The Political Importance of Analogical Argument
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00071 |
| Published date | 01 March 1997 |
| Date | 01 March 1997 |
| Author | Hilliard Aronovitch |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The Political Importance of
Analogical Argument
HILLIARD ARONOVITCH*
University of Ottawa
Is there a form of reasoning somehow specially suited to political philosophy and
political life? I contend that for a variety of reasons analogical argument is eminently
apt for politics. Although the signi®cance of analogical reasoning for law has been
largely recognized, its similar suitability for morality and politics has mostly been
ignored, though insights from Hampshire and others point the way.
An eventual implication of my argument is that an analogically developed liberal
tradition provides rational, non-relativist `foundations' for normative claims, as ®rm
as are feasible and necessary. This larger question about the roots of political and
moral principles is commented upon throughout, but the main purpose is to establish
the nature and legitimacy of analogical reasoning in political argument.
Is there a form of reasoning that is somehow specially suited to political
philosophy and political life? Does it make sense to suppose there might be?
These questions are not asked innocently: they are meant to open an avenue of
re¯ection that will lead to seeing the signi®cance of analogical reasoning for
various practical domains, particularly politics. What I shall contend is that
analogical argument is eminently apt for politics because analogy and politics
both involve building innovatively upon the past by constructively extending
precedent. In that way stability, agreement, and progressive steps into the
future are secured. The echoes here of what occurs in law and legal reasoning
are not accidental but integral to my thesis. Although the signi®cance of
analogical reasoning for law has been largely recognized,1 its similar suitability
and importance for morality and politics have mostly been ignored.2 In
defending the importance of analogical argument I shall concentrate upon
politics, and address ethics or morality by association with it, and I shall orient
the argument towards a larger issue.
* I thank Wayne Norman and the referees of Political Studies for comments on an earlier version.
1 See E. Levi, An Introduction to Legal Reasoning (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1961
[1948]); N. MacCormick, Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory (Oxford, Clarendon, 1978), ch. vii;
J. Raz, The Authority of Law (Oxford, Clarendon, 1979), pp. 201±9; M. Golding, Legal Reasoning
(New York, Knopf, 1984), pp. 44±9, 98±143; R. Dworkin, A Matter of Principle (Cambridge MA,
Harvard University Press, 1985), part 2, and Law's Empire (Cambridge MA, Harvard University
Press, 1986), ch. 7; C. Sunstein, `On analogical reasoning'. Harvard Law Review, 106, 3 (1993),
741±91.
2 Exceptions are various remarks by Stuart Hampshire and by Charles Taylor on practical
reasoning and an article by Roger Shiner sketching ethical justi®cation as case-by-case reasoning;
I welcome these probes, will in due course speci®cally cite them, but aspire to something dierently
focused and more developed.
# Political Studies Association 1997. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 238 Main
Street, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.
Debate
79
Appreciating analogical reasoning points, I believe, to a resolution of the
controversy over the role of reason versus tradition in supporting norms.3 The
implied resolution involves showing that an appropriately evolving, analogic-
ally developed tradition can constitute rational and non-relativist `foundations'
for normative claims, ®rmer and more ®tting ones than can be had by any
other means. While I cannot in this paper adequately elaborate the resolution
of this larger question concerning the epistemological roots of moral-political
principles, my defence of analogical argument will lead me to outline it.
I
I begin with basics: about the genus, structure, merits and means of assessing
analogical arguments as they are commonly used. Only towards the end of
this section do I begin the transition to normative applications of analogical
reasoning.
Analogical reasoning is reasoning from case to case, by example or paradigm
instance, whereby it is inferred that a characteristic of an established case
should apply to a novel, similar one. Thus, I might remark that Rushdie's
writing is like Garcia-Marquez's, in being surrealist, then note that Garcia-
Marquez's surrealism was unappealing to a sober, realist temperament such as
yours, and hence conclude that so too in all likelihood would Rushdie's be. Or, I
might remark that learning to swim is like learning to ride a bicycle in that both
involve a knack which clicks in, and then note that with riding a bicycle once
you have got it you never seem to lose it, so as to conclude that it is bound to be
the same with swimming.
The object of analogical reasoning is to draw lessons from the past by way of
specially selected particulars. As such, analogical reasoning can be counted as a
form of inductive reasoning but with distinctive features; alternatively, in what
comes to the same thing, analogical reasoning can be counted as a category in
its own right, but one that shares key features with inductive reasoning; I shall
follow the former strategy. Like all inductive reasoning, as opposed to deduct-
ive, analogical arguments are occupied not with concepts and their abstract
implications but rather with actual experience and its use in arriving at
conclusions about the future or the unfamiliar. Naturally, notions of what is
familiar and what is unfamiliar are dependent on context and audience; and this
element will prove vital to the application of analogy and analogical argument
to politics.
Because analogical reasoning draws on past experience and its contingent
extension, analogical reasoning like all induction can issue in conclusions that
are at best probable or presumptive, though sometimes to a degree that they are
beyond all reasonable doubt (and seem lacking only by unfair comparison with
deductive certainty). In other words, analogical argumentation is to be judged
3 I have in mind the familiar controversy especially as occurring in moral-political theory
wherein, say, Rawls and Habermas ®gure as defenders of (Kantian) reason and Rorty and
MacIntyre ®gure as tradition-oriented thinkers, albeit in dierent ways and favouring dierent
traditions. See J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1971) and
Political Liberalism (New York, Columbia University Press, 1993); J. Habermas, Moral Conscious-
ness and Communicative Action (Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1990); A. MacIntyre, Whose Justice?
Which Rationality? (Notre Dame IN, University of Notre Dame Press, 1988); R. Rorty, Contin-
gency, Irony, Solidarity (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989).
# Political Studies Association, 1997
80
Debate
as relatively and not de®nitively persuasive or unpersuasive, as providing
support for the conclusion that is anywhere from overwhelmingly strong to
uselessly weak, and most often somewhere in between. Moreover, opposed
analogical arguments on an issue may each be persuasive in about equal
measure.
As a species of induction, analogical reasoning can be usefully distinguished
from two other sorts, namely (statistical) generalization, which reasons from
what is known concerning a sample of instances to a conclusion about the
whole class of them, and cause-eect reasoning which proceeds from a
knowledge of either of the elements to an inference about their connectedness;
whereas, analogical reasoning works by relying upon a key likeness or speci®c
parallels between particular situations, persons, entities, and so on.
However, according to a view found strongly but not only in Mill, and which
contrasts with the appreciation of analogy found in Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas
and others, therein lies a basic problem with analogical reasoning: namely that
such reasoning from one particular to another is unacceptable, or rather can be
acceptable only if a generalization is assumed as a missing premise.4 But this
unease about analogical reasoning and way of resolving it must be rejected
because otherwise the eect is to convert well-demarcated, plausible arguments
into open-ended, implausible ones, since the generalizations assumed to be
necessary are unavailable or unreliable. If we imagine trying to come up with a
generalization that would substitute for or strengthen the argument relying on
the one known case of Garcia-Marquez or the argument relying on the one
known case of bicycling, maybe we could add a sprinkling of other known cases
which could well have been part of the argument from the start, but beyond that
the attempt to generalize signi®cantly will almost certainly fail, either by leaving
us with general statements that are untrue or unacceptable to the parties in
question, or with vague or empty universals (about surrealist writers of the
Garcia-Marquez-sort, or about knacks of the bicycling-sort). And why try? The
persuasiveness of the conclusion depends on the compelling quality of the
known case(s), and on the likeness involved, not on any precise generalizations
in which we have con®dence. And so it is with good analogical arguments: they
succeed, when they do, on their own terms. Indeed, by dispensing with the idea
that generalizations properly speaking are necessary (meaning, generalizations
which are not tautologous, and which are both adequately precise and broad in
scope), we...
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