said: […]

In a recently released multi-contributor volume including the papers of the 2002 Spring Symposium on Byzantine Studies, Byzantine Orthodoxies, the late Sergei Seregeevich Averintsev discussed one of the central features of the Byzantine mind, namely the drive for akribeia, which is most closely rendered as ‘precision’ or ‘exactitude’.  Of the Byzantines and akribeia he said:

The Byzantine system of theological reflection has a certain keyword, which seems to be quite untranslatable in any other language, including and this gives pause for thought–the languages of the Orthodox world, e.g., the Russian language (the intellectual elite of the Russian Orthodox Church has in fact adopted the Greek lexeme without translating it, an average Russian believer or even clergyman does not use it at all).  This word is ακρίβεια: literally, ‘exactitude’, ‘accuracy’, but also ‘scrupulousness’, ‘conscientiousness’, etc.  Now, all these diverging concepts as such are in themselves universally known to the most diverse cultures: first, the exactitude of reasoning; secondly, the formal accuracy of technical or ritual proceedings; thirdly, the scrupulousness of ethical and religious behaviour.

What seems to be specific for the Byzantine akribeia is the fact that it unites all these semantic facets in a quite essential way, so that the correctness of the dogmatic concepts and of the ritual gestures appears somehow identical with the moral conscientiousness of one’s walking before God in truth. (p.217)

While the matters under discussion in most contemporary debates are not so weighty as this and do not always touch on our obligations before God, I think that there is something similar to this sense of an obligation to God and a duty to the truth to show respect for precision in the use of language.  If everything began with a Word, it is significant how we use and understand words.  While for the Byzantines this precision was most important in the most important of all subjects, theology, I believe we can easily understand how the precise use of language possesses an ethical dimension that goes beyond the merely practical responsibility of not using language in a way that attacks decency and public order.  There is an obligation to use language in a manner consistent with our responsibility to the truth and in keeping with the dictates of conscience, and using sloppy language or using rhetoric carelessly betrays deficiency of virtue and a lack of deliberation and wisdom. 

Imprecise definitions also pave the road to broader intellectual confusion and the breakdown of communication; rhetoric ceases to be a matter of persuasion and deliberation, but becomes a blunt instrument used to batter opponents into the ground with tendentious arguments and falsehoods.  In sound rhetoric, proper distinctions are all important; failure to make these distinctions often results in a failure to understand the thing described.  This is why I keep dwelling on the administration and its supporters’ abuses of language and their use of muddled concepts in their public statements about jihadis, and why I keep hammering away on the lack of precision and lack of wisdom in these statements. 

To use the word fascist to describe a jihadi because they are kinda sorta similar if you look at it from one very particular angle is to start to make all definitions lose their integrity and to make words the playthings of the powerful.  Someone resorts to “fascist” rhetoric not to describe or define, but to demonise domestic opponents on the one hand and to make a desperate appeal for support against foreign enemies on the other; once all other arguments fail, the appeal to fascist parallels will not be far behind.  That is why 2006 has become the Year of the Fascist, as every other argument for the war in Iraq and for intervention against Iran’s nuclear program–and it is the war in Iraq and the prospective attack on Iran that are the main policy questions that are really under debate when this term is invoked–has run up against strong principled opposition or significant practical difficulties.  Thus if you want to point out the real nightmare that might result from airstrikes on Iran, you are an appeaser of fascists; if you want to (God forbid) negotiate with Iran directly, you are Chamberlain himself.  All of this is a focused effort to close off policy options for political opponents and critics; it is not a neutral exercise in description or a mere PR attempt to rally support for the present war in Iraq.  It is precisely in its expansive, ill-defined nature that proponents of “Islamic fascism” sees its virtue as a description, as Jim Antle notes here

Interventionism as a foreign policy position is losing ground, so the old enemy has to be dusted off and recycled to make the same argument that interventionists make in every crisis, which has the duelling subtexts of, “American ‘isolationism’ in the ’30s allowed WWII to happen” and, as Rumsfeld might put it, “Real Americans during WWII would never have given up the way you people are giving up against the fascists of our time.”  The word fascist, infinitely flexible because it has become infinitely meaningless in the hands of generations of Marxist hacks, is the key to keeping the WWII parallels alive even as they become less and less credible to more Americans.  Together with its fellow propaganda names appeaser and isolationist, fascist is an ideal term for bludgeoning domestic opponents and defining foreign enemies, because virtually no one knows much about historic fascists beyond the fact that they seem to be very warlike, like regimentation, dislike parliamentary politics and persecute Jews.  Relying on the public’s hazy awareness of what real fascists were, the latest PR push aims at making sure that the public remains very unclear about who today’s fascists are, the better to make the administration’s “anti-fascist” foreign policy harder to understand and so that much harder to criticise effectively–who the fascists are, the administration will decide, perhaps after the fact if necessary.  Some of those who do know something about fascism also seem to be willing to lend their relative expertise to the propaganda effort for the simple reason that they support the interventionist policies that the word is being used to advance.   

When correct definitions break down, the fetters of the unjust are loosed and tyrants are set free.  On a related note, to yield to imprecise and simply fraudulent definitions is to succumb to the ravages of nominalism, the trap that common agreement alone creates the meaning of words and the notion that their relationship to the real world is fundamentally arbitrary. 

Propagandists, ideologues and men of power thrive on emptying language of stable, intelligible meanings; it is a means of instilling confusion and exercising control.  If we would use rhetoric and language ethically, and if we would avoid the snares of sloganeers and propagandists we would do well to be precise in our own language while intensely scrutinising the language of those in places of power and influence.

Advertisement

Comments

The American Conservative Memberships
Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here