Democracy and Rhetoric: John Dewey on the Arts of Becoming

Chapter 3: Rhetoric and Aesthetics

Rhetoric and Aesthetics If the philosophical understanding of the relationship between logic and rhetoric has traditionally been one of master and slave, the relationship between rhetoric and aesthetics has been more complex. For instance, from the rationalistic perspective of a metaphysical logic, rhetoric is a fundamentally aesthetic practice. Dealing as it does with the manipulation of the perceptions and emotions for the sake of producing pain, pleasure, and practice, rhetoric for a rationalist can be nothing other than a “mere” wallowing in the senses that embodies the antithesis of reason. One finds such a view expressed in Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke and David Hume. For Locke rhetoric involves the “artificial and figurative application of Words”1 designed for nothing else but to “insinuate wrong Ideas, move the Passions, and thereby mislead the Judgment; and so indeed are perfect cheat.”2 Hume piles on even more condemnation, noting with scorn how“eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection ; but addressing itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates willing hearers, and subdues their understanding.”3 To guard against these effects, Hume goes on to articulate a method that would effectively eliminate all rhetorical and aesthetic discourse that fails to address itself to unadorned understanding. “Let us ask,” he writes, “Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”4 From this perspective aesthetics and rhetoric are not even loyal servants to logic; they are its sworn enemies. But few outside of the dying realm of positivism would today go so far as Hume to advocate for national speech-burning exercises. Most people accept the Platonic view that rhetoric is necessary to move the passions toward the good. They acknowledge a legitimate distinction between rhetoric that is “merely” aesthetic because it covers up a lack of substance and rhetoric that achieves eloquence because it gives beautiful expression to shared beliefs and values. This ideal of eloquence finds its greatest appeal in the idealistic tradition of religion. Bishop Berkeley, for instance, accuses Locke of misstating the ends of language when championing the ideal 3 Rhetorics and Aesthetics 131 of “clarity.” For Berkeley “the communicating of ideas marked by words is not the chief and only end of language, as is commonly supposed. There are other ends, as the raising of some passion, the exciting to or deterring from an action, the putting the mind in some particular disposition.”5 Pursuing these ends are thus justified for Berkeley insofar at they perform virtuous functions, such as bringing a soul to God or to realizing some moral truth in life. Yet this view simply returns us to the Weaver’s interpretation of rhetoric as “truth plus its artful presentation.”6 This view does not so much rehabilitate the role of aesthetics in rhetoric as excuse its use when it is based on the outcome of dialectical inquiry. Rhetoric and aesthetics have simply moved from death row back to the slave’s quarters. But at least they are still housed together. Yet rhetoric and aesthetics split once again when viewed from the heights of the transcendental ideal of art. This perspective challenges the rationalist assumption that beauty should simply be the handmaiden to truth; it posits instead that truth is beauty. For the aesthetic idealist, there exists a nonpropositional kind of truth that comes to us only through intuitive revelation brought about through interaction with sensual forms. Ironically we find the roots of this perspective also in Plato. In the Phaedrus, for instance, he recognizes a kind of “madness”inspired by love of the gods which exists as a“divinely inspired release from normally accepted behavior.”7 In this aesthetic transformation , a new whole is born that generates a divine madness that transcends conventional logic. What Plato means by “divine madness,” then, does not equate simply to a new passion for a preestablished rational truth. Madness represents an entirely new state of being that is partly self-generative. Neither material nor ideal, divine madness is the interaction of the sensual body with the spirited soul as it is touched by the hand of the gods. Great art brings forth this divine madness and gets us in touch with a higher beauty. In Dewey this Platonic view of art appears in his youthful Psychology, written in 1886, when...