The relationship between the study of rhetoric and the development of virtue or an ethical sense has been debated since classical times.

A2.  Explain the classical and Enlightenment definitions of rhetoric and propose a contemporary definition. Account for differences between the three.

 

“As for the aim of all kinds of intellectual pursuits: one and only is kept in view, one is pursued, one is honored by all: Truth.”  Giambattista Vico

 

      Rhetoric for classical, enlightenment, and my contemporary definition is the revealing of truth using the art of persuasion.  It is the use of words whether verbally, and or written to persuade an audience to agree with the orators point of view. What is the truth?  That is a difficult question for each age has differing views of truth and its achievement.  Rhetoric is tied to exposing and concealment of truth. 

     For the ancient Greeks, Rhetoric is an offshoot of dialectic and ethical studies. In On Rhetoric, Aristotle describes rhetoric as “an antistrophos to dialectic; for both are concerned with such things as are, to a certain extent, within the knowledge of all people and belong to no separately defined science” (1.1).  There is a systematic form one can use to persuade the audience, or adjudicators depending on the type of argument the orator is demonstrating based in speech rather than in writing.  Thousands of years ago, the memory was stressed because writing was not as important to rhetoric as it is today.  The orator needed knowledge of different subjects within his mind, which he could call upon while demonstrating his argument. In classical times, rhetoric and the poetic were inseparable.  Even though the written word was not stressed, all texts were considered rhetorical text.  There was no division between the aesthetic and the pragmatic.  The binary of aesthetic and political did not exist.

     During classical times, rhetoric was used in the public sphere of discussion.  It was a tool of democracy, at least in Athens.  It was used to inform the masses of certain political arguments, to debate within the senate, to litigate legal cases, and to discover the nature of man existence.  The orator must appear credible for persuasion to be achieved because the average Greek citizen was illiterate.  Devices needed to be used to convince the general public of a case.  However, many orators such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle believed that an orator should not pervert or debase the truth in order to sway the audience. 

     The truth for the ancient Greeks was the knowledge of ethos, pathos, logos, and the construction of an argument; an argument that is sound is based in this truth. Ethos is the character of the speaker; persuasion is achieved “through character whenever the speech is spoken in such a way as to make the speaker worthy of credence; for we believe fair-minded people to a greater extent and more quickly” than we do others (Aristotle 1.2).  Pathos is persuasion through emotion.  For logos, Aristotle believes “persuasion occurs through the arguments when we show the truth or the apparent truth form whatever is persuasive in each case” (1.2).  The key here is the apparent truth because it is believed that only a true argument can be formed well.   

       The use of rhetoric in the public sphere began to fade with the authoritarian rule of a central figure such as a Caesar in ancient Roman.  In De Oratore, Cicero, an ancient Roman orator defines rhetoric as being concerned with common usage and the custom and language of all men.  Like the Greeks, Cicero advocated “a knowledge of a vast number of things is necessary, without which volubility of words is empty and ridiculous” (1.5).  Cicero stressed the knowledge of many different disciplines and writing.   Not only the memory, but the study of written text and the act of writing ones argument would create a praiseworthy orator.  The argument would be grounded in knowledge, “he who cannot deliver nothing worthy of his subject is shameless” (1.26).  It is this shame that must be avoided.  The shame is speaking before having the knowledge of one’s subject and the ability to form a solid argument.  Here again, we see the classical idea of the truth as being able to construct an argument.

     Enlightenment can also be called the age of reason because reason was the leading train of thought.  The Scientific method became the mode for investigating the truth instead of blind adherence to the church.  Mechanical inventions and scientific innovation changed people’s perception of reality.  Hard thought and rationalism became favored as a way to navigate the world and discover nature’s secrets.  Expository writing became associated with rhetoric.  Alexander Bain, in From English Composition and Rhetoric, states

Exposition belongs to Science, and to all information in the guise of general principles.  The methods to be observed in rendering expository style as easy as the subjects will allow, are worthy of a full consideration. […] Besides the wide rage of matters involved in persuasive address, there is a complication with the Art of Proof, or Logic (874).

The enlightenment encouraged democracy and capitalism because of its push toward industrialism.  During this time, the idea of egalitarian caused social upheavals such as the American Revolution, and the French Revolution.  People began to question monarchal rule and demand basic human rights. 

     Truth became freedom and democracy for the peasant class.  Rhetoric became even more so associated with pragmatics because people like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Mary Wollstonecraft began to argue for basic human rights. Before the enlightenment, literacy was in the realm of the elite, the aristocrat.  During the Enlightenment, literacy became a tool of the peasant class to fight for freedom.  We begin to see instruction for the commons (when I use the word common, I mean non-elite people) use of rhetoric.  Bain exclaims, “Numerous attempts have been made, and are still making, to methodize instruction […] to cultivate a in them a copious fund of expression” (874).  The enlightenment began the separation of rhetoric and literature.  Rhetoric became the realm of the lower, worldly reality where literature became the realm of the elite the aesthetic. 

     In 2009 there is still a separation of the poetic and the rhetoric; the poetic is the body of literature, and the rhetoric is the art of writing and persuasion.  The separation is a means of social division through class, race, gender because it takes the political out of literature.  People are not encouraged to question images or cultural codes embedded in text.  The truth of socialization to maintain the capitalist power structure is hidden.  Truth is an elusive animal in 2009 that can be manipulated by those orators who appear the most credible.  It is not only speech and writing that modern humans must deal with, but it is also the other forms of media that did not exist in classical times or in the enlightenment.  Television, radio, and the internet bombard people with message to maintain a passive consuming citizen.  I want rhetoric to be a means to critical explore ideas with the goal of becoming a political critic and active democratic agent.  The modern human should learn to recognize suasion and rhetorical devices used to persuade him/her to agree with an argument.  Then he/she can decide for him/herself what is true and what is not. 

     The classical, the enlightenment, and the contemporary ages share the rhetoric meaning of persuasion; it is the way that each reveals truth that is different.  For the classical, truth and therefore rhetoric was about adhering to the form of argument based in ethos, pathos, and logos.  For the Age of Enlightenment, truth was revealed through rationalism; democracy, and the separation of the poetic from the logical.  Rhetoric is use in a pragmatic sense to give information.  In Contemporary times, the truth is concealed in carefully crafted arguments, and rhetoric is needed to critical analyze media in all her forms.