Composition Forum 43, Spring 2020
http://compositionforum.com/issue/43/

Review of John Duffy’s Provocations of Virtue: Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Teaching of Writing

Brittany Capps

Duffy, John. Provocations of Virtue: Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Teaching of Writing. University Press of Colorado, 2019. 162pp.

In Provocations of Virtue: Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Teaching of Writing, John Duffy addresses the toxicity of public discourse in the contemporary United States. He fears we have lost a shared notion of what constitutes facts and evidence and have started avoiding practices that might reveal weaknesses or uncertainties in our own arguments. However, he is determined to counter those ingrained habits and calls on teachers of writing to help. Relying heavily on exemplars from current discourse, Duffy revisits Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and the branch of moral philosophy known as “virtue ethics” to consider how composition instructors can bring ethical writing practices back to the classroom.

He begins by outlining the features, causes, and effects of toxic discourse, followed by a brief explanation and history of three major moral theories: deontology, consequentialism, and post-modernism. He then summarizes Aristotle’s theories of virtue and neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics as well as more contemporary accounts of virtue including sentimentalist, feminist, non-Western, and applied virtue ethics. He also addresses the ways virtue is exploited in the subjugation of women, neo-conservative ideology, and the Christian doctrine. The latter part of his book looks at the relationship between argument and the rhetorical virtues, especially in making claims, presenting evidence, addressing counterarguments, and revising. Finally, he offers strategies for stimulating ethical discussion in the writing classroom and concludes by posing an alternative to the “Q Question” that specifically relates to students and teachers of writing. Duffy traces the history of virtues and virtue ethics and situates them all in the context of the writing classroom to reveal our need for a new language of ethics associated with rhetorical thinking and argumentative practices.

Duffy defines toxic discourse as “language that is disrespectful to strangers, hostile to minorities, contemptuous of compromise, dismissive of adverse evidence, and intentionally untruthful” (29). He explains that toxic discourse can be characterized by incivility, hate speech, eliminationist rhetoric, venomous speech, and outrage discourse, and features dishonesty, unaccountability, demonization, violence, denial, and poverty of spirit. He also tells us it can stem from political, historical, and structural causes, but the rise of social media especially has contributed to the rise of outrage discourse. The result, he says, is that expressions of toxic rhetoric can “damage the capacity of citizens and non-citizens to develop trust and establish civic friendships” (41).

The second chapter reviews the major moral theories of deontology (the ethics of rules), consequentialism (the ethics of outcomes), and post-modernism. While each theory “offers students and teachers of writing a set of reasons for making one choice over another” and “presents them with a conception of what it means to be a ‘good writer’” (46), Duffy finds that they are ultimately “inadequate as the basis of an ethical rhetoric in the twenty-first century writing classroom” (22). For instance, embracing the ethics of absolutes would tell students “whatever moral ambiguities they may encounter when writing or evaluating texts can be resolved by appealing to inviolate rules, that such rules eclipse the situational variables of topic, occasion, purpose, and audience, and that the good writer is one who adheres to those rules, categorically” (51). On the other hand, a framework grounded in consequences and outcomes sends a message that “good writing is writing that results in receiving a good grade, while poor writing results in that which results in a substandard or failing grade” (54). He comes to the conclusion that “we need to provide students with another kind of ethics and another language for deliberating over ethical choices” (60). At the end of the second chapter, he reiterates his purpose to propose “an alternative moral theory, one grounded neither in terms of rules or consequences, nor in contingencies or differences, but in the qualities of truthfulness, accountability, open-mindedness, and others such qualities that the ancients called ‘virtues’ and that today are the subject of that branch of moral philosophy known as ‘virtue ethics’” (62).

The following chapter, however, does not propose that alternate moral theory quite yet. After defining virtue and virtue ethics and revisiting Aristotelian moral theory, he ventures into alternate accounts of virtue-based ethical frameworks—sentimentalist, feminist, non-Western, and applied virtue ethics—which he claims have “expanded our understanding of virtue and virtue ethics in ways that go beyond Aristotle in distinctive and original ways” and contributed “to a more robust understanding of rhetorical ethics and what it means to be a ‘good writer’” (74). However, once again, “while each of these associations informs the understanding of virtue, they neither define nor foreclose its possibilities for teachers of writing” (22). For instance, sentimentalist virtue ethics—which bases ethical life on emotions such as affect, passion, sympathy, and empathy—“suggests that ethical choices in the arguments, narratives, and other texts our students write are not defined principally by the rational principles of Aristotelian virtue ethics” (77). The other accounts do not seem to have a solitary code of ethics, especially as it relates to virtue, since they seem to be more concerned with ethics of care, anger, social action, and the like.

At last, in the penultimate chapter, we are introduced to the four rhetorical virtues of claims, evidence, counterarguments, and revision. Duffy believes “to teach writing is to teach the communicative practices, such as making claims, offering evidence, and considering counter-arguments, among others, through which writers propose and navigate human relationships. And it is in the context of navigating these human relationships that we are necessarily engaged, students and teachers, with the values, attitudes, and actions that fall within the domain of the ethical” (11). This fourth chapter details how those communicative practices embody the virtues he has spent the previous chapters laying out, and how they take shape in the classroom. For instance, when we teach students to write claims, we are asking them to establish trust with their readers by practicing skepticism and truthfulness (99, 101). By teaching students to support their claims with evidence, we are teaching them how to hold themselves accountable (105). When we teach counter-arguments, we are pushing students to deepen their knowledge of an issue and explore it from multiple perspectives (106), while also judging the credibility of opposing views (108). By encouraging revision, we are teaching our students to ask questions about their claims, evidence, and counterarguments (114). In sum, by teaching the virtues of the writing process, we are teaching the rhetorical virtues of “open-mindedness, intellectual generosity, and intellectual courage” (112). The thoughts in this chapter seem to most directly align with his overall objective, and I would have liked to see them take up more space in his book.

Finally, Duffy proposes six broad strategies that help promote ethical awareness and practice in the writing class: situation, naming, modeling, exemplars, dissensus, and institutional culture. In explaining these strategies, he relies heavily on John Gage and the tenants of making ethical arguments he lays out in an essay entitled, “In Pursuit of Rhetorical Virtue.” The strategies Duffy offers are pretty self-explanatory, but he ends with a call to think about how public discourse might change if writing programs were places that adopted and taught virtue ethics in their rhetorical practices (135). Through all of these strategies, he stresses that the goal of ethical discourse is not consensus, but dissensus, or “encouraging diverse perspectives to make space for debate” (133).

In his conclusion, Duffy revisits and reframes the “Q Question,” “asking not what the teaching of ethical discourse proves, but what it makes possible” (140). Looking back to his introduction, Duffy states, “[o]ur toxic public arguments have contributed to a rhetorical climate in which we no longer share common understandings of the nature of a fact, or what counts as evidence, or how to interpret what evidence may be presented” (5). For him, the language of ethics and the teaching of rhetorical virtues is that common ground (140).

Duffy provides an ideal model for writing in the composition classroom, which, if perfectly followed, could lead to complete ethical morality and restore the corrupt state of public discourse in the United States. However, as he mentions, “teaching students, as many of us do, to view the research process as an opportunity for inquiry and exploration, and not as a pretext to confirm pre-existing biases, effectively places us at odds with human evolutionary development” (18). He mentions that Christianity is a moral framework which, if followed, “could lead to the highest good of salvation” (45). However, just as the promises of God stand true knowing all humans will inevitably fall short, so may a rhetorical code based on ethics stand true knowing all students will inevitably fall short as well. Perhaps, then, the goal is not to achieve perfect ethical practice, but to constantly strive for it. And we can start by not only implementing, but practicing, the strategies Duffy lays out in this book.

While teachers of writing seem to be his preliminary audience, Duffy notes that “we” also includes scholars, administrators, and anyone else reading this book (23). I would even challenge those limitations and say “we” includes those we engage with in any form of public discourse. If modeling is an effective strategy for our students in the classroom, then why not model that same ethical behavior in our Twitter feeds and department meetings? Anyone who wants to learn and practice healthier public discourse could benefit from reading Duffy’s book, especially the fourth chapter on rhetorical virtues; in fact, I have already assigned that section to my own first-year composition class. Let us, then, in Writing Studies, take up Duffy’s call to start bringing ethical writing practices back into the classroom. But let all of us, in Writing Studies and beyond, make sure we don’t stop there.