An interpretation of political argument

Bibliographic Data

ID6259972
AuthorsWilliam Bosworth (0000-0001-5234-7717, Australian National University, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume19
Issue3
Pages293-313
Publication date2020-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Political Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1474-8851 • E-ISSN: 1741-2730
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1474885116659842
OpenAlexW2511372186
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited34

How do we determine whether individuals accept the actual consistency of a political argument instead of just its rhetorical good looks? This article answers this question by proposing an interpretation of political argument within the constraints of political liberalism. It utilises modern developments in the philosophy of logic and language to reclaim ‘meaningless nonsense’ from use as a partisan war cry and to build up political argument as something more than a power struggle between competing conceptions of the good. Standard solutions for ‘clarifying’ meaning through descriptive definition encounter difficulties with the biases of status quo idioms (long noted by theorists like William Connolly and Quentin Skinner), as well as partisan translations and circularity. Collectively called linguistic gerrymandering, these difficulties threaten political liberalism’s underlying coherency. The proposed interpretation of political argument overcomes this with a new brand of conceptual analysis that can falsifiably determine whether rhetoric has hijacked political argument

Argument (complex analysis · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy · Linguistics · Political philosophy · Political science · Political subjectivity · Politics · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Law · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics

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