Appendix: Five Structures of Argument
Five examples of a “structure of argument” are given in this appendix. In each case, the aim is to show how that structure represents a kind of knowledge, whether or not there exists any flat public truth or “fact” about the matter:
1) The rate of acceleration of a body falling toward the Earth is usually considered a brute fact. However, our measurement of this value may be thought of as a kind of argument amongst experimental values that converge to the textbook value. The physical constant can be treated as a fact precisely because no one has found it feasible to question that convergence in the domain where it applies.
2) The second example takes up the problem of cause in medical diagnosis – a matter of interpretation, albeit with a strong basis in measurable “fact.” Nonetheless, when the disease is obscure and/or complicated by secondary disorders or lifestyle issues, the physician must treat not a known disease, but rather a cluster of symptoms whose etiology remains obscure. In this case, the physician may well think of her patient’s complaint as more the outcome of a structure of argument than of any single, simple cause.
3) The story of Richard III and the little princes in the Tower is a famous historical mystery – clearly a matter of fact from one perspective, yet one for which the argument has not converged. Richard either did or did not order the murder of his young nephews. Degree of guilt may be a matter of interpretation, but the bare verdict should be as much a fact as we can make it. Still, though we cannot convict any of the suspects “beyond a reasonable doubt,” a great deal of historical knowledge is found within the argument itself. We are not, and probably never will be sure who killed the princes, but we know quite a lot about the circumstances surrounding their disappearance. In some ways, as will be seen, this knowledge-in-uncertainty is more interesting than a definitive verdict would be.
4) The fourth example takes up the problem of textual interpretation – specifically that of a clause in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as applied to the question of gay marriage. For both poems and laws (at opposite ends of the interpretive spectrum), it is shown that a useful, authentically public understanding of their meanings can be found in the structure of argument around them. It is also shown how the notion of truth as a structure of argument points toward a justifiable court decision.
5) The fifth and last example reflects on the meaning of life as a structure of argument amongst religious and philosophical traditions – with that “argument”understood more as a history of uptake and influence than as a theological debate. It is suggested that we by now know a great deal about the possible meanings of a human life, without any explicit directions at all on how to live.
Example 1: The Gravitational Constant
A physics textbook tells me that a body falling toward the Earth’s surface in a vacuum accelerates at a rate of 9.796 metres per second per second. Insofar as the classical distinction between truth and falsity can be taken at face value, this seems to be a true statement – a physical fact. At least, a few other sources agree, and I have no reason to doubt it. However, when we look at the measurement process behind this constant, we find the situation not quite so simple.
Galileo measured acceleration due to gravity by counting oscillations of a weight-on-string pendulum, using either pulse rate or (more accurately) a water clock to measure time. In this way he found that oscillation time does not depend either on the mass of the pendulum bob, nor on the angle by which it is initially displaced, but that the square of oscillation time is proportional to length of the pendulum string (T2 = kL). This constant k is then measured by calculating T2/L for each trial. Neglecting air resistance, g – the rate of acceleration due to gravity – is equal to 4π2/k, because the pendulum bob is not accelerated straight downward by the force of gravity, but back and forth along the arc of a circle of radius L. You can easily repeat Galileo’s measurement for yourself, using materials that can be found in any hardware store.
Notice, however, that any measurement you make will yield a value that may be slightly or even considerably different from the textbook value. In fact, we can think of that textbook value as the outcome of a kind of argument amongst the actual measurements – an outcome finally settled by the compromise of averaging. Admittedly, in this case and many others like it, the structure of argument is so trivial that we never think of it as such. Nonetheless, a kind of argument is what we are seeing in every precise measurement, because there is always some experimental error to compensate for, and explain away. Of the different values obtained by measurement, which (if any) is the correct one? The only way to answer this question is to play the values against one another, consider them as a group, and observe the pattern they make.
We can think of measurement as a process rather like shooting at a target. You want to get an exact value just as the marksman wants to hit the bull’s eye, but your experimental values fall in a cluster which, like the marksman’s shots, are liable to two kinds of error: On one hand there is the random error that yields a result as likely to be above the correct value as below it. This can easily be corrected by taking the measurement a number of times, and using the average of results obtained as an estimate of the true value. There is also the possibility of bias or systematic error, like that which results from shooting in a cross-wind, or with poorly adjusted sights. If one does not know the true value in advance (as in real scientific measurement, one does not), such error may be impossible to detect, let alone correct. About all you can do is try to make the measurement in several different ways, and correct for the bias of one experiment by checking it against another. Actually, the precise value of g is slightly different at different points on the earth’s surface. The measurement described is subject to bias because the earth is not a perfect sphere. And there is also a bias from air resistance that will depend on altitude, and on the shape and surface area of the pendulum bob.
Thus, even here, in the most “factual” of the cases we shall consider, the clean textbook value is merely a convenient summary for a complex argument amongst conflicting measurements. That value is good enough for many purposes; but the engineer who forgets the contradictions beneath it may fall into a trap.
Example 2: What’s Your Problem?
Faced with a pain or difficulty of any kind, diagnosis is the first step toward finding a remedy: We try to figure out what is causing the problem in hopes that when we remove or reverse that cause, or apply some appropriate treatment against it, the problem will go away. However, causes may not be easy to determine; and the idea of cause itself is far from simple. When we look for the cause of some phenomenon – an illness, automobile accident, or historical event – what we find usually has an indeterminate character, as not quite fact, but more than interpretation.
Naively, the idea of cause seems connected to the idea we have of ourselves and other people as intentional agents. As very young children, we learned that we could cause small objects to move by pushing or pulling them. As slightly older children, we learned that we would get blamed for pushing our food off the table and causing a mess on the floor. Long before we knew anything about electricity, we learned to turn a light on and off by flipping the little thingy on the wall, and learned to say that flipping the switch caused the bulb to light up. Later on, we may have acquired some ideas about electricity, and about the arrangements that must have been made and conditions satisfied to place the light and darkness under our control in this magical fashion. Or, possibly, your ideas about the power grid may have remained as vague as mine are: When flipping a switch does not bring light, I know enough to change the bulb. If that doesn’t work either, I know to call an electrician. But I am aware that there is no single, simple cause for the light from my overhead bulb. A full explanation would be fairly complicated.
However, the physics and technology of electric lighting are sufficiently well understood by the persons who understand such things; and we expect that light will happen when all necessary conditions are satisfied. Yet, in the event of a massive power failure (as happened in the north-eastern United States and Canada just a few weeks before this was written), there will be arguments months and years afterwards about why the lights went out, and whose fault it was. When we talk about most biological or psychological events, or about political or economic ones whose causes are vaguer still, we are reduced to talking about correlations and contributing factors and the like.
Of course, our talk is rarely just an intellectual exercise. We search for causes of our problems in hope of finding ways to prevent or cure them. As such, the identification of causes will be a matter for interpretation in some particular situation, and invariably the outcome of various arguments:
1) About whether there is a problem, just what it is, and whose it is? (There is no problem at all until some problem is described and named and brought to public attention.)
2) About the nature of the system in which that problem occurred, and the factors that might have caused the system to go awry in this fashion? and
3) About the measures that might be effective in preventing or curing the identified problem; and which of these measures should be undertaken, and at whose expense?
Obviously, such arguments may be exceedingly complex, and may easily turn into squabbles, or even wars that have no knowledge value to speak of. However, to choose an area in which a great deal of knowledge has been and is continually being produced, let’s restrict ourselves to the field of medicine, focussing on just two aspects of the interpretive search: the recognition of new communicable diseases; and the diagnosis and management of some particular case.
Disease Recognition
The following passage is quoted from a paper found on the Web:
The list of communicable diseases which have caught our attention has, in the last decade, not only solidified the reputations of our old companions - tuberculosis, malaria, salmonellosis, rabies, plague, sexually-transmitted diseases - but expanded to include many new names - verotoxigenic E. coli, listeriosis, hantavirus, Ebola, Marburg, Lassa, Kyasanur Forest disease. Anyone staring very closely at the changing patterns of communicable disease could very quickly drive themselves crazy trying to make sense of them. Which diseases are the important ones? Which one is the next AIDS, spreading around the globe, and which one is Lassa Virus, which made a brief, dramatic splash in the 1970s and then, at least to our western eyes, disappeared from view? What's turning that kaleidoscope? Can we alter it to make the colour patterns more congenial to ourselves? How can we best deal with communicable diseases in a context of radical uncertainty?
This passage poses the problem for epidemiologists and public health officials:
The communicable diseases which are of concern to us today did not arise from nowhere. They arose - and perhaps more importantly, our recognition of them arose - out of very specific ecological and social conditions. The Harvard Working Group on New and Resurgent Diseases has identified at least ten factors which contribute to our recognition of diseases: 1) the disease has distinct symptoms; 2) the disease was previously tolerated, and now, for social reasons perhaps, is unacceptable; 3) a marginal population gains public voice; 4) while the disease develops slowly, the host is living longer; 5) a disease which was local becomes widespread; 6) a rare disease becomes common; 7) a mild disease becomes severe; 8) a diffuse disease becomes clustered; 9) we develop improved techniques for diagnosis; and 10) we examine a new population.
The author continues:
In most cases, the recognition of diseases is the result of a complex of these factors, rather than any single cause. For instance, our recognition of AIDS has been the result of a distinct complex of symptoms related to immunosuppression, combined with a previously marginalized population, the homosexual community, gaining a public voice, combined with the development of new techniques being applied in new populations such as those in sub Saharan Africa. Salmonellosis and legionellosis may well once have occurred in a diffuse fashion, but we have made their occurrence in large clusters almost inevitable through how we structure the distribution of food and water, and have developed better testing techniques which enable us to recognize their presence more easily. The recognition of acute necrotizing disease associated with Streptococcus A is a combination of what was thought to be a mild disease becoming severe, with distinct symptoms - at least on post mortem - and a perception that it is more common now than previously. Recognition, then, is the result of a complex network of political and scientific feedback loops.
Summarizing all this, we might say that a new disease will come to the attention of medical journals, politicians and public health officials when it satisfies two conditions:
1) Its symptoms and response to treatment, are sufficiently coherent to be conveniently thought of and labelled as a single entity; and
2) As such an entity, it has achieved significant nuisance value to people whose anger is politically significant.
Thus, strictly speaking, it is perhaps only a trick of language that we have diseases like AIDS or the common cold. There are viral infections which destroy the immune system, and there are viral infections which cause respiratory congestion, but there seems to be no unique virus to which either corresponds and, perhaps, no single intervention by which they could be cured or prevented. The terms seem to label two large families, rather than two specific diseases.
Now let’s turn to the epistemological situation of a physician facing a patient with vague presenting symptoms that do not lead immediately to any clear diagnosis. She may ask a few questions, order certain tests, refer the patient to a specialist – perhaps to an internist, a specialist in diagnosis – if this seems appropriate. Pending a definite diagnosis, she will attempt to make the patient as comfortable as possible. In light of experience and the probabilities, she may attempt a shrewd guess at diagnosis, and start a tentative course of treatment – to be revised as further information becomes available.
The interesting point for our purpose is that the patient’s response to medical intervention must be part of the diagnostic process. One way a diagnosis is confirmed is that the treatment based upon it seems to work, so that the patient gets better, or at least feels better. Conversely, one way it may be disconfirmed is that the indicated treatment brings no improvement. Thus, even a vague diagnosis is good enough if it points the physician to an effective plan of treatment. On the other hand, even precise diagnosis of a terminal condition will lead the patient, and perhaps his doctor also, to seek a second opinion that provides some basis for hope.
The upshot is that the chosen course of treatment for some particular patient reflects the structure – including convergence, or lack thereof – of not just one, but four connected arguments:
1) the argument to recognize a distinctive syndrome or pathology, given a number of patients with similar symptoms and prognoses;
2) the argument about indicated therapies and modes of treatment for this given syndrome;
3) the argument to match the symptoms of a given presenting patient to the recognized syndromes;
4) the argument to select a plan of treatment appropriate to the patient’s total medical condition and life style.
All four of these arguments in combination determine the handling of some particular patient by his doctor. What passes for medical “knowledge” available to that doctor – and really is such, to the extent that any solidly based knowledge is possible – reflects the four levels of structure that we’ve discussed for all of these together: the interests and values of various stakeholders in the medical system; their defended paradigms and positions; the terms and concepts coined and deployed; the factions at the table, and the balance of power between them.
Example 3: Who Killed the Little Princes?
Medical diagnosis is a problem of interpretation, but medicine is fairly scientific, because its arguments are usually (more or less) convergent. But there are also questions of plain fact for which the argument is permanent and irreducible, with no convergence at all.
For example, the fate of Richard III’s nephews remains a mystery. We don’t know who killed the two boys, nor on whose orders they were killed. We don’t know when they died. We don’t even know for sure that they were murdered, though that seems highly likely. We do know that on Friday, June 20 of 1483 the boys were moved, presumably on Richard’s orders, to an inner keep of the Tower of London, and that they disappear from public view as of that date. On July 18, household accounts show that Richard paid out some money for their care; but rumours of the princes’ murder begin to be heard by September, 1483; and that just after Easter Sunday, 1484, there is said to be “much whispering among the people that the King had put the children . . . to death.” On the 2nd of August 1485, Henry Tudor arrives from France with a mercenary army, lands in Wales and advances into the Midlands, gathering support along the way. On August 22nd, Richard is defeated and killed at Bosworth Field in Leicestershire, and the crown of England passes to Henry (now Henry VII), who dates his reign from the day before so that nobles who fought for Richard might be charged with treason. Some years later Thomas More, in his History of Richard III, reports that Sir James Tyrell, a functionary of Richard’s who also prospered for a time under the new Tudor regime, confessed to having smothered the boys on Richard’s orders. Supposedly, this confession was obtained just before Tyrell’s execution by Henry in 1502, on some other matter entirely; but no written copy has ever been found. Thus, More’s story of the confession would be pure hearsay, except that in 1674 the bodies of two boys of about the right age were found buried under some stone stairs leading up to a door to the White Tower – which some have taken to confirm More’s account of Tyrell’s account of the princes’ burial.
This is about all we know for sure about the princes’ deaths. The rest is speculation and argument.
History of the Argument
Of argument there has been plenty. If you watch Shakespeare’s play and read
Josephine Tey’s historical whodunit, you will get – respectively, in entertaining
formats – the traditional story that Richard was a scheming monster, and then
the basic revisionist story that he was framed by Henry. If your interest is
piqued, you can then dive as deeply as you wish into the dozens of serious
books and articles that have been written.
The main suspects are still Richard
and Henry, although at least two other likely instigators have been proposed: It
is possible that Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham had the boys murdered
with or without a suggestion from Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond
and Henry Tudor’s mother. It is possible that Buckingham obtained Richard’s
agreement to their deaths, and possible that he did not – but had the boys killed
in such a way as to frame Richard either to his own or to Henry Tudor’s
advantage. We simply do not and probably never will have enough evidence to
convict anyone, nor even to establish a clear historical likelihood.
Nonetheless, the argument around this case already provides a kind of
knowledge, in some ways more valuable than any simple answer to the question
of Richard’s guilt or innocence.
For one thing, the dispute raises a host of questions that in turn become points of departure for fruitful research and speculation. If one function of knowledge is to motivate and guide further inquiry, the argument around Richard’s guilt certainly achieves this much. Here are some questions that have been raised, that become fascinating riddles in their own right:
1) The detailed account of the princes’ deaths, written by Sir Thomas More in 1513 in the reign of Henry VII, was the prime source for Shakespeare’s play, and thence for Richard’s black reputation. Unfortunately, its reliability is open to question. Since More was a boy of seven when Richard was killed at Bosworth, he could not have been writing from first hand knowledge. Since he provides a wealth of detail that is not available elsewhere, it becomes crucial to know where he got his information – or whether he made it up. It also becomes essential to understand his motive for writing, to estimate what credence his story deserves. In all likelihood, he took his information from John Morton, bishop of Ely at the time of the events in question, who might have been in a position to know the truth, but who was certainly a bitter enemy of Richard.
2) The princes’ last public appearance was in June, 1483. Within a few months, rumours of their deaths are already circulating but these are neither confirmed nor denied. To estimate Richard’s culpability, it would help to know the political situation when they died. In particular, if the boys were still alive at the time of Richard’s own death at Bosworth two years later, then he could not have murdered them. It would be helpful to know: When exactly were the princes killed, and why were their deaths kept secret? If Richard wanted the boys removed as threats to his regime, then public knowledge of their deaths would have been as important to him as the deaths themselves. He could have had them poisoned, and announced they had died of plague. On the other hand, if the boys were still alive when the rumours began, why did Richard not arrange for them to be seen?
3) Richard took the boys into his custody after his brother’s death, and
had himself named their Protector.
Then, in less than three months, he
used Bishop Stillington’s tale of his brother’s previous betrothal to have
the boys declared illegitimate
and take the crown for himself. This
much is established fact. However, his motives are open to
interpretation. Putting the best face on Richard’s actions, it’s possible
that he feared for the boys’ safety on the first occasion, and for the
stability of the realm on the second. He may have feared for his own
safety on both occasions – deciding that it was safer to do unto his
Woodville rivals before they did unto him. It may have been normal
politics of the time in taking the Protectorship and then, in taking the
throne, a fit of ambition combined with the sudden opportunity afforded
by Stillington’s revelation. Or, he may himself have concocted the story
of the betrothal, and arranged for its timely leak. He may have been
plotting long before his brother’s death, as in the story that
Shakespeare tells. In this way, estimates of Richard’s character come
to figure in the mystery. Was he the schemer that Tudor propaganda
made out? Was he a good man who succumbed to temptation? Or
was he a 15th century princely politician doing his best to cope in a very
dangerous situation? His biography has been written in all these ways,
and a great deal of solid information has been collected in support of
each version. As with most people, the more we know about Richard,
the less sure we are of who he really was.
4) Next we come to the plans and motives of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, Richard’s trusted ally and henchman until his premature rebellion and execution in 1484, just before Henry Tudor’s first attempted landing from France. For him the question is, just which double game was he playing, and when did he start to play it? Exactly when and for what reason did he turn against Richard? Was he acting in Henry’s cause, or in his own? Was it he who arranged for the boys’ murder, using his position as Lord High Constable of England (bestowed on him by Richard) to gain access to the Tower where they were held?
Again, there are several possibilities. Buckingham may have arranged the murders, acting on explicit orders from Richard, or on just a hint that the king would prefer the royal brats off the board. Or it may have been Buckingham (as one contemporary source has it) who first suggested their deaths to Richard. Or Buckingham may have had them killed on his own initiative, knowing that Richard would be blamed. In doing so, finally, he may have been aiming to win the throne for himself, or playing his part in a conspiracy to put Henry Tudor on the throne. In the latter case, the idea of killing the boys and framing Richard may well have originated with Henry’s mother, Margaret Beaufort.
5) There is the question of opportunity: The boys were kept in the Tower
of London, a secure holding place for political prisoners. Their gaoler
was Sir Robert Brackenbury, a loyal Richard man who died at
Bosworth Field, fighting in Richard’s cause. It is doubtful that
Buckingham (or anyone else) could have had access to the boys
without Richard’s order. And surely, even if someone had gotten to the
boys and killed them, Richard would have been told about it, and could
have had the murderer denounced and punished. This is, in fact, the
best argument – perhaps the only really strong argument
– for
Richard’s guilt.
Is it conclusive? That question has been argued both ways. Most historians today feel that it is – that Richard must at least have agreed to the double murder, even if he was not its primary instigator. Against this it can be suggested that the boys may not have been killed during Richard’s reign, or that Brackenbury would have accepted an order given by Buckingham in the king’s name, or that few security arrangements even today, let alone in the 15th century, are so foolproof that they cannot somehow be circumvented. As for the cover-up, given the other troubles facing him, Richard may have felt it too dangerous to announce the princes’ murders – thinking that innocent or guilty, he would be blamed in any case.
6) The behaviour of Elizabeth Woodville, the boys’ mother and Edward
IVth’s widow, also raises questions that bear on the likelihood of
Richard’s guilt. Consider the following sequence of events: On May 1,
1483, Richard and Buckingham take custody of her son Edward, the
12-year old heir to the throne. At the same time, they arrest three of
her kinsfolk,
who had been escorting the boy. Immediately after,
Elizabeth Woodville and her other children take sanctuary at
Westminster. A month and a half later, on June 16, just 3 days after
Hastings is executed on a charge of plotting against Richard, she allows
the heir’s younger brother, 10-year-old Richard of York, to leave
sanctuary and join his brother Edward V in the Tower, to prepare for
the coronation. One week later, on June 22, it is proclaimed (based on
Bishop Stillington’s testimony) that her marriage to Edward IV had
been bigamous. Her children with Edward thus become illegitimate,
and the plans for young Edward’s coronation are abandoned. Richard
is crowned on July 1st – Elizabeth’s three kinsfolk, Rivers, Grey and
Vaughan, having followed Hastings to the block only a few days
previously. Nonetheless, only nine months later on March 1, 1484,
while rumours of her sons’ murders are spreading, she accepts
Richard’s offer of safety, support and suitable marriage for her
daughters, and allows them to leave sanctuary – thus delivering them
into her enemy’s hands. Probably, she herself leaves sanctuary at this
time, although the chronicles are silent on this point. Meanwhile, in
negotiations with Henry Tudor’s mother, she also seems to have
promised her oldest daughter, also named Elizabeth, to Henry upon his
accession to the throne – a promise that would be wholly unintelligible if
she thought her boys were still alive. Henry Tudor, for his part makes a
public promise to marry that daughter on his accession, and actually
does so in January, 1486, making her queen of England. Elizabeth
Woodville herself retires to a convent in 1487, where she spends the
five years that remain to her.
On the assumption that she was an experienced political player in an age when political defeat meant death, there is no real puzzle about Elizabeth Woodville’s behaviour – though many writers have found it impossible that any mother could manage such brutal realism in coming to terms with her son’s murderer. Accordingly, it has been argued that she indeed knew her sons were dead, but also knew or had been convinced that this was not by Richard’s hand. By whose then? Perhaps by Buckingham’s. But the point can also be made that Elizabeth Woodville’s steady pressing of her family’s interest goes some way to explain Richard’s indecent celerity in seizing first the protectorship and then the throne. Fears for his own head would not have been paranoid, should Elizabeth and her Woodville clan prevail.
7) About Henry Tudor’s behaviour and motives there are also riddles. Having no legitimate claim to the throne himself, he needed the princes’ deaths more urgently than Richard did. If they were still alive after Bosworth, he would have had to kill them himself. Yet Henry, having been in France throughout Richard’s reign, had no very good opportunity to arrange their murders, while the evidence suggests (but does not establish) that they were already dead by Easter Sunday of 1484. On taking the throne, Henry would have had every reason to announce that Richard had murdered the princes. If they were still alive, he would have had every reason to kill them, and cast the blame on Richard. Nothing in his record suggests that he was incapable of doing so; yet, in fact, there was no announcement. Why not?
We have from More the previously mentioned story of Tyrell’s confession. In fact two other chroniclers, both writing after 1502, accuse Tyrell of the murder; but we have only More’s word that Tyrell actually confessed. But if he did so, why was the confession not written down and published?
It is argued that Henry, immediately after Bosworth, felt that the boys were best forgotten, and that he later took the opportunity afforded by Tyrell’s execution to tie off a loose end that had become awkward because rumours of the boys’ survival persisted, and several pretenders had arisen. This is plausible enough, yet Henry’s behaviour still seems odd. Given the strength of his own motive for killing the princes, and diligent as he was to marry their sister, blacken Richard’s reputation in every possible way, unify the warring houses of York and Lancaster and establish the myth of himself as saviour of England from the foul Ricardian tyranny, why was Henry not more forward in pinning the boys’ deaths on his evil predecessor? Why was he secretive about it? And why was Tyrell about the only Richard man to prosper (for a time) under Henry’s reign?
8) More tells his readers that the murdered children were buried by their killers “at the stair-foot, meetly deep in the ground under a great heap of stones.” During the demolition of a staircase leading to the chapel in the White Tower in 1674, the skeletons of two children were found in a wooden chest, ten feet beneath the foundation of the stairs. What help do these bones give us in solving our mystery?
The short answer is: None whatever. First, it has not been established that the bones are indeed those of Richard’s nephews, although these children were of about the right age when they died. As Pollard remarks, “there are many skeletons in the Tower’s cupboard.” Second, even if they are those of the nephews, they would not tell us when the boys died – whether before or after 22 August 1485: during Richard’s reign or Henry’s. Third, if we accept More’s story that the killers buried their victims under the stair-foot, there is no reason to reject the story told in the next two paragraphs:
Then rode Sir James [Tyrell] in great haste to King Richard, and showed him all the manner of the murder, who give him great thanks and, as some say, there made him a knight. But he allowed not, as I have heard, the burying in so vile a corner, saying he would have them buried in a better place, because they were a King’s sons. Lo the honourable courage of a King!
Whereupon they say that a priest of Sir Robert Brackenbury took the bodies again, and secretly entered them in such a place, as by the occasion of his death, which only knew it, could never since come to light. Very truth is it and well known, that at such times Sir James Tyrell was in the Tower, for treason committed against the most famous prince King Henry the Seventh, both Dighton and he were examined, and confessed the murder in manner above written, but whither the bodies were removed they could nothing tell.
Actually, then, More gives us no reason to connect the skeletons under the stairs with those of the murdered princes. Rather the contrary. Brackenbury’s priest could have re-buried the children anywhere in England, but presumably not in “so vile a corner.”
Plainly, around the question of Richard’s guilt, the arguments persist and do not converge. As for knowledge, however, it now seems clear that Richard was neither the twisted malignancy of Shakespeare’s play, nor the much-maligned saint of Tey’s mystery story. At the least, as Pollard points out, we can convict Richard of culpable negligence in the princes’ deaths since, as Protector, he had been entrusted with their lives. At worst, he seems to have been an able prince led (like so many other princes) by ambition or lust for power to usurp a crown through a string of political killings. Mitigating circumstances clearly can be found if one cares to look for them, and there are reasonable doubts that he was guilty of his nephews’ pre-meditated murder.
We are not likely to find definitive answers to any of the questions raised above, but the fact that we have been led to ask them indicates a considerable advance in knowledge. If we accept that a crucial function of knowledge is to prompt a student to deeper inquiry, then the argument around Richard’s guilt has certainly done that. Richard’s career has been and remains a scholarly industry, though it has not, and is unlikely ever to turn up evidence that would satisfy a court of law. If nothing else, it is useful to have so vivid an example of the fickleness of historical reputation, and of the old saying that nothing succeeds like success. It seems unfair that Richard’s reputation is so black, while the adventurer Henry Tudor – who was certainly no more ethical than Richard, and probably rather less so – is remembered as the founder of England’s most illustrious dynasty. Yet, so it goes. We rarely get so clear a glimpse of historical remembering in action.
In taverns at the time, the debate around Richard’s guilt amounted to rival claims of “Yes he did!” and “No he didn’t!” With little more than speculation and rhetoric on each side, the epistemic value of this squabbling was about zero. By contrast, that of the argument sketched above is considerable. By now, a great deal of good scholarship has been devoted to the issue, and much sound knowledge has been compiled, evolving as Ricardian papers continue to be written, and as new books come out. The story of Richard and the little princes is an unusually dramatic example of what historical knowledge, and most knowledge is really like – a plausible story (often two or more such stories) with a penumbra of accepted fact and doubt and argument.
Then as now, Jeremy Potter suggested in 1983, “England was two nations, and the events of Richard III’s reign are best seen through the perspective of north versus south.” . . . Then as now, perhaps, the story of the wicked uncle was the story of the south-eastern political elite; the story of the saintly brother was the story of the north.
There are thus two stories of Richard III in
circulation in the late twentieth century. They have an
appeal today as at any time in the last five hundred years,
but their fundamental attraction lies in their being cast in
archetypal moulds. It is because history is a form of
storytelling and because two conflicting stories have been
created around the lives and deaths of Richard and his
nephews that the same stories will continue to be told and
retold.
Where does the meaning of a text reside? Not in the text itself, since no text
is intelligible except as interpreted by a reader prepared to find it so. But not solely in its reader unless we overlook the distinction between interpretation and understanding as discussed at the beginning of Chapter 5. What should be said, I think, is that a text’s meaning is negotiated between its reader and the written words. Meaning does not reside at either end of this pipeline, but at some point where reader and writer meet. It is true the reader always has the last word – especially once an author is safely dead, and no longer in a position to complain of being misunderstood. But a text makes suggestions to its readers, and thereby shapes them in conjunction with all other texts and interlocutors of experience. Unless a reader is willing to be totally “off the wall” and idiosyncratic, he will find his reading influenced – and to some extent constrained – by the readings of others, and by his own use and understanding of the same words on different occasions. There’s a limit to how “original” a reading can be, while remaining intelligible to other readers. “Where do you find that?” and “Why read it that way?” are always fair questions to ask.
In what follows, then, I assume the reader is trying to understand the text before him, not merely to interpret it in some arbitrary fashion. The difference, as we’ve seen, is that understanding is an act of obedience as well as an act of power. The idea of interpretation lets us twist a text as we please; that of understanding requires us to meet the text – letting it have its way with us even as we have ours with it. We interpret to be sure; but we engage the text itself, and other readers in doing so.
In construing as he does, the reader of any text positions himself within a structure of argument around it – an argument which may be public, or strictly personal. The understanding he forms will be the outcome of a struggle with the text itself, but often with other readers as well. If the text is a scientific paper the reader will care what his colleagues have made or will make of it. If it is a law, he will care what a judge (ultimately the Supreme Court) would make of it. Usually, to some extent, a reader will care what the text’s author made of it: what the writer wanted to say.
The structure of relevant argument around a text depends on its actual
and potential audience, and on the way the text presents itself. Some texts
present themselves as fact and ask to be believed, while other texts ask only to
be imagined. Still other texts are playful with the distinction between fact and
fiction, and prefer to suspend their readers between these poles. Along a
different axis, some texts claim authority, and demand to be obeyed. Others
are content to suggest. Along an axis of interpretive freedom, some texts ask to
be read literally, according to the dictionary meanings of their words. Some
texts license and respond to a much freer, more playful reading, asking for
sensitivity to the connotations and associations of words, as much or more than
to their literal meanings. On yet a fourth axis falls the distinction between sound
and sense: Some texts want us to pay attention and respond to the music of
their language. Much writing today presents itself in a tone that tries to sound
bland, important and reassuring while saying as little as possible. In all these
ways, genre guides the reader’s expectations and responses to a text, and
shapes the interpretive argument that develops around it.
Here I will mention only two genres, poems and laws, at opposite ends of the interpretive spectrum. About a poem we ask, “What does it make us think of, and what feelings does it create?” About a law we ask, “What behaviours does it command or allow?” The crucial difference, of course, is that the argument around a poem’s meaning need not converge, while the argument around a law may and must be forced to closure each time that law is invoked before a judge in some actual case at law. For the poem, we have a tradition of literary criticism. For the law, we have decisions by a Supreme Court.
With little need to choose between alternative understandings of a poem, every interpretation except the blatantly silly – and even these, perhaps – enriches public understanding at no very great expense. Thus, for the understanding of poetry, the problem of public knowledge is trivial: The poem can be taken to mean whatever its readers have found in it – including any tensions and contradictions amongst those meanings. The reader is licensed to find his own commitments on the meaning of a poem. One can teach certain skills for interpreting and appreciating poetry, but no one can definitively say what a given poem means.
With legal texts, the situation is different. In every case that comes before a judge, interpretation must converge – must be made to converge – to a definitive reading with the force of law. This reading, backed by the state’s power, becomes the basis for legal settlement of the issue, and a precedent for future cases and readings.
Even in law, however, the court’s opinion does not quite establish legal “truth.” At law’s highest levels, minority opinions are written up, and enter the legal literature; and, in doing so, they are not without significance. At the very least, minority opinions put the dissenting viewpoint. They may cue lobby groups and legislators to the existence of loopholes that stand in need of correction. They may signal a trend or drift in legal opinion. They may provide a basis for decision in similar but distinguishable cases – ultimately for the overturning of precedent.
The history of civil liberties in Constitutional law, shows how important dissenting opinion can be; and we can take the issue of gay marriage for a topical example. At the level that concerns us, this and many similar controversies reflect a quarrel between two utterly different visions of human life and society. On one side is the idea of Christendom, a society under the covenant of Christian teaching. On the other side is the idea of the liberal, secular society, harking back to the Treaty of Westphalia that ended the wars of religion in 1640, and worked out in theory by thinkers like Montesquieu, John Locke, Adam Smith and John Stewart Mill in the 18th and 19th centuries.
In light of the contradiction between these conflicting ideals, and of the structure of argument between them, we can discuss the meaning of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – and of its “equal protection” clause, in particular – with reference to the question of gay marriage:
Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the
right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without
discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based
on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or
mental or physical disability.
The question is, does this provision allow Canadian governments or legislatures, federal or provincial, to define marriage as a relationship between persons of the opposite sex? As this is written, two provincial Supreme Courts, those of Ontario and British Columbia, have ruled that it does not. The federal government is pondering its options and the pope, whose claims to moral authority are thus directly threatened, is no doubt pondering his. What these parties will or should do need not concern us. It’s the federal Court’s decision that we must second-guess. And again: Our question is not what the court will do, but what it should do, and on what basis it should decide.
Note first that the Justices are not called upon to make a moral judgment about homosexual relationships. Their role is to decide what the law prescribes and allows. It is true, of course, that the law will prescribe and allow just what they say it does, but this circularity is more apparent than real. They are called upon to read the law in good faith as a critic might read an obscure poem and, as society’s designated experts on the subject, to pronounce on what it means. This is the way the Justices, and the whole legal community, understand their jobs.
Also, we must note that it really is the meaning of a word that is at point. Almost no one – possibly not even the pope, at this point – would dispute that the law should give to gay individuals and couples the same rights and responsibilities as to straight ones. If it were just a question of substantive rights and privileges, the issue could be resolved quite simply, as in France, Denmark and many other countries it has been, by creating the new category of “civil union,” and leaving religious groups to define and regulate “marriage” as they see fit. The problem arises because gays are demanding the dignity of marriage, not just its legal perquisites. As, one must say, seems perfectly reasonable from a liberal, secularist viewpoint.
From the perspective of “Christendom,” however, the demand is outrageous, and even gay secularists should acknowledge that more than arbitrary hatred makes it so. From the traditional Christian perspective all human carnality and willfulness incline toward sin; sexual expression is suspect on that ground alone. Only the sacrament of marriage transforms sex from a forbidden act into a holy one. Thus same-sex love strikes the traditional Christian as unnatural – as a deviation from God’s plan. To dignify it with the name of marriage seems to him a blasphemy. For believers, the demand for homosexual marriage is not a civil rights issue at all, but a gratuitous provocation. In their view, the churches are legitimate lobby groups like any other, and have both the civil right and the religious duty to attempt to influence society toward the Good as they conceive it. But for the thorough-going secularist, it is not acceptable that believers should use the state’s power to foist their religious sensibilities on the public at large.
When the Justices try to decide what marriage means – as a legal status conferred through bureaucratic procedure – they will have to do so on the basis of this argument as a whole, giving no privilege to either side.
I think I know where reason should take the Court or, at least the lines along which its thinking should go. I think it should base its decision on the structure of argument in the situation: on the two radically different paradigms in play, and the tension between them as to the nature, privileges and responsibilities of marriage.
The Court will be aware, as are the saner specimens on both sides of this debate, that civil disorder round the matter is a real possibility. It will recognize that the primary duty and interest of government must be to cool the situation, and keep tempers below the flashpoint. It will perceive that marriage is not any one, but all of the things that people are saying it is: a natural complementarity and cooperation between men and women for the begetting of children; a promise between any two adult people to be there for one another and to work out any differences that arise between them; an institution of special intimacy offered and recognized by society. Finally, it will calculate that the vital interest of the gay community is in having its serious relationships recognized and respected, while the vital interest of the Catholic Church, and certain other denominations, is society’s recognition of their claim to preside over a sacrament.
Reasoning along these lines, I think the court will require government to define and specify means for entering into a default civil contract as the basis – and the only legal basis – for spousal benefits and obligations. It will leave it up to the politicians what to call such an arrangement – “civil union” or “marriage” or “licensed cohabitation” or whatever. It will allow churches and other institutions to teach as they see fit, to define and administer whatever contracts and sacraments they please, and to call the resulting arrangements whatever they please. It will require government to recognize and enforce such contracts (like any others), provided they are not outrageous and have been freely entered into. It will refuse to place the state’s power behind any particular idea of marriage so as to make this idea binding upon the whole of society; and it will forbid federal and provincial legislatures from doing so.
When accused of making a social revolution with arbitrary, judicial power, the court will reply that whatever a spousal arrangement may be in the eyes of God, a church, or the individuals and families concerned, it is a contract like any other before the law – which is, and is Constitutionally required to be, the same for everyone. The law must recognize and enforce all valid contracts evenhandedly, and must distribute its benefit and protection without discrimination, as the Charter requires. Religious organizations have a right to teach that gays are living in sin; other organizations have a right to teach that certain religious ones are promulgating superstitious bigotry; no one has the right to engage in speech or conduct directly injurious to the physical safety of specific individuals. The free expression of ideas is one thing; incitement to violence is something else.
Example 5: The Meaning of Life
Here as elsewhere, my claim is that public truth is a structure of argument. Each individual has his own commitments as to the meaning of life, namely those that he in fact lives by and for and that guide his concrete life-choices. At the same time, our public knowledge of these matters is found in the argument amongst the various religious teachings and philosophical positions, contradictory as they are. The irreducible fact of their disagreement is knowledge of a sort – indeed, very significant and useful knowledge if properly understood, accepted and applied. It is too bad that most people seem to experience such existential disagreement as confusion and strife, and are attracted to the idea of a universal covenant that draws all men within its fold. This has proven among the worst of human ideas. It makes for bitterness and bloodshed because the covenants men favour, and still more the institutions based upon these, can scarcely help but come into conflict.
But the fact of disagreement about the meaning of life can be read in a very different way as a conclusion that is partly about a necessary diversity in human life-styles and sensibilities, and partly about the necessity for personal choice: As individuals, we pick our way among alternatives on offer. We form commitments and live and die by them. What else can we do? The commitments are diverse because our situations and temperaments are very different, and would be less lethal if we acknowledged them as merely personal commitments, instead calling them beliefs and demanding for them the status of absolute truths.
But the pool from which we draw our values, our ideas, and finally our vital commitments must be a kind of public knowledge. It is, after all, public insofar as it is freely available on the Internet and in public libraries – part of a common heritage of documented human experience. And it is knowledge of a sort: knowledge conceived not as a structure of flat truths, but as a structure of argument from which each individual or cultural groups forms and re-forms its own ideas about life.
If we think of the world’s religions and philosophies not as revelations, but just as so many takes on what it means to be human, we see at once that the public knowledge of life’s meaning lies in the structure of argument amongst the various teachings. Where else could it be?