CHAPTER ONE
Introduction: The Nature of Rhetoric
The English word “rhetoric” is derived from Greek rh
torik, which apparently came into use in the circle of Socrates in the fifth century and first appears in Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, probably written about 385 B.C. but set dramatically a generation earlier. Rhtorik in Greek specifically denotes the civic art of public speaking as it developed in deliberative assemblies, law courts, and other formal occasions under constitutional government in the Greek cities, especially the Athenian democracy. As such, it is a specific cultural subset of a more general concept of the power of words and their potential to affect a situation in which they are used or received. Ultimately, what we call “rhetoric” can be traced back to the natural instinct to survive and to control our environment and influence the actions of others in what seems the best interest of ourselves, our families, our social and political groups, and our descendants. This can be done by direct action—force, threats, bribes, for example—or it can be done by the use of “signs,” of which the most important are words in speech or writing. Some concept of rhetoric, under different names, can be found in many ancient societies. In Egypt and China, for example, as in Greece, practical handbooks were written to advise the reader how to become an effective speaker.
Classical writers regarded rhetoric as having been “invented,” or more accurately, “discovered,” in the fifth century B.C. in the democracies of Syracuse and Athens. What they mean by this is that then, for the first time in Europe, attempts were made to describe the features of an effective speech and to teach someone how to plan and deliver one. Under democracies citizens were expected to participate in political debate, and they were expected to speak on their own behalf in courts of law. A theory of public speaking evolved, which developed an extensive technical vocabulary to describe features of argument, arrangement, style, and delivery. In recent years, the term “metarhetoric” has been coined to describe a theory or art of rhetoric in contrast to the practice or application of the art in a particular discourse. The first teachers of rhetoric were the itinerent lecturers of fifth-century Greece known as “sophists,” to be discussed in the next chapter; beginning with Isocrates in the fourth century, regular schools of rhetoric became common, and throughout the Greco-Roman period the study of rhetoric was a regular part of the formal education of young men.
Classical rhetoricians—that is, teachers of rhetoric—recognized that many features of their subject could be found in Greek literature before the “invention” of rhetoric as an academic discipline, and they frequently used rhetorical concepts in literary criticism. Conversely, the teaching of rhetoric in the schools, ostensibly concerned primarily with training in public address, had a significant effect on written composition, and thus on literature. All literature is “rhetorical” in the sense that its function is to affect a reader in some way—“to teach and to please,” as the Roman poet Horace and many other critics put it—but beginning in the last three centuries B.C., much Greek and Latin literature is overtly rhetorical in that it was composed with a knowledge of classical rhetorical theory and shows its influence.
In the third chapter of his lectures On Rhetoric, Aristotle distinguished three “species” of rhetoric. An audience, he says, is either a judge or not a judge of what is being said. By this he means that an audience either is or is not being asked to make a specific decision on an issue presented to it. If the audience is a judge, it is either judging events of the past, as in a court of law, in which case the speech is classified as “judicial,” or it is judging what action to take in the future, in which case the speech is “deliberative.” If the audience is not being asked to take a specific action, Aristotle calls the speech “epideictic” (i.e., “demonstrative”). What he has in mind are speeches on ceremonial occasions, such as public festivals or funerals, which speeches he characterizes as aimed at praise or blame. These three categories—judicial, deliberative, epideictic—remained fundamental throughout the history of classical rhetoric and are still useful in categorizing forms of discourse today. The concept of epideictic rhetoric, however, needs to be broadened beyond Aristotle’s definition. In later antiquity, some rhetoricians included within it all poetry and prose. Perhaps epideictic rhetoric is best regarded as any discourse that does not aim at a specific action but is intended to influence the values and beliefs of the audience.
In its fully developed form, as seen for example in writings of Cicero in the first century B.C. and of Quintilian a century later, classical rhetorical teaching consisted of five parts that parallel the act of planning and delivering a speech. Since a knowledge of how to speak in a law court was probably the skill most needed by most students, classical rhetorical theory primarily focused on judicial rhetoric. Rhetoricians, however, usually also gave some attention to deliberative and epideictic forms, and from the time of the Roman Empire some treatises describe epideictic forms in considerable detail.
The first of the five parts of classical rhetoric is “invention” (Gk. heuresis, Lat. inventio). This is concerned with thinking out the subject matter: with identifying the question at issue, which is called the stasis of the speech, and the available means of persuading the audience to accept the speaker’s position. The means of persuasion include, first, direct evidence, such as witnesses and contracts, which the speaker “uses” but does not “invent”; second, “artistic” means of persuasion, which include presentation of the speaker’s character (thos) as trustworthy, logical argument (logos) that may convince the audience, and the pathos or emotion that the speaker can awaken in the audience. The artistic means of persuasion utilize “topics” (Gk. topoi, Lat. loci), which are ethical or political premises on which an argument can be built or are logical strategies, such as arguing from cause to effect. A speaker can also use topics, many of which became traditional, to gain the trust or the interest of the audience. The importance of the case can be stressed, not only for the speaker, but as a precedent for future decisions or for its effect on society.
The second part of classical rhetoric is “arrangement” (Gk. taxis, Lat. dispositio). “Arrangement” means the organization of a speech into parts, though the order in which arguments are presented, whether the strongest first or toward a climax, is sometimes discussed. Rhetoricians found it difficult to separate discussion of arrangement from discussion of invention and often merged the two into an account of the inventional features of each part of a speech. The basic divisions recognized by the handbooks and applying best to judicial oratory are (1) introduction, or prooemium, (Gk. prooimion, Lat. exordium); (2) narration (Gk. digsis, Lat. narratio), the exposition of the background and factual details; (3) proof (Gk. pistis, Lat. probatio); and (4) conclusion, or epilogue, (Gk. epilogos, Lat. peroratio). Each part has its own function and characteristics: the prooemium, for example, aims at securing the interest and good will of the audience; the narration should be clear, brief, and persuasive; the proof supplies logical arguments in support of the speaker’s position and also seeks to refute objections that might be made against it; the epilogue is often divided into a recapitulation and an emotional appeal to the audience. Some rhetoricians added other parts. At the beginning of the proof often a “proposition” and a “distribution” of headings is discussed. Sometimes there is what is called a “digression” or “excursus,” which is not so much a true digression as a discussion of some related matter that may affect the outcome or a description of the moral character, whether favorable or unfavorable, of those involved in the case. Deliberative speeches usually have a prooemium, proof, and epilogue and can often omit a narration. Epideictic speeches have a structure of their own; for example a speech in praise of someone may take up the “topics” of his or her country, ancestry, education, character, and conduct.
Once the speaker has planned “what” to say and the order in which to say it, the third task is to decide “how” to say it, that is how to embody it in words and sentences. This is “style” (Gk. lexis, Lat. elocutio). It is characteristic of classical rhetoric to regard style as a deliberate process of casting subject into language; the same ideas can be expressed in different words with different effect. There are two parts to style: “diction,” or the choice of words; and “composition,” the putting of words together into sentences, which includes periodic structure, prose rhythm, and figures of speech. Discussion of style is usually organized around the concept of four “virtues” (aretai) that were first defined by Aristotle’s student Theophrastus: correctness (of grammar and usage), clarity, ornamentation, and propriety. Ornamentation includes “tropes,” literally “turnings” or substitutions of one term for another as in metaphor; figures of speech, or changes in the sound or arrangement of a sequence of words, such as anaphora or asyndeton; and figures of thought, in which a statement is recast to stress it or achieve audience contact, as in the rhetorical question. Styles were often classified into types or “characters,” of which the best known categorization is the threefold division into “grand,” “middle,” and “plain.”
Invention, arrangement, and style are the three most important parts of classical rhetoric, applicable equally to public speaking and written composition. The earliest recognition of them as three separate actions seems to be in Isocrates’ speech Against the Sophists (section 16), written about 390 B.C. Aristotle discusses all three subjects in his lectures On Rhetoric, which in its present form dates from around 335 B.C., but in the first chapter of book 3 he suggests that a fourth part might be added, “delivery.” By the first century B.C. in fact two more parts had been added. Fourth in the usual sequence comes “memory.” Once a speech was planned and written out, the student of rhetoric was expected to memorize it word for word for oral delivery. A mnemonic system of backgrounds and images had been developed for this purpose.1 The best ancient discussion is found in the third book of the Rhetoric for Herennius, written in the early first century B.C. Fifth and last came “delivery,” as Aristotle had proposed. This is divided into control of the voice—volume, pitch, and so on—and gesture, which includes effective control of the eyes and limbs. The best ancient discussion is found in Quintilian’s Education of the Orator, book 11.
Classical metarhetoric, as set out in Greek and Latin handbooks from the fourth century B.C. to the end of antiquity, was a standard body of knowledge. Once fully developed, it remained unaltered in its essential features, though constantly revised and often made more detailed by teachers who sought some originality. Was the teaching of rhetoric ever called into question in antiquity? The answer is “yes.” Just as today “rhetoric” in popular usage can have negative connotations as deceitful or empty, so it was viewed with hostility or suspicion by some in classical times.
The earliest context in which this criticism explicitly appears is the Clouds of Aristophanes, a comic play originally staged in 423 B.C. at the height of the activity of the older sophists.2 The play includes a debate (lines 889–1104) between “Just Speech” and “Injust Speech,” in which injustice acknowledges itself the “weaker” but triumphs by verbal trickery over justice, the “stronger.” In Plato’s Apology (18b8) Socrates, imagined as speaking at his trial in 399 B.C., says he is accused of “making the weaker argument the stronger.” Aristotle (On Rhetoric 2.24.11) identifies “making the weaker cause the stronger” with the use of argument from probability as described in fifth-century rhetorical handbooks and says the phrase was used against the sophist Protagoras. The phrase reflects the frustration of those unskilled in the new techniques of debate when traditional ideas of morality and truth were undermined by verbal argument and paradoxical views that seemed wrong to common sense were seemingly demonstrated. Examples might include not only the comic debate in the Clouds but Zeno’s argument that Achilles could never overtake a tortoise in a race or the argument attributed to Lysias in Plato’s Phaedrus that it is better to accept as lover a person who does not love you than one who does. To make the weaker argument the stronger can certainly be open to moral objections, but historically the discovery in the fifth century of the possibilities of logical argument, and thus the willingness to ask new questions, proved fundamental to scientific progress and social and political change. That the earth is round and circles the sun had long seemed absurd to most people, and to argue that blacks should be equal to whites had long seemed to many the “weaker cause.”
The most important and most influential of the critics of rhetoric was Plato, especially in the dialogue Gorgias.3 The word rht
r in Greek means a public speaker, but it often had the more dubious connotation of a “politician”; the abstraction rhtorik could then be represented as the morally dubious technique of contemporary politicians in contast to the nobler study of philosophy with its basis in “truth.” Socrates in the Gorgias certainly criticizes fifth-century political orators as having corrupted the people, but his criticism is more immediately addressed to Gorgias and Gorgias’ follower Polus for teaching a form of flattery and for their ignorance of the subjects on which they spoke. Gorgias was one of several traveling lecturers, called “sophists” (literally “wise men”), who sought to teach techniques of success in civic life, including what came to be called rhetoric. The sophists as a group were philosophical relativists, skeptical about the possibility of knowledge of universal truth. The earliest of the sophists, Protagoras, had begun a treatise with the famous words “Man is the measure of all things, of things that are in so far as they are and of things that are not in so far as they are not.”4 One of the surviving works of Gorgias, entitled On Nature, argues in outline form that nothing exists, that if it does exist it cannot be known, and that if it could be known knowledge could not be communicated by one person to another.5 The consequence of this position is that the value of opinions about what is true, right, or just should be judged from the circumstances as understood by individuals at a particular time; courses of practical action can best be determined by considering the advantages of the alternatives. This opens up a place for rhetoric in debate and a need to argue both sides of an issue as persuasively as possible, but it also opens up a place for skill in “making the weaker the stronger cause.” Socrates in the Gorgias, and elsewhere in Plato’s dialogues, contends that there is such a thing as absolute truth and universal principles of right and wrong. In the Gorgias (463a–b) he describes rhetoric as a form of flattery and a sham counterpart of justice. But in a later dialogue, Phaedrus, Socrates is made to describe a valid, philosophical rhetoric that would be based on a knowledge of truth, of logical method, and of the psychology of the audience. As we shall see, Isocrates and others attempted to answer Plato’s objections, and Aristotle eventually provided the best solution to the argument by showing that rhetoric, like dialectic, is a morally neutral art, which can argue both sides of an issue but which draws on knowledge from other disciplines in the interests of determining what is advantageous, just, or honorable and employs a distinct method of its own.
Although criticisms of rhetoric were occasionally voiced by others in the fourth and third centuries B.C., the utility of the study of rhetoric for civic life and for writing became generally recognized. The question was, however, reopened in the middle of the second century B.C. by teachers of philosophy, who seem to have been threatened by the number of students flocking to rhetoricians for advanced study rather than to the philosophical schools, traditionally the source of higher education in antiquity. These students included Romans interested in acquiring a knowledge of Greek culture. Cicero (On the Orator 1.46) says that the philosophers in Athens in the late second century B.C. “all with one voice drove the orator from the government of states, excluded him from all learning and knowledge of greater things, and pushed down and locked him up in courts of justice and insignificant disputes as though in a mill.” Cicero’s dialogue On the Orator, written in the middle of the first century B.C., is an eloquent and thoughtful response to criticisms of rhetoric, which are blamed in the first instance on Socrates’ division between tongue and brain (3.61). In books 1 and 3, Crassus, the character in the dialogue with whom Cicero clearly most identified, describes an ideal orator trained in rhetoric, philosophy, law, history, and all knowledge. Such an orator should be morally good and an active participant in public life. The more practical process of rhetoric is substituted for the more theoretical goal of philosophy, but with a deeper basis of knowledge than could be derived solely from the study of rhetorical rules.
Hostility between rhetoric and philosophy existed throughout the period of the Roman Empire. The problem was acerbated by Stoic and Cynic philosophers who criticized the emperors as autocratic. The emperor Domitian, toward the end of the first century after Christ, expelled philosophers from Rome, and the rhetorician Quintilian, who enjoyed Domitian’s patronage, scorned them as antisocial dissidents. The emperor Marcus Aurelius in the second century had studied with the rhetorician Fronto but increasingly turned to the attractions of philosophy. That Plato’s criticisms of rhetoric were still regarded as forceful is seen in the fact that Aelius Aristides in the mid–second century composed an extended reply to Plato entitled In Defense of Oratory. Later in the century the skeptical philosopher Sextus Empiricus in Against the Rhetoricians dismissed the study of rhetoric as a waste of time. Rhetoric was a problem for early Christian thinkers. Saint Paul in first Corinthians (2:4) rejects the “wisdom of this world”: “My speech and my proclamation are not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power, in order that your faith may not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” Radical early Christians often scorned rhetoric as worldly, but Paul was, within his own faith, a skilled rhetorician, and the Apologists of the second century found traditional rhetorical skills useful in presenting the new faith to larger audiences. With the toleration and official establishment of Christianity in the fourth century, Christian leaders show a greater openness to the study of rhetoric. Saint Augustine began his career as a teacher of rhetoric; though he abandoned that on his conversion, he eventually worked out a synthesis of the place of rhetoric in interpretation of the Bible and in preaching as described in On Christian Doctrine.
Some modern readers sympathize with philosophy in its dispute with rhetoric. In the former discipline they see devotion to truth, intellectual honesty, depth of perception, consistency, and sincerity; in the later, verbal dexterity, empty pomposity, triviality, moral ambivalence, and a desire to achieve self-interest by any means. The picture is not quite so clear cut. Rhetorical theorists such as Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian are not unscrupulous tricksters with words. Furthermore, rhetoric was at times a greater liberalizing force in ancient intellectual life than was philosophy, which tended to become dogmatic. The basic principle of humane law—that anyone, however clear the evidence on the other side seems to be, has a right to present a case in the best light possible—is an inheritance from Greek justice and Roman law. Political debaters under democracy in Greece and republican government in Rome recognized the need to entertain opposing views when expressed with rhetorical effectiveness. Finally, linguistic, philosophical, and critical studies in the twentieth century have pointed to the conclusion that there is no such a thing as nonrhetorical discourse; even ostensibly objective scientific and philosophical writing contains social and political assumptions that may be questioned and uses rhetorical techniques that carry ethical and emotional connotations to argue its case. In the first chapter of On Rhetoric Aristotle presents reasons for concluding that rhetoric is useful; we can go beyond that to say it is necessary and inevitable. In speaking, writing, hearing, and reading, we are better off if we understand the process.