Modes of Argumentation

Note in Henry V that the legal argument is placed next to the argument from honor, pride, and tradition, which is then placed next to the argument from insult.
 

 
It is fairly easy to see what is insufficient in a purely legal argument.  They are made in
the abstract without taking account of the specifics of a particular situation and by virtue of their generality are deficient.  Second, while logical, logic alone cannot answer the question of 
the justice or rightness of a claim, only whether it is logically sound and hence rational.  For example, I can tell you there is a rule that all people who do not bear their head in church must be sanctioned (major premise).  I can then tell you that Sally failed to bear her head (minor premise). 
Therefore, Sally must be sanctioned.  Come to find out, however, that Sally just had brain surgery
and needs to keep her head wrapped.
Now common sense tells us that it would be unjust to apply the rule in this situation, but we need something other than Legal Logic to tell us.  Hence, Henry's question "but is it just?"
He is called to tradition, to the story of his people and the wars with France.  They may not stir the reader who is ignorant, but they stir Hal.  The Feelings of reverence, honor, and loyalty to those before him evoke him to the concrete considerations of the particulars of this case.  He answers the question: does the rule apply in this situation.

  As an Aside -- How does this relate to legal argumentation in so far as it aims to argue for the just and true?  Read IN PRAISE OF CALLICLES, by Philippe Nonet, Judges as Poets, by Martha Nussbaum and finally [tobe attached later]

 

 


 

 The emotions such as repulsion, respect, joy clue as in to those judgments and tenets which we have incorporated into ourselves as part of our being, so too they clue us in to what kind of judgments we should make.  NOTE,  feeling and instinct while related are not the same quality.  "Instinct" connotes several aspects of being. One, instinct refers to amoral qualities such as aggression, hunger, lust and  predatory nature.  While feelings are intimately related to these instincts, they are not identical.  They are cognitive in that they are directed at some outside thing which we understand and evokes feeling within us.
Instinct knows no other, only itself and hence the sense we have of instinct being non-reflective, non-selfconscious, non-thinking.  Often we connect it to the idea of reaction as opposed to action.  Nevertheless, there is also a place for the instinctual in the doing of justice.  The question is "what place?" and we will wait to entertain it.  Though note that in contradistinction from Hal's evocation to feelings which were concretely tied to his ancestors' relations and wars with France, that his "reaction" to the Dauphin's insult was more akin to an instinctual rising up.
For now consider, that as we consider to act, and how to act, in a given dispute, all three states, reason, feeling, and instinct need to conjoin together.  Put different, it is never sufficient that an act is legal (logical and rational), it must be just in the particular case and that requires a heart attuned to the details of a dispute.  And so too, it is never sufficient that we are both attune, and rational, for we do not act without impetus, we must be ignited into action.  Ignition is itself intimately tied to instinct.