Rhetoric

How to combine political rule with freedom, or at least how to minimize oppression, are questions that have often puzzled political thinkers. One popular response to these questions is to suggest that government should rest on persuasion rather than coercion. It is claimed that persuasion, unlike force, leaves the capacity for choice intact, and so is not an exercise of power. Yet, while rhetoric does not involve the use of force, it is often thought of as a tool that can be used by skillful orators to manipulate people into supporting whatever course of action best suits the orator's interest. For those who adopt this view, rhetoric seems more like coercion than respectful persuasion, and thus some maintain that if arbitrary and oppressive rule is to be avoided, we should purge public discourse of rhetoric. Thus, debate about the value of rhetoric tends to focus on whether it can be thought of as a weapon or a tool, and if so whether it is a weapon that must be used if a just and stable state is to be maintained.

Disagreement about whether rhetoric should be thought of as a manipulative tool can to some extent be explained by disagreement about how it should be defined. Aristotle, one of the earliest supporters of rhetoric, defined rhetoric broadly as speech in public that is intended to persuade, and contrasted it to speech intended to teach. However, effective persuasion in the public forum tends [Page 579]to be characterized by particular persuasive techniques, for example appeals to the emotions, and later Roman and Renaissance writers identified rhetoric with these techniques. Defining rhetoric as the “science of speaking well” encouraged them to think of rhetoric as a powerful tool or weapon. Tacitus, in his Dialogus de oratoribus, explains that the mastery of rhetoric “leaves you perpetually armed” and able “to strike fear and terror into malignant enemies” and the ability of great orators to argue either side of a case equally effectively was widely celebrated. However, this understanding of rhetoric alarmed many later writers who worried that if rhetoric was a weapon that could be used to defend or attack almost any position, then it would be used by good orators to manipulate and mislead. Thus, Thomas Hobbes insisted that the goal of eloquence “is not the truth but victory, so that truth is only obtained by accident.'

Yet Roman and Renaissance humanist writers maintained that the art of rhetoric was an essential part of public life. Their defense of rhetoric was in part based on the claim that rhetoric is necessary to motivate people. Cicero worried that “wisdom in itself is silent and powerless to speak” and he maintained that “eloquence is indispensable if men are to persuade others to accept the truths that reason finds out” (1949, p. 6). However, although it is widely accepted that rhetoric is an effective motivator, it is not clear that this should lead us to commend rhetoric. The problem is that if rhetoric is seen as a weapon that can be used by skilful orators to gather people behind any cause, there is no guarantee that they will use it to motivate people to defend the right cause.

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