Cicero's De Oratore

De Oratore starts with Cicero addressing his brother Quintus and recalling his life time that when he gets to be old, he could retire to a happy and quiet life and then lamenting the reality of “disastrous times” and “personal misfortunes” which prevents him from attaining that goal. It appears that he is writing this book in response to a request from his brother, whereby he is asked to discuss the topic of rhetoric and oratory. He also sets up a fundamental opposition between his own view that “eloquence is dependent upon the trained skill of highly educated men” and his brother’s view to the effect that “it must be separated from the refinements of learning and made to depend on a sort of natural talent and on practice” (p290). This dichotomy seems to run throughout the text in one way or the other. Later, in the fashion of Plato’s dialogs, Cicero sets up a dialog between several individuals, chief among them Crassus and Antonius. It seems like Crassus is representing Cicero’s views while Antonius those of his brothers: Crassus advocates knowledge and rigorous training for someone to become an orator (extensive knowledge is a prerequisite of eloquence), while Antonius argues that for the most part eloquence is a natural faculty and it can be developed by exercise and imitation of the works of good orators.The language in the introduction in which he sets up the background for his work is flowery and full of metaphors, and is a reflection of the writer’s desire or admiration for eloquence and strong language. He also laments the lack of great orators, and attributes this to the fact (as he thinks) good oratory skills require extensive training and knowledge. I think the dichotomy set up between training and knowledge on one side, and natural abilities on the other side, is somewhat artificial. In many cases we have seen people who speak well and effectively, and we can admit that the effectiveness of their speech is a reflection of the depth or breadth of their knowledge in their field. We also see people who don’t have formal training or extensive knowledge, and yet they can speak very effectively. On the other hand we know people who are extremely knowledgeable in a field but are at the same time very poor communicators and speakers even in their field of specialty. So like more or less everything else in life, I think this is a case where reality does not fit a simple dualistic model (one or the other), but consists of many shades of grey with details depending upon numerous individual characteristics such as the field of interest, the particularities of the occasion, the background of the speaker, the audience, social conditions, etc.

Some Rhetorical elements in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew

What are the rhetorical underpinnings of Kate’s speech? Who is Kate’s audience? She repeatedly looks at Petruchio, implying that indeed it is him she is addressing, but implied by him are the other male audience in the banquet. Thus, we can say her audience is a patriarchic society which for her in this particular occasion is represented by Petruchio.Her speech is long and consists of many rhetorical elements. As an example, we can point to her appeal to ethos, i.e., the authority of the established norms of the society. Her appeal in fact takes the form of an implicit enthymeme as such:(A) Your husbands provide for you (B) In this, the husband is like a sovereign. (C) You should respect your sovereign; therefore, (D) You should respect your husbands. Not all the premises in this syllogism are explicitly stated, but overall, she is placing her argument within the context of not only a patriarchal society, but one in which relationships are well defined vertically, a hierarchy that ascends all the way up to the “sovereign.” The relationship of a wife to her husband is therefore likened to the relationship of a subject to a sovereign, and based on this analogy, the conclusion, i.e., that a wife should submit to the authority of her husband, is argued for.

A Rhetorical Analysis of the last scene in Casablanca

>>>>Casablanca. What are the rhetorical underpinnings of Rick’s appeals to Ilsa? Scene: A foggy airport, where Rick is trying to convince Ilsa to board the plane and leave.Ilsa: “You are saying this because you want me to go!”Rick: “I am saying this because it is the truth.”Here we can see appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos (although the latter is in the form of enthymeme). Appeals to ethos: Rick uses his manly voice, tone, character, and position of authority as someone how knows everything and is aware of the good of everyone, including Ilsa’s.Appeal to pathos: Rick uses the emotional background between him and Ilsa, and also the background of the war and the common cause of the resistance which supersedes their individual concerns. Appeal to logos in the form of an enthymeme: Rick’s argument can be put in the form of a syllogism as follows:(A) What I say (that you should leave) is the truth (not based on my or your emotions) (B) If something is the truth, then it must be follows. Therefore, (C) You must leave. In fact, both (B) and (C) are implicit, and (A) is vague, for Eric is not clear as to what part of what he says is the truth. Nevertheless, in the urgency of the moment, and given the atmosphere of the time, this argument seems to be effective.

Aristotle’s Rhetoric

In Aristotle’s treatment of rhetoric, at the very beginning it is contrasted with dialectic. This is an important distinction, especially when the latter is defined as the art of persuasion in any given situation. While this distinction is made to emphasize the fact that the purpose of rhetoric is different from that of logical discussion, I think it also underlines the fact that rhetoric is essentially a monolog, where the direction of speech (or shall we say flow of information) is unidirectional: from the speaker to the audience. The speaker is actually involved in exercising a form of art, like someone who is creating a painting or a statue. As such, moral purposes are almost irreverent, or perhaps a better characterization is to say that rhetoric is a morally neutral art, it can be used for good or bad purposes, just as an artist can implement his art in service of a good or a bad cause. This is not to say Aristotle himself did not have any prescriptive opinion about rhetoric, as can be deduced from his distinction between rhetoric and poetics (the latter being too involved with emotions to allow it to serve as a basis for a social form of discourse). But it goes to emphasize that moral prescriptions are irrelevant to the essence of rhetoric itself. The moral neutrality of rhetoric and the fact that it is unidirectional also affects its epistemological status. I think we are justified to claim that rhetoric in and on itself does not embody an epistemological status, value, or goal, for it may be used (just like a tool) in a large variety of cases where no truth-related activity is implied, for instance in generating excitement and inducing action. This especially holds when rhetoric functions on the basis of appeals to ethos and pathos, but even when it involves logos it still attempts to convey a truth that has been arrived at in a different domain. On the other hand, dialog can embody an epistemological methodology. For in dialog parties attempt to enter into an exchange in which, at least in principle, they can be interested in approaching the “truth”. Thus, dialog in inherently pluralistic and not unidirectional, and each party contributes (again at least in principle) to the solution that is not known in advance. As such it can be argued that dialog is inherently less amenable to ideological discourse, (unless we expand the meaning of ideology so far that it includes all kinds of discourse). For if we take ideology to mean a set of value-driven a-priori principles that are consciously or unconsciously held and more or less algorithmically generate an answer to a wide variety of questions without the need to refer to anything outside themselves, then dialog seems to not be a suitable ground for ideology. On the other hand, rhetoric can be a suitable tool for ideological discourse, because more often than not ideologists (in the particular meaning of the word defined above) assume they have reached the truth and already have the answer, and their main interest is to merely convey it to others. Of course we can expand the meaning of ideology to include any discourse, in which case we can say that in dialog it is more likely to self-question the fundamental assumptions held by the parties involved in the dialog, whereas in rhetoric the goal of persuasion makes such foregrounding of hidden assumptions less likely and less relevant to the goal of the discourse.

Enter the dialectic. Whom do you side with, Plato or Gorgias?

It is certainly no easy task to side with one or the other of the two without hesitating about the merits of the position and arguments of the other. I think essentially the discussion boils down to the question of subjectivity vs. objectivity, and the inherent question of whether “truth” is revealed to, delivered to, and discovered by us, or, it is invented, created, and shaped by us and our interests? Certainly, there are plenty of instances which one can give as example for both sides. Let me start by giving some examples that seem to support Socrates’ position.I am aware that it is often argued that science is “relative” and just another form of discourse, on par with other forms of discourse when it comes to truth claims. However, even the most ardent defender of scientific relativism, I maintain, will prefer to go to a physician when he is sick with a life threatening illness rather than to seek advice from other nonscientific disciplines of discourse. This shows the fact that ultimately, regardless of theoretical concerns, intuitively and practically everybody knows that not all forms of discourse are “equal,” or may be it is better to say, “equally arbitrary.” I personally prefer to ride on a plane that is designed based on principles of engineering and aerodynamics compared to one whose design is based on black magic, even if I am not able to refute Gorgias’ arguments to the contrary. And in fact I am sure Gorgias himself would also have the same preference, in spite of his own arguments. On the other hand, one can easily give examples (and mighty examples at that) of cases where the perceived truth is and has been a result of a social consensus, and relative to the accepted norms of the society in which that “truth” has taken shape. Even in the scientific worldview, for two thousand years the “truth” was that the earth was the center of the universe. So it is only reasonable to maintain the same epistemological uncertainty with respect to the current accepted forms of truth.This debate, which starts from Socrates and Gorgias, certainly does not end with them and continues to be a most difficult dilemma, unlikely to be completely resolved anytime soon. But I think it is possible to at least draw some outlines about what properties a reasonable response should have. I think most crucially, a reasonable solution must acknowledge the merits of both sides, and then integrate them in a coherent way, coming up with a synthesis of each side’s strength. I think that the core point to acknowledge is that subjectivity and objectivity are not two completely distinct properties. In other words, they form a continuum. Thus, although it is impossible to describe something (narrative, discourse, position, idea, rhetoric, etc.) as either subjective or objective (completely), it is still possible to speak of one as being more (or less) objective (or subjective) as the other. And what maps out this continuum and gives us the ability to perform this gradual sorting is indeed reason. Therefore, in this view, the role of reason is not to reach at the “truth”, but to sort out between two positions and categorize one as more (or less) objective as the other.

Classical Rhetoric, Psychology and Audience Analysis

Classical thinkers like Aristotle have apparently been aware of the importance of the physiological factor in the audience. After all, a speaker is supposedly appealing to both the rational side in the audience as well to the emotional side, and the latter seems to be inherently related to the psychology of the audience. The book goes on to mention that for Aristotle (as is typical of his philosophy) psychological factors are treated as universals and believed to be true of all members of the intended class. “All young men have hot tempers,” for example.

However, I think when talking about psychology another very important factor must also be considered, what I think can be called the “ethical dimension.” A hypothetical thought experiment can clarify this point.

Suppose a scientist has discovered a certain kind of radiation whose effect is to suppress the power of reason and rational thinking in whoever is exposed to it, in such a way that the subject becomes extremely susceptible to being persuaded by any proposition he is exposed to. The scientist hides a source of this radiation in a lecture room, and turns it on during his lecture. Sure enough, the audience is completely convinced by his arguments, and he is given a standing ovation at the conclusion of his speech. The question is: can we count this as a case of “good” rhetorical skills? Apparently, in a sense, the answer should be yes, because after all, the scientist has used language to convince his audience. The fact that the audience was made predisposed to accepting his argument by the radiation is more or less a fact of psychology, because the radiation just caused release of certain chemicals and firing of certain neurons that could have, at least in principle, been achieved by use of other advanced psychological methods. Yet, something is not right here; we intuitively feel that the audience has in some sense been “violated.” This episode may be counted as a case of good rhetoric, but from an ethical standpoint something is wrong.

Of course a new kind of radiation with such an effect may sound too far fetched and something out of a Sci-Fi movie, but very similar techniques are being used (perhaps to a lesser degree) in many occasions. There are reports of prisoners who have been subjected to such psychological pressures (so called white torture, including long solitary confinements, being frequently bombarded by speeches contrary to their beliefs by powerful loudspeakers, constantly being verbally humiliated for the purpose of breaking their character, etc.) that after a few months they have come out and rejected all their previous beliefs, as if they are new persons, “newly born” and awakened from their “wrong past life”. Again, we feel very strongly that there is something seriously wrong about such techniques of persuasion, even if they are applied solely through language. Similar psychological techniques are used in advertisements, although to lesser degrees and in more subtle ways.

Perhaps one way to clarify this problem is to use the Kantian ethics and require that in any rhetorical act, each and every individual among the audience should be treated as an autonomous agent, an end in itself, not to be manipulated for some other political or commercial purpose. But this requirement is not sufficient, because the perpetrators of white torture can in principle also treat their subjects as autonomous subjects with the goal of converting them and making “good citizens” out of them at any cost. One way to complement this requirement is to add that anything that “causes” a change in the opinion of a person without his or her accepting it “knowingly” and out of his or her “free will” is an unethical tool of persuasion, be it rhetorical, psychological, scientific, etc. In this way, a torturer who forces the accepted ideology of a tyranny to his or her subject and an advertiser who uses the back-alleys of psyche to persuade us to buy a product that we really don’t need without us are both violating the independence and freedom of their audience. Such rhetorical practices can be described, but cannot be prescribed.