Portal:Rhetoric
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Rhetoric is a derivation of the Greek term rhetorike, which first appeared in Plato's dialogue Gorgias. The formal study of rhetoric began in Greece during the 5th century BCE. Paid itinerant teachers called Sophists taught their students the art of effective public speech-making, or oratory. Plato likened rhetoric to cookery, implying that it was an art of appearance rather than truth. Aristotle, a student of Plato, redefined rhetoric in his treatise on the subject as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." Eventually, the scope of rhetoric was expanded to include written as well as spoken discourse, and now includes any form of symbolic communication. Some contemporary definitions of rhetoric include Kenneth Burke's "the use of symbols to induce cooperation in those who by nature respond to symbols" and George Kennedy's "the energy inherent in emotion and thought, transmitted through a system of signs, including language, to others to influence their decisions or actions."
Though rhetoric's reputation suffered during the Age of Enlightenment, when influential writers like Thomas Sprat and John Wilkins of the Royal Society condemned it as meaningless bombast or unwelcome ornamentation, rhetoric is currently enjoying a renaissance in universities across the world.
St. Augustine
St. Augustine wrote On Christian Doctrine to try to convince the church to not continue to outlaw rhetoric as well as to teach Christian teachers how to interpret and teach the Bible.
Plato on Rhetoric
Man is the Measure of All Things
Plato has been the most renowned philosopher of the Western world for over twenty four hundred years. He was believed to be the son of the god Apollo, and was known for his sublime thoughts and vision expressed through his foundational philosophies.
Plato is most famously associated with his teacher and mentor, Socrates. Interestingly, Plato’s’ major works are based on ‘dialogues’ involving Socrates. The father of philosophy, Plato was mainly revered for his revolutionaries ides in philosophic and scientific research that were imparted in his famous school—the Academy. He taught there for twenty before returning to Syracuse. The Academy, however, continued to excel for another nine hundred years and served as a precursor to medieval form of universities.
Theory of Knowledge
“What is Knowledge?” Plato approached the idea of “Knowledge” through a four-level diagram. He was instrumental in questioning the difference between knowledge and opinion. For Plato, the notion of knowledge was related to human soul. He expostulated his philosophical theory of the “tripartite soul” to counter the cultural and moral relativism of the time. Among other areas of knowledge, Plato was concerned with the understanding of “justice,” which he discussed extensively in Book I of Republic.
Interestingly, the concept of justice was based on the idea of soul. The ideal running of a government reflected the harmonious working of the constituents of soul. He also extended the metaphor of soul to the principle of mathematics.
The strains of harmony continued with Plato’s definition of “Good Life.” Good Life did not signify the “Christian denial of body and contempt of flesh;” Plato associated Good Life with the “Life of Reason.” This entailed a true blend of bodily energy and mental sharpness.
Political Philosophy
Book I of the Republic, contain extensive discussion on Plato’s views on the political philosophy of time. Plato concerned himself with thoughts like, What are the elements of a ‘good’ society? What is the extent of power and with whom it exist? What is relation between the individual and the state or the authority? Interestingly, some of the underlying concepts on the Republic have some modern resonances in Foucault’s discussion on ‘power.’
However, Plato stand in sharp contrast with the Christian notion that dismissed the supreme state authority on individual freedom. In this view Plato also contradicts Marxist’s assumption of state as the dictatorial power. Thus, Plato expounded that man as a social creature could nurture himself by the rules of society; for Plato the life could consummate with the ideals of established order manifested through cities ruled by government. Like many other stalwart Greeks of the time, Plato envisioned the propriety human destiny in serving the principles of the state and government. He held city as a ‘man’ “writ large against the sky.”
Intersection with Philosophy
Truth Value
One of the often contentious issues between rhetoricians and philosophers is the often polemic notions each have of truth.
Pre-Socratic and Socratic Periods: During the pre-Socratic and Ancient Greek periods, the debate was particularly strong between the Socratic philosophers and the Sophists
As discussed in Plato’s Gorgias, the Sophists at the time were accused of subscribing to a relativistic notion of truth while Plato, with his theory of forms, advocates a more absolute view of truth. For the Plato, epistemological access to metaphical conceptions of reality were rooted in logic, primarily through the dialectic, whereas the Sophists advocated a notion that truth was rhetorically socially constructed through language use and an individually relative world-view. The function of language serves as either a vehicle for the creation of truths (in the case of the Sophists), or an imperfect human reflection of truths (in the case of Plato).
Aristotle would, in many ways, offer a synthesis between these two differing theories of rhetoric. Aristotle recognized that in theoretical areas, the dialectic provided a means of discovering truth, whereas more pragmatic matters, where the truth may not be discoverable (e.g. judiciary cases) rhetoric is better suited. It is during this time rhetoric gained its traditional appellation of “the art of persuasion,” as Aristotle saw the function of rhetoric as primarily relegated to the legal and political spheres.
Medieval Rhetoric saw a shift in the foundations of truth from largely secular, objective, or relativistic views, as of those the Ancient Greeks, to a theologically based divine source. Medieval rhetoricians, to generalize, looked to religious sources for determination of truth value.
With the rise of Renaissance thinking, rhetoric, the source of truth value returned, once again, to secular roots, specifically philosophy and science. The method of Philosophic inquiry, however, became, even more than in previous times, fractured. On one side of the divide, there were the rationalists, for whom the ultimate source of truth value was intrinsic, or essentially located within human understanding. For the empiricists, on the other hand, truth value, was externally or extrinsically, either located in the observable phenomenon, itself, or in ideas one has about externally observable phenomenon. The role of the rhetorician, then was typically relegated, not to the discovery of truth value, but rather in the effective means of delivering true statements. As was the case with the Medieval rhetoricians, style and delivery typically took precedence for the Renaissance rhetoricians.
The modern and post-modern era of rhetoric saw an explosion in activity. It is difficult to sum up the plethora of diverse theories of truth value, as with any of the previous eras. On the polar-opposite extremes, there are, as was the case in Ancient_Greece, theories of absolute truth value and theories of relative truth value – mirroring (some would say reviving) the arguments between Plato and the sophists. The debate amongst the structuralists and the post-structuralists calls into question the role of language in determining ones world-view, and where – if any place at all – such truth is located.
Ancient Rhetoric
(4th Century B.C.E. - 5th Century C.E.) : In the West, the formal study of Rhetoric began in Greece in the fifth century BCE through the appearance of the Sophists, the first professional teachers of rhetoric in the city-state of Athens. Plato questioned the Sophistic practice and challenged the feined knowledge of the Sophistic orators. Aristotle adapted and expanded upon Plato's ideas. In agreement with the Sophists's views, he sought to establish rhetoric as a teachable discipline, thus opposing his teacher's view that rhetoric was not art. Aristotle was the first to develop scientific proof for arguments. Most of The Ancient era extends from these Greek beginnings to Roman Rhetoric. Cicero (106-43 BCE), a Roman lawyer, drew heavily from Isocrates, Plato, and Aristotle, describing the importance of eloquence and wisdom and also stressing liberal arts. The rhetorical tradition was continued by Quintilian (35-96 CE), who is most famous for his thoughts on the education of youth in rhetoric.
Medieval Rhetoric
(5th - 14th Century) : Rhetoric languished for a while during Europe's late antiquity period. Eventually, at the beginning of the Medieval period, St. Augustine was able to fuse Classical "pagan" rhetoric with the goals of the Catholic Church while writing about the act of preaching. With this the fires of rhetorical theory were rekindled.
Renaissance Rhetoric
(15th - 17th Century) : The Renaissance was a time of renewed European interest in classic Greek and Roman arts and texts. Humanists, at the time, emphasized rhetoric as contributing to the full realization of human potential. The latter part of the Renaissance saw rhetoric attacked both directly and indirectly by Peter Ramus, who challenged the educational system by questioning the teachability of rhetoric rather than the truth. At the same time Francis Bacon took the same critical approach by rejected the syllogism as a means to arrive at the truth.
Enlightenment Rhetoric
(17th - 18th Century) : This era was marked by the rejection of many conventions of classical rhetoric as new ways of constructing reality and investigating discourse gave rise to an epistemological shift. This change corresponded with the new emphasis on the advancement of science through experimentation, empiricism, and inductive logic. The most influential intellectuals of this period were René Descartes, John Locke, and David Hume.
19th Century Rhetoric
20th Century Rhetoric
Postmodern Rhetoric
(20th - 21st Century) : A term dealing with many things, postmodernism in general is a response to literary and artistic modernism. Postmodern rhetoric is concerned with questioning notions of certainty pervasive in many aspects of life and posits a conflicting, not unified, self. Often, postmodern rhetoric is charged with being relativistic.
Contemporary Rhetoric
(19th - 20th Century) : This era has been marked as a way to examine and provide a way of discussing everyday arguments and was brought about as a reinterest in rhetorical studies for discerning and revealing the human motivations and values that structured arguments, which science was unable to address. Some of the most influential rhetors of this time were Chaim Perelman, Olbrechts-Tyteca, Stephen Toulmin, Kenneth Burke, and Lloyd Bitzer.
Women's Rhetoric
(20th - 21st Century) : This field of rhetoric is no longer obsessed with the idea of how to persuade people. But rather it is interested in understanding how people make sense of and construct the world they live in. This movement is marked by the questioning of systems that favor one group of people and subordinate others. Rhetoric is what gives power to the marginalized groups of society, not an instrument of the powerful.
How to define "Rhetoric"?
Definitions of rhetoric are ungainly. In post-modern and contemporary theories of rhetoric, the ownership of the term is all-important. Thus in a field called "rhetoric" the definition of the name of the field becomes one of the vehicles by which the ship of rhetorical studies is steered. Who is at the wheel in the early part of the 21st century? Without doubt, the post-moderns. But classical passengers are dining on the upper deck, romantics and expressivists are viewing the scenery from their upper class windows, and the great mass of consumers of rhetoric is gathered now with the sophists at starboard, now with Plato at port. First, second, third class passengers, and those in steerage—all have different definitions of rhetoric.
- "Rhetoric is the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." -- Aristotle, Rhetoric
- "Our minds possess by nature an insatiable desire to know the truth." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tusculanarum Disputationum (I, 18)
- "A word is a bridge thrown between myself and another. If one end of the bridge depends on me, then the other depends on my addressee." Mikhail Bahktin, Marxism
- "Whatever precautions you take so the photograph will look like this or that, there comes a moment when the photograph surprises you. It is the other's gaze that wins out and decides." Jacques Derrida
