RHETORIC

The discipline, traditionally enumerated among the liberal arts, concerned with persuasion or engendering credence. Since it has no proper subject matter and no inherent restrictions on what means it can or should employ, its notion tends to vary with the philosophy with which it is associated. Sometimes, however, rhetoric itself is taken as the basis of entire philosophy (M. Nizolius, 1498–1576), and at others it is excluded from philosophy as a hallmark of sophism (Plato).

Various Views. The verbal and the mental are two aspects of rhetoric that may be taken as poles between which the variations assumed by the discipline are to be apprehended. When the verbal aspect predominates and the rhetorician's emphasis is on effective speech, criticism is characteristically moral. Either rhetoric is dismissed as a somewhat empty concern with verbal ornamentation; or, if the rhetorician is a figure to be reckoned with, it is argued that man is not "the measure of all things" (Protagoras) and that true self-knowledge leads to principles transcending the merely human. When a cosmological identification of such principles takes place, rhetoric shares with poetry the condemnation of being inferior to philosophy, this frequently accompanied by paradoxical use of poetic devices, such as Plato's, to express a philosophy that excludes poets. The refutation by rhetoric of this attempt to devaluate its importance has ordinarily been to urge the human irrelevance of cosmological speculation—the mistake of Socrates, according to Cicero, was separating wisdom and eloquence—and at the same time to dissociate the rhetorician's active participation in human affairs from the fancies and falsehoods of the poet.

Christian thinkers have evaluated the verbal aspect of rhetoric somewhat differently. The preeminence in so many senses of the Word of God accounts for the subordination of the rhetoric of human words—in the thought of the converted professor of rhetoric, St. augustine—not to a cosmological, but to a personal Principle (confer, Doctr. christ. 4.1.1–4.7.11; Mag. 3.5–6, 11.36–12.46). The change from belief to Christian faith, the development of theology and the issuing forth of the independent scientific certitudes of philosophy provide the background against which the vicissitudes of rhetoric, conceived in relation to the other liberal arts, can be traced through the intellectual history of the Middle Ages. For St. thomas aquinas, for example, rhetoric is a part of logic leading the mind to a state that is neither full-blown opinion or conviction on the one hand, nor estimation based almost wholly on manner of representation on the other. These are the offices of dialectics and poetics respectively, whereas rhetoric induces a kind of suspicion that does not exclude the contrary possibility (In anal. post., proem. 6).

Throughout the history of Western thought rhetoric or some of its devices has been a part of logic or dialectics. This is not so much because the verbal aspect is preempted or devalued by wisdom, philosophy, science, or some other discipline as because the devices of rhetoric belonging to its mental aspect prove attractive to some philosophers at certain critical junctures. When the larger analogical contexts become doubtful or subject to dispute, or when univocal definitions become difficult to establish, rhetoric has often seemed to offer appropriate resources.

Rhetorical Devices. The rhetorical distinction between definite and infinite questions, the former having a name and time attached and the latter arrived at by removal of these (Cicero, Partitiones oratoriae 9, 18, 30), has sometimes been invoked as a means of first approach to otherwise resistant data, or has been used along with its subdistinctions to order transcendental considerations in metaphysics.

Once the kind of question has been settled on by a rhetorician, his most characteristic device, namely, place or topic (locus, topos ), can be brought into use. Places can be characterized as sets of recurrent patterns that oratorical encounters are likely to embody. Running over these in preparing his case, the orator can locate both his opponent's position and possible lines of argument and his own most effective lines of argument and refutation. Lists of places in the rhetorical tradition are customarily divided into common places, that is, those common to all situations and proper places, those appropriate either to kinds of questions (Cicero) or to kinds of oratory (Aristotle) and distinguished according to type of audience as forensic, deliberative, or epideictic (display). A familiar example of both questions and places in a short, though mixed, list is the set of circumstances—quis, quid, ubi, cur, quomodo, quando, quibus auxiliis —that has a long history of use in Canon Law, moral theology and journalism.

The notion of rhetorical place can be presented by contrasting the treatments of definition in rhetoric and dialectics. Dialectics in many of its versions (for example, Aristotle's or Agricola's) employs places, not infrequently taking over those to be found in the lists of rhetoric; but even when dialectics does not use places, its characteristic movement, often rather far ranging, is centripetal with regard to definition or some approximation of this. For rhetoric, definition is one of the places or topics, along with others, such as cause, consequences and contrary. Rhetoric proceeds to definition by explication rather than by narrowing. Unfolding parts or divisions carries out defining (Cicero, Topica 5), the idea being that definition in some matter or affair may provide some room for possible argument in the course of presentation.

Rhetorical Argument. It is in argument that the interest of the great classical rhetorics of Aristotle and Cicero lies. Their predecessors had devoted too much attention either to the verbal side of the art (Aristotle), or to the judging of statements (Cicero), whereas the prior or more important aspect is the invention of arguments. The arguments, for which the places serve as a means of inventing, are for example, corresponding to induction in logic or dialectics, and enthymeme, the counterpart of deduction. While manuals of logic have for centuries described enthymeme as a syllogism with some unexpressed member, for Aristotle it is what is in the mind (Gr. ἐνθυμε[symbol omitted]σθαί, to keep in mind) of the judge or the audience, and for Cicero, what is in his forensic opponent's mind, that dictates what the argument should be.

Treatises on rhetoric, however much they may emphasize the invention of argument, do not neglect the further elements on whose proper synthesis effective rhetorical practice depends. Collocation or arrangement of introduction (exordium ), division of the issue (partitio ), the argument (confirmatio ), the refutation of the opponent's argument and peroration need to be looked after. Elocution or the choice of effective language and memorization require attention. Above all, in the view of the greatest orator of antiquity, Demosthenes, the speech needs delivery (actio ).

The dependence of rhetoric for its persuasive effect is traditionally not confined to the words or the thought or to the combining of the two. Rhetoric relies on the confluence of these with the character of the orator and the emotions (motus animi ) of his audience. The chief rhetorical fallacy would be ineffectiveness. On the other hand, the union in mutual appropriateness of so many elements—thoughts, words, actions and men—in rhetorical practice at its greatest has sometimes suggested itself as a moral ideal. For Quintilian, moral education would be moral training; and in Cicero's dictum, the good life would be like a good speech.

Recent Interest. Contemporary attention to rhetoric has largely concentrated on the history of the discipline (R. McKeon). Sometimes it is said that many of the matters included in the classical treatises on rhetoric have been absorbed by the subject matters of psychology and the social sciences. In recent decades, however, the question has been raised whether closer study and adaptation of the devices of rhetorical theory might not contribute to the considerations of problems in literary theory (K. Burke), poetics (J. Paulhan), linguistic theory (I. A. Richards) and ethics, politics and jurisprudence (C. Perelman).

See Also: argumentation.

Bibliography: c. s. baldwin, Ancient Rhetoric and Poetic (New York 1924; reprint Gloucester, Mass. 1959). k. burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (New York 1950). i. a. richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (New York 1936). r. mckeon, "Poetry and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century: The Renaissance of Rhetoric," Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern, ed. r. s. crane (Chicago 1952) 297–318; "Rhetoric in the Middle Ages," ibid. 260–296. p. a. duhamel, "The Function of Rhetoric as Effective Expression," Journal of the History of Ideas, 10 (1949) 344–356. c. perelman and l. olbrechts-tyteca, Rhétorique et philosophie: Pour une théorie de l'argumentation en philosophie (Paris 1952). j. paulhan, Les Fleurs de Tarbes: ou, La Terreur dans les lettres (Paris 1941).

[g. f. drury]