From Ancient to Modern: The Short Story of Rhetoric (in less than 1,000 words)

To understand the origin or rhetoric, and why rhetoric is still rarely taught, we need to go back to its origins, 2,500 years ago.

This short story will also help us understand its bad reputation.

1. Plato & Descartes: philosophy first

Plato held rhetoric in low esteem.

Statue of Plato at The Academy of Athens, Greece.

For him, there is only one Truth, accessible to human beings as they strive to discover the Good, the Beautiful and the Fair. To achieve this, they have a formidable tool at their disposal: dialogue. By confronting their thoughts, pooling their information and reasoning, they come up with genuine knowledge.

Philosophy is therefore the only noble approach.

Plato is suspicious of assembly speeches, where listeners sit passively and silently as the speakers battle it out. They come out either winners or losers. No holds barred. The debaters don't hesitate to tell listeners what they want to hear, appealing to their baser instincts.

In “Gorgias”, Plato compares rhetoric to good cooking. In the same way that the cook is only concerned with flattering the palate without wondering whether it's good for the health, the debater uses rhetoric to charm minds without worrying if it's good for the individuals who are listening or for the benefit of society. The aim of rhetoric is simple: to please to then manipulate.

Plato is not the only one to have severely criticized rhetoric —2000 years later, Descartes did it too!

Descartes - Credit: Photograph: © Leonard de Selva/ Copyright: Corbis

But with one difference: for Descartes the quest for truth is not through dialogue. It’s through scientific approach. As a trained mathematician, Descartes swore by rational thought. A good argument has to be irrefutable. Each step in the reasoning process must be the logical consequence of the previous conclusion, which is itself incontrovertible. The demonstration is true unless it can be shown to contain an error.

Descartes goes even further.

The truth must be clear to all. So, if two or more individuals disagree, it's highly likely that they’re all wrong. Indeed, those who hold a truth that has become clear to them must necessarily, at the end, convince their adversaries. Those who are forced to argue do so precisely because they have no irrefutable statement.

2. Aristotle: Rhetoric is compromise 

Athens, 4th century BC.

All citizens (except women and slaves) can debate the public affairs of the city, vote on laws and be eligible for public office. It was against this backdrop that Aristotle completed his work entitled “Rhetoric”. Like Plato, Aristotle believes that the search for truth is necessary in fields such as mathematics, the natural sciences and philosophy, for example, through rigorous deduction chains.

He names it Analytical Reasoning.

However, Aristotle believes that such requirements cannot be applied to court cases, city management or the daily lives of citizens. In these areas, uncertainty predominates. We can never know, perfectly and indubitably, how the facts unfolded, what reasons guided them, what motivations inspired them. Even after the most exhaustive investigation, grey areas remain. There's also a second layer of uncertainty as it's impossible to predict, exactly and certainly, the chain of events that will result tomorrow from what we decide today.

Since we can neither fully know the past nor fully foresee the future. In everyday life Truth is inaccessible to us.

Should we resign ourselves to the caos?

There's a middle ground: no longer seeking ‘Absolute Truth’ but ‘Probable Truth’. Not what is ‘Fair’, but what is ‘Acceptable’.  Not what is ‘Good’, but what is ‘Preferable’. How? With Rhetoric. Rhetoric is the tool that makes it possible as it allows us to reason properly and rigorously without making insurmountable requirements.

Of course, it means accepting that there can be no single answer to every question. A single solution to every problem.

For every person who develops a line of reasoning and comes to a conclusion, there will be another who establish a different line of reasoning and comes to a divergent conclusion. Each one can decide which point of view is the most probable, fair or acceptable. Perhaps time will tell who was right.

This system can have terrible consequences. It can happen that someone who defends a highly plausible proposition fails to convince, while another who defends a very dubious proposition succeeds in convincing. The former masters the art of rhetoric, the latter lacks it.

In “Rhetoric”, Aristotle explored the processes involved in producing both sound reasoning and powerful speeches.

3. Decline and Rebirth 

Plato and Descartes triumphed. Rhetoric is abandoned.

The fall of the ancient Greek cities and Rome has given way to empires and kingdoms where debate and contradiction have no place.  Rhetoric is limited to the art of flattering the powerful elite and loses its original function of influencing the mind.

It wasn't until the mid-twentieth century that rhetoric made a comeback.

In the wake of the Second World War, representative democracy took hold throughout the West. Aristotle's thought is back in the spotlight.

In 1958, Chaïm Perelman, a Polish-born Belgian philosopher, published with his collaborator Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca “The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation”.

 Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca not only rehabilitate Aristotle’s rhetoric but also give it a new, greater dimension. Rhetoric is inseparable from an audience, a group of people whom speakers wish to influence with their arguments. Its rivalry with philosophy is outdated as rhetoric precisely gives to philosophy the means to develop universal arguments that are accepted by all human beings. Philosophers who master rhetoric are able to convince a universal audience, whatever the values, opinions, age or social condition of people.

If “Treatise on Argumentation” is the PoC of modern rhetoric, “Rhetoric Wednesdays” aims to humbly establish itself as the PoV!

Because here's the ultimate goal of “Rhetoric Wednesdays”: sharing the knowledge of rhetoric mechanisms with as many people as possible, so that they become aware of how others exert influence on them and how they can themselves influence others too.

Rhetoric is everywhere - friendly chatters included 😉