Openings: Acknowledging Essential Moments in Human Communication

6. Truth, Eloquence, and the Creation of Openings

109 —6— Truth, Eloquence, and the Creation of Openings The transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson writes of the heroic nature of eloquence: “Certainly there is no true orator who is not a hero. . . . The orator must ever stand with forward foot, in the attitude of advancing. . . . His speech is not to be distinguished from action. It is action, as the general’s word of command or shout of battle is action.”1 This claim calls into question a well-known maxim of our culture—“Actions speak louder than words”—that is famous for its “put-down” of the practice of rhetoric and that is heard indirectly in Kierkegaard’s earlier noted dismissal of eloquence as “babbling.”2 The metaphor that informs the eloquence of Emerson’s claim lends it further force for, indeed, heroes and war are readily related. When speaking of the true orator’s heroism, however, Emerson’s understanding of “war” emphasizes what he terms “a military attitude of the soul” that is not directed toward the actual killing of others. Instead, this attitude is needed by the orator who would “dare the gibbet and the mob,” the rage and retribution of a misinformed and closed-minded public, when attempting to move its members beyond the blinders of their “common sense” beliefs and toward a genuine understanding of what, for the orator, is arguably the truth of some immediate matter of concern. For Emerson, the 110 • Openings heroism and dignity of the true orator is made possible not only by one’s “power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it,” but also, and primarily, by one’s “love of truth and . . . [the] desire to communicate it without loss.”3 The process presupposes the imaginative capacity of the orator to construct dwelling places for his or her audience, to create openings for others that allow for collaborative deliberation about the truth of the matter at hand. I agree with the literary critic Northrop Frye: “As long as a single form of life remains in misery and pain the imagination finds the world not good enough.”4 The heroic nature of the true orator entails moral obligations. As evidenced in his writings, Kierkegaard, I believe, would favor Emerson’s and Frye’s related positions, especially if they are associated with a love of God.5 The same can be said about another well-spoken orator President Barack Obama, who knows the importance of being open to others and who thus appreciates the impulse of perfection that makes possible this democratic state of existence. Obama puts it this way in his inaugural address: “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist. . . . There is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.”6 Eloquence is born of imagination, love, and a desire for perfection and truth. As Kenneth Burke succinctly notes, “The primary purpose of eloquence is not to enable us to live our lives on paper—it is to convert life into its most thorough verbal equivalent ” in order to better understand, appreciate, and deal with the reality of which we are a part.7 The true orator, the rhetor as hero, is a person committed to this imaginative and dignified task of eloquence. In working out the moral grounds of “civic republicanism” as he countered Plato’s critique of the orator’s art, Cicero made clear the value and necessity of such rhetorical action: for “what function is so kingly, so worthy of the free, so generous, as to bring help to the suppliant, to raise up those who are cast down, to bestow security, to set free from peril, to maintain men in their civil rights? . . . The wise control of the complete orator is that which chiefly upholds not only his own dignity, Truth, Eloquence, and the Creation of Openings • 111 but the safety of countless individuals and of the entire State.”8 Indeed, the rhetor as hero, which Cicero certainly aspired to be, is the embodiment of dignity. His or her presence and action allow for an epideictic display of dignitas. In his assessment of the political style that characterizes Cicero’s republican theory of rhetoric and that...