1/e
2/e
(No part of this re/inter/view discussion may be published elsewhere without written permission from victor j. vitanza and the individual posters.) --Full Copyright notice is at the end of each file.
|
1/e |
The PreText List will hold a Re/In/View with Deirdre N. McCloskey, beginning June, 1998. The subject of conversation will be Deirdre's The Rhetoric of Economics (U of Wisconsin P, 1998). | 2/e |
Dear Mr. Baake, Delighted to hear from you.
>_____I wonder if you would agree with the oft-quoted remark of Yes, because I said it before Alan did!
>as you say in The Rhetoric of Economics, implying that it is necessary No, as I argue more clearly in the second edition of The Rhetoric, just out. I'm quantitative, too. But quantity is a rhetoric. It's persuasion all the way down.
> If economics is all rhetoric and rhetoric is "antimethodolgy (p. 51 I go into this in detail in Knowledge and Persuasion in Economics (1994, Cambridge UP). I think you need to get the second edition of The Rhetoric, which has a thorough bibliography on the rhetoric of economics. These issues have been THOROUGHLY worked over in print. Our exchange will have more point if I do not have to summarize in a sentence what I've said at book length elsewhere!
Without a systematic effort to organize and No, no, not what you mean by "normative." There's plenty of science. The science, tho, uses ethics and rhetoric daily. This is true of biochemistry and astrophysics, too.
Fine, except isnšt there then the danger that economics as Yes. Nu? Why do we need "foundations" for ethics?
>Normative economists freed of methodology would have license to sling I don't knowwhat you mean. You seem to think that methodology is some sort of Higher Test. Read Knowledge and Persuasion.
To me, it seems the tension now You misunderstand what Alan and I (and Paul Feyerabend and Maurice Finocchiaro and Thomas Kuhn and so forth) are saying: truth seeking entails a rhetoric. Sincerely, Deirdre McCloskey
Deirdre, _____Would you spend some more time elaborating on what you refer to as the "irrationalist" side of Modernism? I would like to see the discussion on 141-42 extended in the light of my comments below. (Booth elaborates on the irrationalist side of modernism intermittently, e.g., MDRA, 23-24). You write:
"The rationalist and the irrationalist pray to the same god. An irrationalist believes himself different from the rationalist, and in the way he cuts his hair he sometimes is. But in his theory of knowledge he is not. He is merely a protestant, irritated by the rituals of the church of science and scornful of its selling of indulgences, but sharing with it a belief in a trinity of fact, definition, and holy value. Each part of the trinity, on this view, can have its separate devotees--the scientist, the mathematician, and the litterateur" (142, 2/e) I could end the post at this point ... making it brief. But I think that I should give you--if you wish to continue reading--the following context for my question and concern: You spend--at least, for me--too little time separating and joining together these logical positivism (high rationalism) and the 'irrationalist' side. And the metaphor of the religious struggle in the above quote does not illuminate the difference for me. Additional discussions and juxtapostions make it difficult for me to understand what you are getting at. I often get lost when you throw together *Wayne Booth and Paul Feyerabend,* who I could place in the same circle with my own redescriptions (Rorty), but not with your description of Modernism. The difficulties that I am having with your take on Modernism is that I view Booth (the entire Chicago School) as one more form of Modernism. And as you know, much--if not all--of your take on Modernism is similar to Booth's. Therefore, yes, it follows ... I find your view of Economics as yet one more form of Modernism! Your argument that Economists use rhetoric while they say they don't, I of course agree with completely. This is not an issue for me. (So, irony of irony--and yet, I am probably not the right audience for your 1/e or 2/e--I find the arrangement of the 1/e better for me.) The difference in your and my takes on this -ism are very different, of course. Logical positivism is only one form of Modernism for me. Booth's open rhetoric is un/just one more. How outlandish, huh!? There is nothing wrong with giving a stipulative definition of what you or someone else takes Modernism to be. In one way or other we are all incipient modernists. But... --For Booth, both Tim Leary (MDRA, 3) and D.H. Lawrence (45) are irrationalist and of the Modernist kind. And then there are C. Jung, R.D. Laing, Norman O. Brown (96). The list goes and goes. --In dis/respect to 'irrationalism' being, in your view, one more Modernism, I can sometimes hear--though you do not, if I am correct, mention him--A. MacIntyre (After Virtue), favoring Aristotle over Nietzsche-the-irrationalist. --I can of course sometimes hear you alluding to KB, whom you do mention, but not in respect to Nietzsche (again) as the "cult of the primitive positive" ... as the yea-saying irrationalist. I can hear you agreeing with KB, favoring Aristotle over Nietzsche, which of course would be only one possible ratio or permutation/combination, right? --I hear you referring to H.White in several places and your incipiently echoing and agree with his view of "the absurdist moment in contemporary literary theory" (all of Ch. 12, Tropics of Discourse, but especially pp. 269-70). For me, any and all thinking that works from *the condition of the negative* is Modernist! Right now, communicating with you, I am being thoroughly modernist victor. "We" are mostly modernists. The key issue, then is to ask, _____What are the ontological and epistemological conditions of the possible (as you say, "theory of knowledge") in this author's thinking and doing (hir using of language or any symbolic system or their using of hir)? Which gets me to my next questions, if you have read this far: ____Are you working from the genealogy of the negative (KB, LSA 419-79) when you think, write, and do the rhetoric of economics? I don't recall your referring to Georges Bataille (The Accursed Share, 3 vols). His thinking about economics does not begin from the principle of lack or the negative, but from a principle of excess. I'm not going into all that here. But will add that H.White would take Bataille to be a total, unregenerate irrationalist ;-) . There's always more to say, right? But this is enough for now. Thanks in advance for your thoughtful consideration of these right or wrong-headed questions. vv
victor j. vitanza
Thank you for your thoughtful response. If I may, I would like to explore some of these issues a little further, especially in light of Ken and Victor's questions. I think we agree on the importance of Kuhn and Feyerabend. However, I think that there are some points where we may or may not agree, especially in terms of priveledging rhetoric. An anecdote: I first encountered your work in Debra Journet's Rhetoric II class at the University of Louisville. Upon reading selections of the first edition of the rhetoric of economics and _The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences_, many of us in the class--all rhetoric and composition students raised on many of the "victim narratives" of the role of rhetoric and the role of rhetoric and composition in the history of education--left Debra's class thinking, "look, look, here is the proof that rhetoric _is_ the metadiscipline of all disciplines." Those of us who had taken Rhetoric I had wanted to use your work to redescribe, indeed re-cover, lost Gorgias so that it was he that won the debate against Socrates (By the way, I mentioned Bertie because I think he is a certain apotheosis of Plato's thinking, as you yourself mentioned). Looking back, I am not sure if you or Debra had intended this extreme reading. Nevertheless, I question it in light of my reading of Victor's book and of Deleuze's book on Kafka. Simply put, it strikes me that we buy into the same hierarchy and same dichotomy of philosophy and rhetoric, only here we simply reverse the terms. In short, in the langauge of Deleuze, Gorgias becomes the Oedipal father, rather than Socrates. What I would like is a way out of this dichotomous thinking into a third possibility which is neither rhetoric or philosophy. Let me put my question/comment to you this way: ---Dear Tireseus, which is better, being a man or a woman, a philosopher or a rhetorican? My desire--which might not count for much here--would be for you to say, "I prefer niether, I prefer the hermaphrodite." Without leading this discussion to far estray from the second edition, I want to ask you something about the Rhetoric of the Human Sciences that I think might shed some interesting light on this discussion. ----In Richard Rorty's contribution to the _Rhetoric of the Human Sciences_, Rorty never refers to inquiry as rhetoric or to knowledge-makers as rhetoricans. Instead, he says things like "We fuzzys." I have often wondered why Rorty resisted the term rhetoric in his essay. Was it because he wanted still to priveledge philosophy, or was it that he saw the trap of making rhetoric into a meta-discipline? You may not know this, but as the editor, I am hoping that you might. Again, thank you so much for your response and this opportunity to ask you these questions. Todd
>You have drawn on Wayne Booth to arrive at the conclusion I'm glad you noted that this last assumption, which is not mine. I detail the difference as much as the similarities. Have a look at p. 66 of the new edition. (Just a crabby note: I wish no one would take the Journal of Economic Literature paper as What McCloskey Says in Conveniently Brief Form; it was a maiden effort, and too philosophical, and not applied enough. But the statement you quote I still believe.)
>Specialists from all fields could talk to each other in a productive way I'm reminded of the old reply when a woman is asked if she believes in infant baptism: "BELIEVE in it?! I've SEEN it!!" In Iowa's Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry engineers and lawyers, economists and literary critics, mathematicians and communications theorists have been doing just this for 18 years. The rhetorical point is that the COMMON topics, of which there are a great many in even the most technical work, can indeed be talked about across disciplines. No one outside math can help a mathematician work a proof by contradiction, which has been a mathematical special topic since the Greeks. But a lawyer can help her think about the importance of ethos in the exordium of a paper; an English professor can help her think about parallelism as a persuasive technique.
>The concept of "utility maximizing behavior" in economics may You're right, but economists also use the biological trope of survival value. Rationality and evolution are two forms of argument, which often come to the same conclusion (when they don't it is called a market failure).
>But arent we really back to a If you mean that an economist has to "learn economics," which is to say the special topics peculiar to the field and the characteristic ways that an economist makes use of the common topics, yes. In other words, a rhetorician is not an all-purpose outside expert. (This, by the way, is a Platonic argument about philosophers; Plato tended to the view that they WERE all-purpose experts about expertise, an arrogance that philosophers have calmly maintained in the face of overwhelming evidence over the past 2500 years that the main problems we face are rhetorical.) But a rhetorically sophisticated economist or lawyer or engineer, which is what we are after at the Project, is another matter, able to speak to outsiders, or at least listen with some patience. Regards, Deird
Victor said, >You write: "The rationalist and the irrationalist pray to the same god."
>You spend--at least, for me--too little time separating and joining I agree. What seems to be true is that the two go together. I've made this observation a lot, without developing any very interesting theory about it. For example, Santa Monica is the home of both the highly rationalist Rand Foundation and the highly irrationalist Santa Monica City Council, which has always struck me as funny. To be serious, it is the DUALISM of thinking since Descartes that annoys me, and one of the dualisms is Science and Art, the one thought (wrongly) to be largely a matter of rationality and the other thought (wrongly) to be largely a matter of irrationality.
>I often get lost when you throw together *Wayne Booth and Paul Feyerabend. I We've got to watch out here for differing meanings of Modernism. Certainly modernism as a theory of dualism, such as fact vs. value, is something Wayne has always opposed; and so did Feyerabend. You may have in mind "literary" modernism. I'm not sure. It's an essentially contested concept. >I find the arrangement of the 1/e better for me.) You must have a philosophical mind. Not me!
>course. Logical positivism is only one form of Modernism for me. Booth's I detect a critique of pure tolerance. Here we would disagree.
>--For Booth, both Tim Leary (MDRA, 3) and D.H. Lawrence (45) are Yeah, literary modernism. I distinguish it from scientific modernism. They are paired, often in the same person, as form example in Bertrand Russell, according to Booth. There's a sort of modern dance between them. Thus at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton the highest of highbrow theoretical physics is combined with a hushed museum attitude towards music, which is a large part of the life of the Institute (joke: At the Institute, what's a string quartet? Three physicists and a mathematician.)
>Modernism, I can sometimes hear--though you do not, if I am correct, I hadn't read MacIntyre when I first wrote the book. yes, I agree with his favorable assessment of Aristotle. Of Nietzsche I am shamefully badly informed. I find him so hard to read. When I grow up.
I can hear you agreeing with KB's my main man, speaking of people hard to read. He was Iowa a couple of years before he died and Michael McGee had me over to talk with the great man for an evening. Burke drank and drank, and at the end, having established that I was an economist, said, "Say, perhaps you know this economist McCloskey who writes about my work?" I admitted knowing the person.
> I had read White a little, mainly Metahistory, and more since then. I'm no expert, but I'd say we agree. Someone has made off with my White collection (which suggests that I loaned them to a student who hasn't returned them), so I don't know the exact passage.
> I only vaguely grasp what you mean here. After looking at Burke's discussion I would agree, but then Wayne Booth is a clear plus-thinker. Look at the respectful way he treats Cardinal Newman's Grammar of Assent, which is nothing if not [!] positive. And how hard he is on Descartes' beginning in doubt.
> Yes, I think so. I just read (for the first time) the pages from Language as Symbolic Action you cite and am not too surprised to find Burke rediscovering economics. (I had called him an "Austrian" economist in an essay in H. W. Simons and T. Melia, eds., The Legacy of Kenneth Burke (U of Wisconsi Press, 1989: tell them to take the shrinkwrap off before they send it to you). His "negativity" is what economists call "scarcity" or "constraint." The positive is desire. Between the idea/ And the reality/ . . . . Falls the shadow. I wrote on this in "Voodoo Economics," Poetics Today 12 (Summer 1991), reprinted in my If You're So Smart (Chicago, 1990).
>I don't recall your referring to Georges Bataille (_The Accursed Share_, 3 Haven't read Bataille. I have an aversion to French writers (except Todorov, whose Bulgarian) because I get so annoyed at their reinvention of rhetoric without acknowledgment. I guess I would count him an irrattionalist if he doesn't recognize scarcity in the economy. Regards, Deirdre
Dear Tod,
Deidre,
>in Debra Journet's Rhetoric II class at the Go to it!!
>we buy into the same hierarchy and same dichotomy of philosophy Not quite. Philosophy is a part of Big Rhetoric. No rhetoric is a part of Philosophy. The philosophers just won't admit it. I've asked them. >---Dear Tireseus, which is better, being a man or a woman, a philosopher >or a rhetorican? >My desire--which might not count for much here--would be for you to say, >"I prefer niether, I prefer the hermaphrodite." No, thanks. I am a woman. But that does not, should not, keep me from certain male virtues, when they are virtues. >----In Richard Rorty's contribution to the _Rhetoric of the Human >Sciences_, Rorty never refers to inquiry as rhetoric or to >knowledge-makers as rhetoricans. Instead, he says things like "We >fuzzies." I have often wondered why Rorty resisted the term rhetoric in >his essay. I don't think there's any question that he avoids the term, as did Kuhn at the same conference (he who was working on a book which can only be described as the rhetoric of science), and my friends among the Social Studies of Knowledge crowd (Collins, Pinch, Mulkay, Latour), and many, many other people who should be more loyal to the tradition of humanism, which until the 17th century just called this stuff by its name, because the word has been corrupted by newspapers to mean "bloviation, hot air, publicity, lying." Sincerely, Deirdre ("of the Sorrows") McCloskey
|
(Copyright. 1998. PRE/TEXT. Victor J. Vitanza and the posters to Pretext Re/In/View. All rights reserved. Anyone should feel free, however, to link to this page for educational purposes, but do not publish otherwise in part or whole without prior written consent from copyright holders. You may also establish a link to this or any REINVW discussion.)
To Part 1, McCloskey Reinvw.
To Part 3, McCloskey Reinvw.
To REINVW Archives
To PRETEXT-List HP