Adams,

Misty A. The Un-ethic: On Katzs The Ethic of Expediency

The Un-ethic: On Katzs The Ethic of Expediency

Steven Katz, in his 1992 publication, The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust warns us, expediency is the only technical ethic[a]nd, of course, technology is the embodiment of pure expediency (p. 204). In other words, putting what is solely efficient, technical, technically accurate, and task-oriented before ethical societal, cultural, and human concerns is dangerous. Katz puts forth the example of a Nazi Germany technical communication document as a case in pointthat documentation may be perfectly appropriate and ethical within an organizational ethos (1992, p. 198) and yet such an organization (in this case, the Nazi regime) may be, in fact, morally and ethically reprehensible. Katz makes it clear that technical communicators, due to their roles in rhetorically communicating technology and teaching such communication, should be actively availing themselves of ethical examination in the documentation they create and the pedagogical approaches they take. Katz focuses his argument on the ethic of expediency via an examination of deliberative rhetoric, in which we seek to persuade someone to do something or to accept our point of view (1999, Corbett & Connors, p. 23). Katz asserts that the German public, in addition to the military and civic machine otherwise known as the Nazi Party, allowed science and technology [to] become the basis of a powerful ethical argument for carrying out any program (1992, p. 203). In this particular case, that program was Hitlers Final Solution for the systematic extermination of Europes Jews and other undesirables. Hitler was able, via technological expediency (and, therefore, the ethic of expediency) to make mass extermination not only necessary, but just and

Adams, Misty A. The Un-ethic: On Katzs The Ethic of Expediency honorable (Katz,1992, p. 203). This just and honorable ideology, presented by Hitler to the polis of Germany via deliberative rhetoric, addressed that societys cultural focus on organization, elegance, efficiency, and speed (Katz,1992, p. 203). By focusing the polis (Katz, 1992) upon the task to be accomplished--the extermination of people--Hitler effectively dehumanized the Final Solution project into a technological undertaking that only the industrious German people could effect and, thus, save the world. Katzs article, while not necessarily shouting at technical communicators, is shouting at technical communicators: Ethics! ethics! ethics! Please teach ethics, in your classrooms, in your textbooks, and in your scholarly pursuits! From the lowliest undergrad to the loftiest epistemologist, Katz is imploring us that we can and should teach the whole panoply of ethics in deliberative discourse in our rhetoric and writing courses (1992, p. 208). Rhetoricians, and by this I mean in our modern senseof which technical communicators may be seen as a de facto groupwould seem to be morally bound to pay careful attention to technical discourse and, in fact, discourse in general. Otherwise, Katz warns, the technologically capitalistic and overly-rational society may become, not unlike Nazi Germany, enslaved to the State[s] (1992, p. 207) moral and ethical view of right and wrong, good and utilitarian.

Adams, Misty A. The Un-ethic: On Katzs The Ethic of Expediency

References

Corbett, E.P.J. & Connors, R.J. (1999). Classical rhetoric for the modern student. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Katz, S.B. (1992). The ethic of expediency: Classical rhetoric, technology, and the holocaust. In J. Johnson-Eilola & S. Selber (Eds.) Central works in technical communication (pp. 195-210). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.