Argument in Holocaust denial: the differences between historical casuistry and denial, casuistry.

AuthorWright, Jaime
PositionEssay

Casuistry and rhetoric both are terms long maligned for their unpredictability and ethical bendability. (1) The debate about rhetorical ethics is ancient and ongoing-as is the debate surrounding the appropriate use and application of casuistry. Since the sixteenth century, casuistry has been considered a flawed approach to moral decision-making, consigned by Pascal and Ramus to the arenas of argumentative nonsense, the worst excuse for ethical laxity and individual immorality. It is a "form of ethical problem solving with a dubious pedigree" (Miller 7). Recently, however, casuistry has been rehabilitated. Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin describe it sympathetically as

the analysis of moral issues, using procedures of reasoning based on paradigms and analogies, leading to the formulation of expert opinions about the existence and stringency of moral obligations, framed in terms of rules or maxims that are general but not universal or invariable, since they hold good with certainty only in the typical conditions of the agent and the circumstances of action. (257)

The key to legitimate casuistic reasoning is the human ability to relate and compare disparate objects and events appropriately, without splitting hairs. Discussing the range and limits of argument by example, John Arthos describes the Catholic Church's use of casuistry during the Middle Ages as exaggerations of situational, specific reasoning: "the vast and sprawling casebooks of canon law were exercises in the art of qualification" (332).

Casuistry is a consideration of the situatedness of situations, a nod to the contingencies of life, and it is rhetorical in that it has the power to shape and alter our perception of "fitting" responses and propriety: "Because of the complexity of reality and the variation of circumstances, immutable laws are not immediately helpful in determining the disposition of a case. Thus, a body of examples model prudent discrimination in conflicting and ambiguous decisions of conscience" (Arthos 332). These models of prudent discrimination demonstrate the ethical difficulties that casuists confront. When facing what Bitzer called an exigency, requiring judgment and decision, one has not only a logical responsibility to compare the present situation with previous precedents but also a moral responsibility to balance and evaluate each decision as it comes.

It is important for scholars of argument and rhetoric to study casuistry (whether used for good or ill) for two reasons. First, casuistry is a necessary and inescapable attribute of language (Burke, Rhetoric 72-73). Casuistic stretching. (2) is a function of language that enables social and collective meaning (Burke, Attitudes 229). Rhetoric, as the determination of persuasive means in any given situation, recognizes the space between certainty (syllogisms) and probability (enthymemes). Without this space, if only formal logic was acceptable, how would communication occur? How would history get told? Where would be the room for error and revision, correction and reapplication? Professors employ casuistry to relate old ideas to new ones. Politicians employ casuistry to form coalitions. Parents employ casuistry to get children in bed on time. Casuistic reasoning is intimately related to the process and business of language. If truths could not be stretched, and logic could not be expanded, language would be impoverished. Common ground between audiences and speakers would prove impossible because we cannot always stand in the same space, at the same time, with the same perspective.

The second reason to study casuistry is because casuistry is convincing. Pascal was outraged at what he believed to be the immoral (and random) rationalizations of the Church in part because they were so effective. Situational reasoning accommodates the contingencies, particularities, and uniqueness of exigencies. Bitzer's discussion of the rhetorical situation reveals the casuistry required of effective rhetors (5-6). That being said, the rhetorical value of casuistry, its argumentative efficacy, can be demonstrated by careful examination of its operation in specific rhetorical situations. Such examination reveals not only examples of casuistic arguments but also standards for evaluating their ethicality and effectiveness. By studying casuistry in its ethical and unethical forms we learn about the places where people shop for arguments and the form and function of convincing arguments.

This essay examines the process of argument as well as its effects. I do not claim that all casuistry is bad or, necessarily, that all casuistry is good. What I do want to suggest, though, is that there are good and bad forms of casuistic reasoning, and I lay out the differences between them by studying a recent instance of casuistic stretching: the libel suit brought by Holocaust denier David Irving against Penguin Publishers and Deborah Lipstadt.

David Irving is a prominent Holocaust denier/British writer who was mentioned, briefly, in Lipstadt's 1993 Denying the Holocaust. In July, 1996, he sued both Lipstadt and her publishers, claiming that his career and reputation had been harmed when Lipstadt identified him as a key figure in Holocaust denial, or the global movement to rehabilitate the Nazis. In an attempt to turn the tables in his own favor, Irving chose to bring the suit in a British rather than American court because British libel laws favor the plaintiff: Lipstadt would have to prove that what she wrote was true, rather than Irving having to prove that it was deliberately false.

The trial began in London on January 11, 2000. Libel defense in a British court is always a difficult task; this trial, however, was a particularly important (and complicated) case (Hasian, "Holocaust" 130). Because Irving's main contention is that the gas chambers are a grand, conspiratorial hoax, Lipstadt needed to prove her own claims in particular and the reality of the Holocaust in general. In essence, this trial

was a battle neither side could afford to lose. Irving, who represented himself, risked his reputation as well as his livelihood. Defeat would mean professional ruin, and probable bankruptcy. For Lipstadt and her British publisher (and co-defendant) Penguin Books, the stakes were even higher. Irving's strategy of putting the Holocaust itself on trial meant that Lipstadt and her lawyers had to defend not just her veracity, but the integrity of all of those caught up in the Nazi onslaught. (Guttenplan 2)

In an effort to move his version of the past into the limelight, Irving put history on trial, forcing Holocaust denial into a legal and academic position ostensibly equal to careful historical methodology. Challenging historians to meet him in a courtroom, Irving provided deniers a potential entree to legitimate historical discussions. Had Irving prevailed, the veracity of historical facts that most of us take for granted-that Hitler killed millions, that the Nazi factory of death was frightening, bureaucratic and efficient, that European Jews were decimated by a decade-long campaign to exterminate them (Guttenplan 2-3)-and the validity of accepted methods of historical research would have been seriously weakened. Such a ruling would have been a solid victory for deniers and a crushing blow to analytical historical methodology.

Studies of Holocaust denial as a persuasive and dangerous rhetoric cannot be overvalued. Because history is revised constantly (properly so, as new discoveries are made), critical historical investigation is a protean, mutable pursuit. Holocaust denial becomes increasingly convincing against the contemporary backdrop of historical revision. Pierre Vidal-Naquet argues that historical and rhetorical changes in the language used to describe genocidal events turn genocide into a spectacle, a pure language event better fit for mass consumption (98). This does not prevent assessment of changes in denial rhetoric; instead, critics and consumers must recognize and adapt to shifts in historical understanding of the Holocaust.

As time passes, carrying us farther from the epiphanic moments of the 1940s and 1950s, we can rely no longer on familiar routes of perception; as Holocaust deniers renovate their language and reconstruct their images, we must be vigilant in our evaluation of their rhetorical and political moves. Michael Marrus defines the difficulties facing historians and scholars: "In time, as a result [of the deaths of survivors and witnesses], the mystification [surrounding the Holocaust] will be dispelled and is bound to be replaced by the historical perspective. Doubtless some of the exercises that result will be misguided. But the alternative, silence, is surely the counsel of despair-yielding the field to falsification or oblivion" (7). Despite the possibility of misdirection, an ongoing process of adaptation seems a safer, more legitimate course than acquiescing to politically driven assaults on history.

One form of vigilance consists in thorough examination of the Holocaust denial movement's language and arguments (Hasian, "Canadian" 44, 48). In doing so, we necessarily enter the realm of casuistry, which is necessary to language but ethically slippery. With an eye to the tensions between necessary situational adaptation and ethical reasoning, I explore casuistry in three places: argument theory, historical research, and Holocaust denial. First, I provide a more expansive description of casuistry. Next I examine the function of casuistry in scholarly historical research. Finally, I examine an instance of casuistry used for ill: David Irving's closing remarks at trial. By comparing the ethical practice of casuistry, in historical research, with its unethical practice, in denial casuistry, I hope to illuminate some methods available to analyze and evaluate casuistry in discussions of the past.

CASUISTRY

A form of reasoning located between the logical pull of precedent and...

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