ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the importance of “doctrines” based on development of a sufficiently clear demarcation criterion between rules of policy and legal rules. It deals with a more principled treatment of rhetoric and reasoning tries. A criterion distinguishing clearly between legal rules and other rules of the game serving as constraints upon the choices of a decision-maker will, consequently, have to be developed. The chapter discusses the issue in terms of the “language game” involved in “following a rule.” The outcome of a decision determined by legal or moral rules is on the contrary, heavily dependent upon such a situation. The difference rests, in other words, in the relationship between the prostasis of a rule—that part of the rule which points to the circumstances in which it operates—and the situation which calls for the decision. The role of doctrines serving as rules, as guidance devices for inferences in the formulation of foreign policy, becomes visible.
