A certain view of politics conceives of it as a convincing, by pen or gun. Certainly political philosophy lends itself well to this conception, being, as it is, in the business of convincing the reader the truth of the political conclusions offered by the text. One succeeds as a political philosopher when one convinces their interlocutor that one’s proposed system of politics rises above all others. One succeeds as a professional philosopher when one convinces their colleagues that one’s ideas are meritorious, either because they are true or, as is more likely, because they substantively further the interminable dialogue of the profession.

On a certain very cynical conception of politics, one will take this convincing to be rhetorical rather than truth-seeking. Rhetoricians convince without regards to the truth of what they convince. What differentiates the rhetor from the philosopher is the latter’s concern for the truth, regardless of how (un)convincing it might appear. One need not look far for examples of the counterintuitive in political philosophy. Nozick argues that taxation is tantamount to theft and, indeed, slavery. Marx argues that a voluntary, free labor contract between a worker and their employer is fundamentally exploitative. Rawls argues that wealth inequality is preferable to equality because it makes the worst-off better-off in absolute terms. But of course it is not merely enough to state the counterintuitive and expect assent. All three philosophers proceed from assumptions which ostensibly demand compliance from any reasonable human, and go on their merry way demonstrating the implications of such assumptions.

The problem with rhetoric in the written form: one must meet their audience as they come. A text on its own permits no discretion as to who partakes in its contents (well, at the very least they must be literate). A political community must meet its audience as they come. A society on its own permits no discretion as to who partakes in its practices and institutions. At this juncture it must be clarified that these are idealizing assumptions which presuppose an impossible independence between language and its participants, between a society and its citizens, when of course these categories are mutually constitutive. A text prefigures its audience just as a society prefigures those who live in it. The reader introduced to language takes up well-worn conventions which undergird even their most elaborate experimentations with the word. The citizen introduced to society develops their characteristic habits in context of social practices and institutions — via education, religion, media exposure, and so forth. But idealizing assumptions are appropriate when investigating the logic of a discourse — of politics and political philosophy — which conceives of itself in the ideal, as the derivation of what ought to be without necessary regard for what is. And in investigating the idealizing logic of such a discourse, with the recognition that its methodological presuppositions are not quite borne out in the world, we may produce a systematic clarity with regards to its contents. So we return to the idealized problematic of rhetoric and politics: one must meet their audience as they come.

There is nothing complex about this problem. K. believes fundamentalist religious doctrine should serve as the law of the land; M. ,an atheist, thinks religion ought be abolished. A political philosopher must convince both of a single conclusion; a legislator must convince both to obey the same law. If we could speak face-to-face with K. and M. we would tailor our talking points to their particular character. To K. we might focus on doctrinal reasoning against the notion that religious law should serve as general law, that to think of such debases the divine, that in any case it would only foment further religious persecution, and so on. To M. we might focus on the infeasibility of such drastic reform, on the requirements of pluralism in a democratic society, on the possibility of separating religious life from secular life, etc. In being able to address the particularity of K.’s and M.’s concerns our rhetoric achieves maximal effectiveness, for, in a manner of speaking, we know and can choose exactly what buttons we need to press. But in our writing we are agnostic to such particularity in our readers. Rawls’ veil of ignorance is instructive. The veil of ignorance serves not just as a conceptual tool for analyzing political arrangements but also as a reflection upon the position of the author in relation to her readers. She knows naught of their desires, dispositions, dreams, and yet must meet all of these as they come. What to do?

A more thorough cynic, or perhaps skeptic, would argue that reason was invented precisely to solve this problem: that it is merely a subset of rhetoric which aims to address all people — all rational beings — rather than individuals or smaller groups, and that truth is just shorthand for a universally-applicable rhetoric. And some truth indeed lies behind this cynicism. Reason gives one access to a technique of convincing which, unique among all other such techniques, can convince anybody. Specifically, reason binds anybody, insofar as they are rational, which really amounts to a tautology: reason binds all for whom reason is binding. The power of it is that it is so hard, so undesirable to be irrational, and even to ask why one ought to be reasonable amounts to a performative self-contradiction. The issue cannot even be formulated and, when we try, we find out we have been playing reason’s game all along. To convince someone strictly through reason amounts to providing a valid proof without premises (in the strongest case) or, at the very least, a proof with premises everybody should or actually does accept (a case which might, upon analysis, turn out to be equivalent to the former). Regardless of anything else about a person, they cannot help but accept a valid proof with no premises — at least insofar as we can communicate with them at all. One who cannot be compelled by reason, we think, cannot be compelled by anything.

It is banal to say that one can investigate the presuppositions of a political philosopher by analyzing what goes into their concept of a rational being. The key to all of Hobbes lies in his conception of a rational human abstracted away from society: a self-interested actor who places supreme value on their self-preservation, and who pursues this interest by any means necessary. From this mostly-formal conception of a rational human, everything else about the Hobbesian architectonic falls into place: the sacrifice of freedom toward the maximization of self-preservation via the social contract. The State as omnipotent and omniscient protector. Leviathan.

Banal because what we are really saying is that the philosopher becomes a rhetor. The transformation occurs, from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde, when substantive features of an audience are snuck in to what supposedly should apply to any audience at all. One reads Hobbes and wonders, how could it be that one sees all humans as being so close-minded, so selfish? I am not such a human; nor my family; nor my friends. One objects to the Hobbesian account of rationality, which purported to describe a universality inherent in all beings, on the grounds that it has failed to deliver on such universality. A single counterexample crumbles the whole elaborate structure because the point was not to deliver an empirical generalization of behavior, open to exception, but rather a normative ground for the legitimacy of behavior.

Why have we not focused on human nature? We very well might have; it functions quite similarly in providing an axiomatic basis for the derivation of conclusions about just political society. It is likely right to conceive of rationality as one of the features comprising human nature — for some philosophers, as the exclusive feature comprising human nature. The reason to emphasize rationality in particular is to highlight the logic of political philosophy, its constitutive form. Within the content of their theories, political philosophers may very well appeal to human nature as the substantive basis for their conclusions. But even if the political philosopher takes the content of their theories to follow from an account of human nature, such an account must itself follow from rationality, because it must be able to convince any reader of their text. If the account of human nature appealed to could not convince a rational reader, then we are left with the aforementioned problem of Hobbes, in which we might simply deny whatever aspects of human nature are not rationally binding. Indeed, perhaps the only component of human nature which cannot be reasonably denied is that of rationality. Regardless of content, what formally constrains political philosophers is the requirement that their argument be convincing to any who might read their work. For it is precisely the goal of the political philosopher, who seeks not only some abstract truth of the matter but to make such truth operative in the world, to convince their audience of their position’s legitimacy.

The necessity of convincing most apparently binds the philosopher of democracy, for whom the fact that a member of the polis might not assent to its laws presents an obvious objection. One who grounds political legitimacy directly in the will of the governed would surely see a failure of assent as damning. But even those who do not must yet do some convincing. Plato had to convince the philosopher-kings. And even the most antidemocratic thinker must end up convincing themselves with their theorization.

Such self-convincing cannot be presumed on the basis that one must tautologically be convinced by one’s own beliefs. In a sense this is obviously true. But one can only find their own beliefs convincing insofar as they are justified. And justification, in order to function as such, must appeal to some public and non-individual criteria. For suppose it did not — that justification could appeal only to some private knowledge to which the despot had privileged access, and which was inarticulable in terms of public reason. Would the despot, in this case, find their politics justified by merit of a particular sensation which corresponded to their entertainment of some political conclusion or another? (e.g. “it seems right to me that. . .”). How would they know that such particular sensation was really a sensation of feeling-right-that? And how could they confirm that their particular sensation at an earlier time was the same as their particular sensation at a later time? And what if their sensations came into conflict?

In short: even a despotic political regime must be reasonably convincing. But insofar as the despot may be convinced of their regime, and insofar as such convincing takes place in the space of public reason, then — assuming such convincing has proceeded legitimately — is it not the case that all reasonable beings should assent to it? It turns out we have no despotism, after all, for a despot with the assent of the governed ends up being a democratic ruler. Democracy inevitably awaits us at the conclusion of our inquiry as the only possibly legitimate form of political governance; it ends up that all we must flesh out are its contents.