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2. Speaking of Rhetoric
- University of Pittsburgh Press
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24 Rhetoric is a very old art. Conceivably its practice began when human beings learned to talk, and surely when they discovered differences of opinion. Theories of rhetoric developed in the West as early as the sixth century bce, and rhetoric was studied in Western schools from ancient times through the Renaissance. Throughout this long period it was taught to men (and on rare occasions women) who were positioned to become leaders in their communities. Rhetoric is useful to communities because those who practice it—here called “rhetors”—can find ways to alleviate disagreement; those who study it—here called “rhetoricians”—try to understand why disagreement occurs so they may help rhetors figure out how to alleviate it. Granted, rhetors sometimes deliberately obfuscate or mislead , and sometimes they foment or intensify disagreement. This fact does not undermine the usefulness of rhetoric itself, however. In On Rhetoric Aristotle notes that all good and useful things, such as “strength, health, wealth, and military strategy,” harbor the potential for harm, “for by using these justly one would do the greatest good and unjustly, the greatest harm” (I.1.1355a). In other words, ethical risk is involved in the use of any powerful art or attribute. The power of rhetoric lies in its discrimination of a conceptual vocabulary and a set of discursive strategies that allow those who are familiar with it to intervene fruitfully in disputes and disagree2 speaking of Rhetoric sPeAkiNg Of RhetORic 25 ments. Risk is entailed when access to rhetorical power/knowledge is unevenly distributed within a polity. Charles Sears Baldwin, an early twentieth-century historian of rhetoric , depicted the Second Sophistic (100–400 ce) as a period during which rhetoric was degraded because Roman emperors allowed no space for political disagreement. After the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 bce a series of emperors assumed power over the former republic of Rome. They ruled the vast Empire and the citizens of Rome alike with a mixture of guile, repression, and strategic assassination. The ruthlessness of these regimes had a chilling effect on rhetorical practice. Tacitus remarks in his history of the Imperial period that “the rising tide of flattery had a deterrent effect. . . . The reigns of Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, and Nero were described during their lifetimes in fictitious terms, for fear of the consequences” (31). Nearly two thousand years later Baldwin summarized what happens to rhetoric when it cannot be tied to civic deliberation: “sophistry is the historic demonstration of what oratory becomes when it is removed from the urgency of subject matter. Seeking some inspiration for public occasions, it revives over and over again a dead past. Thus becoming conventionalized in method, it turns from cogency of movement to the cultivation of style” (15). Today historians of rhetoric might quarrel with Baldwin’s negative assessment of sophistry. But his point still holds: rhetoric cannot thrive in polities where open disagreement is discouraged. During the American colonial and revolutionary periods rhetoric was taught to everyone who entered a school or college; its study and practice were required at Harvard College, for example, from its founding in the early seventeenth century. Samuel Eliot Morison claims that “rhetoric, studied from classical texts, manuals, and collections of flores, and practised constantly by declamation in English and Latin, taught [students] how to speak and write with ‘clearness, force, and elegance’” (30). However , instruction in rhetoric faded from school curricula in the late nineteenth century and is no longer readily available. It is increasingly hard to find professing rhetoricians in American colleges and universities, where rhetorical studies resides at the margins of communication and English departments. In civic spheres rhetoric is held in such low esteem that it is often taken to be part of the problem rather than its cure. I refer of course to the view that rhetoric is somehow false or unreal, that it gets in the way of meaningful discussion. Today rhetoric, a formidable art of persuasion studied by Aristotle and practiced by Cicero, is identified with “spin.” Spin [54.224.52.210] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 09:07 GMT) 26 sPeAkiNg Of RhetORic is what people spout when they want to cloud the issue rather than clarify it, or when they have nothing of consequence to impart but are expected to speak nonetheless. Spin interprets facts in a light favorable to the interpreter , and its practice implies that facts may be unintelligible or even dangerous if encountered unspun. Rhetoric is something else altogether. Ancient rhetoricians conceived of rhetoric...