UNSPOKEN ASSUMPTIONS
FRANCIS J. GAVINMAY 11, 2023
COMMENTARYFranz_Ferdinand_&_Sophie_Leave_Sarajevo_Guildhall
Editor’s Note: This is the introductory essay for Volume 6, Issue 1 of the Texas National Security Review, our sister publication. Be sure to read the entire issue.
In April 1968, historian of modern Europe James Joll delivered an inaugural lecture at the London School of Economics entitled “1914: The Unspoken Assumptions.” He presented his reflections several months after the English language translation of German historian Fritz Fischer’s controversial book, German Aims During the First World War, appeared. Joll had contributed an introduction to the English edition, after having written a review essay on the German language edition.
Joll’s essay confronted the challenge of surfacing unspoken assumptions — or what is left unsaid when people make consequential decisions. When assessing any critical choice — either in the past or present — we analyze the process and debates over policies by looking at written documents and commentary made in public. But many times, the core assumptions and worldviews shaping decisions are not explicitly laid out.
When political leaders are faced with the necessity of taking decisions the outcome of which they cannot foresee, in crises which they do not wholly understand, they fall back on their own instinctive reactions, traditions and modes of behaviour. Each of them has certain beliefs, rules or objectives which are taken for granted; and one of the limitations of documentary evidence is that few people bother to write down, especially in moments of crisis, things which they take for granted. Yet if we are to understand their motives, we must somehow try to find out what, as we say, ‘goes without saying.’
https://warontherocks.com/2023/05/unspoken-assumptions/
