About St. John's College
Rhetoric and Liberal Education
Dean's Lecture, August 24, 2007
Michael Dink
Welcome to all new members of the St. John's community, and welcome back to all the returning members. At St. John's, we often refer to ourselves as a community dedicated to liberal education. Liberal education is often understood to be education in the liberal arts. The traditional list of the liberal arts includes seven, divided into two unequal parts: the trivium, consisting of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and the quadrivium, consisting of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. On the seal of the new program, these seven arts are represented by seven books around the circumference of a circle. In the middle of the circle is a balance, intended to symbolize the work of modern science.
Tonight I want to focus on one of the liberal arts, rhetoric. I single it out because, for two reasons, it seems problematic. First, in a Platonic dialogue that we read early in the freshman year, the Gorgias, rhetoric appears to be the subject of a devastating critique, as an artless and corrupt practice, whereby unscrupulous politicians gain power for themselves by appealing to the passions of the multitude. Socrates, the main speaker in the dialogue, even denies that it is an art at all, thereby precluding its claim to be a liberal art. The second reason that rhetoric seems problematic is that we at the college rarely speak about it as one of the liberal arts that we practice and cultivate, perhaps in part because we take seriously the critique set forth in the Gorgias. While the mathematics and music tutorials give explicit consideration to the four arts of the quadrivium and the language tutorials to grammar and logic, rhetoric seems to be the abandoned orphan of our liberal arts curriculum.
Thus I want to pursue the following questions with you tonight. First, what is rhetoric? Second, is it a liberal art? Third, do we and should we study, practice or cultivate it as part of our education at St. John's College?
I want to address the first question by following the argument about rhetoric in the Gorgias, and then briefly looking at Aristotle's Rhetoric. In the Gorgias, the topic of rhetoric is taken up three times. First, there is a sequence of questions asked by Socrates of Gorgias seeking to determine what Gorgias, who calls himself an expert in rhetoric, understands his art to be. Second, Socrates presents his own account of rhetoric as a kind of flattery, by means of an elaborate analogy. Third, there is a discussion between Socrates and another interlocutor named Callicles about the kind of rhetoric actually practiced by Athenian statesmen.
In presenting these three treatments of rhetoric in the Gorgias, I am going to do something rather problematic, especially in the context of the topic of my lecture. I am going to summarize the content of the arguments in a way that largely abstracts from the dialogic situation and thus from Socrates's rhetorical response to this situation. This problematic procedure raises a number of questions. 1) Is such a clear separation of rhetoric and logic possible? 2) Is it true that Socratic cross-examinations use rhetoric? 3) If so, why? If Socrates thinks he needs the rhetoric, what are we missing if we try to leave it out? 4) What is Plato's intention in showing us Socratic rhetoric at work in a conversation where he appears to be very critical of rhetoric? 5) Finally, what kind of rhetoric is at work in Plato's composition of the dialogue? Some of these questions will be touched on later in the lecture, and others will be left for the question period.
Part I: Rhetoric in Plato's Gorgias
Part I has three sections, corresponding to the three conversations about rhetoric.
Section A: Questioning of Gorgias
Socrates asks Gorgias what rhetoric is about,giving as examples the arts of weaving and music, each of which is said to make something, clothes and melodies respectively. Gorgias says that rhetoric is about speeches. Socrates asks what kind of speeches it is about, giving as an example the art of medicine, which makes speeches about how those who are sick might become well. Gorgias replies that the other arts accomplish their work largely through manual activity, whereas rhetoric accomplishes its work through speeches alone. Socrates gives examples of other arts which accomplish their work through speeches alone, such as arithmetic, calculation, geometry, draughts-playing, and astronomy, and asks how rhetoric differs from these. Rhetoric, Gorgias replies, makes speeches about the greatest and best of human affairs. (449d-451d)
Socrates responds that men possessed of other arts have claimed to provide the greatest good for human beings. The doctor provides health, the gymnastic trainer provides beauty, and the moneymaker provides wealth. He then asks Gorgias what good rhetoric provides to outdo these three. Gorgias replies that it provides freedom and rule over others, and that it does this by producing persuasion through speeches to political gatherings. (451e-452e)
Socrates asks about the kind of persuasion produced by rhetoric, whether it is like the kind produced by arithmetic, that is, the kind that teaches. Gorgias replies that it is the kind that is found in law courts and other gatherings, and that it is about those things which are just and unjust. (453d-454c)
Socrates then asks whether this is the kind of persuasion that produces knowledge or the kind that produces only belief without knowledge. Gorgias replies that it produces belief without knowledge. (454c-455a)
Socrates then asks whether someone using the art of rhetoric will produce belief without knowledge in the assembly when it is deciding whom to appoint to accomplish some task requiring an art, such as building walls, ships and arsenals. Gorgias replies that there is no subject on which the one skilled in rhetoric could not speak more persuasively to a multitude about the subject of a craft than a practitioner of that craft. Nevertheless, Gorgias says that teachers of rhetoric do not intend that their students use it for unjust purposes, and therefore should not be blamed for it if they do. (455b-457c)
Socrates now goes back over some of the same ground, adding some further clarifications. The person skilled in rhetoric is more persuasive when speaking to a crowd about a given subject than one who has knowledge about this subject, when neither the one skilled in rhetoric nor those to whom he is speaking have knowledge about the subject. Socrates then adds that the one skilled in rhetoric achieves this persuasion by appearing to those who lack knowledge to know better than those who possess knowledge. (458e-459c)
Socrates then asks Gorgias if all this applies not only when the subject spoken about is the subject matter of some craft, but also when it is the just and the unjust, the noble and the base, the good and the bad. As an alternative to this conclusion, Socrates asks whether acquisition of the skill of rhetoric presupposes knowledge of these things, either in the sense that rhetoric cannot be learned by one who is ignorant of these things or in the sense that Gorgias will not consent to teach it to such a person. Gorgias replies that if someone who lacks the knowledge of the just and unjust wishes to learn rhetoric from him, he will first provide him with such knowledge. Socrates then draws the consequence that none of Gorgias's students could possibly use rhetoric unjustly, and thus Gorgias was needlessly concerned to argue that teachers of rhetoric should not be held responsible for its unjust use by their pupils. (459c-461b)
Let us try first to summarize the delimitation of the work and sphere of rhetoric as it has emerged from Socrates's questioning of Gorgias. The proximate product of rhetoric is said to be speeches, but these speeches are further delimited with respect to a further product, namely persuasion. This persuasion is specified as the kind which results in belief without knowledge, as opposed to the kind that results in knowledge. The audience upon whom this persuasion is effected is further specified as political gatherings, such as law courts (in Athens, judgment in trials was rendered by large juries), the assembly (in Athens, all citizens could participate), and the council (a smaller deliberative body). Socrates suggests that it is only when addressing large crowds of those who do not know that one skilled in rhetoric could be more persuasive about a subject matter than one with knowledge of this subject matter. Gorgias, however, cited a case in which he, using rhetoric, was able to convince a patient to submit to a treatment when the doctor was unable to do so. If this introduces an ambiguity about the audience for rhetoric, there is a further ambiguity about the specificity of its subject matter. Gorgias had at an earlier point in the questioning said that rhetoric's speeches were about the just and the unjust. Later, however, he seemed to say that one skilled in rhetoric could be more persuasive than anyone else about just about anything, as long as he was speaking to a multitude. Furthermore, Socrates added the good and the bad, the base and the noble to the just and the unjust in his last series of questions about rhetoric. Finally, Gorgias had previously indicated that the ultimate goods at which rhetoric aims are freedom and rule over others.
This series of delimitations leaves us with a series of questions. If Gorgias's kind of rhetoric does not produces the kind of persuasion that results in knowledge, does this mean that no kind of rhetoric is involved in this kind of persuasion? Can rhetoric produce persuasion about a given subject matter in listeners who lack knowledge of that subject matter only by making the speaker appear to know what he does not know? Does rhetoric require a multitude for an audience or not? Is rhetoric restricted to political topics or not? Is the goal assigned to rhetoric by Gorgias, freedom and rule over others, intrinsic to rhetoric? How is this political goal related to the topics about which rhetoric speaks, the just and the unjust, the noble and the base, the good and the bad?
Section B: Rhetoric as flattery
Two of the questions to emerge from Socrates's questioning of Gorgias concern the relationship of rhetoric to knowledge, on the one hand, and to politics, on the other hand. Socrates addresses these questions in his own attempt to say what rhetoric is, which he begins in response to the questioning of Polus, a young follower of Gorgias.
Socrates places rhetoric in the genus of flattery, which he defines as a practice that lacks the knowledge required to be an art and that aims at gratification and pleasure, rather than the good. This is the germ of his answer to the questions about rhetoric's relationship to knowledge and to politics. (462b-463b)
Socrates lists other examples of flattery: cookery, cosmetics, and sophistry, while repeating and amplifying his claim that these things are not based on knowledge, but only on a certain cleverness or knack based on experience. He then gives a preliminary statement of his definition of rhetoric: it is a semblance of a part of politics. (463b-d)
Socrates now goes back to lay the groundwork for these claims and to put the various examples of flattery into the framework of an elaborate analogy. He says that body and soul are distinct from one another, that each has both a good condition and a condition that seems to be good but is not. For each there is an art that cares for it by aiming at the best for it. For the soul, this art is called politics, for the body, simply care of the body. Each art has two parts, gymnastics and medicine for the body, legislation and justice for the soul. (464b-c)
We should note at this point, that Socrates has affirmed that politics is an art, and that its goal is the care of the soul. Gorgias had offered freedom and rule over others as the good to be provided by rhetoric, perhaps suggesting that this was the highest good achievable within the sphere of politics.
Socrates now gives a more detailed generic statement of what flattery is. It has four parts, each of which insinuates itself into and pretends to be one of these four arts that care for the body and the soul. These parts of flattery are said to care nothing for what is best, but to deceive thoughtlessness by means of pleasure. Socrates illustrates this with the part of flattery that he calls cookery, which assumes the guise of medicine, and pretends to know what foods are best for the body. He affirms that flattery in general is base, not noble, because it aims at the pleasant, with no concern for what is best.(464c-465a)
He now elaborates his earlier claim that these parts of flattery are not arts, but merely knacks based on experience. This is because, lacking an account of the things they apply, they are not able to say the cause of each. It is not quite clear whether, when this is applied to rhetoric, it goes beyond Socrates's earlier claim that rhetoric lacks the knowledge appropriate to the subjects about which it speaks persuasively, to the further claim that it also lacks any second order knowledge about how to speak persuasively on these or other subjects. (465a-b)
Socrates now takes up and elaborates his account of the second kind of bodily flattery, cosmetics, which presents itself under the guise of gymnastic. He says that it is wicked, deceptive, ignoble, and illiberal and that it deceives men with shapes and colors and makeup and clothes, so that, by dragging in an extrinsic beauty, it causes them to neglect the intrinsic beauty attained through gymnastic. This description seems to imply that beauty is the good aimed at by gymnastic, although perhaps one might say that beauty is a mere concomitant or result of the true good, which is the good condition of the body in its externally visible parts, the muscles and skin. The extrinsic beauty conferred by cosmetics does not quite seem to be a pleasure in itself, although it may be the cause of pleasure in the anticipated admiration of others. (465b-c)
These descriptions of the bodily species of flattery, cookery and cosmetics, might suggest the following account of how flattery works. Rather than convincing an audience that is aware of the distinction between the pleasant and the good that the pleasant is really the good, they instead rely on a vague and superficial understanding of the good aimed at by the arts. Someone who thinks that the work of medicine is to make us feel good may be led to believe that the chef has done the work of medicine by means of a tasty meal. Such a person has not discriminated between the feeling good that results from an underlying condition of health and the feeling good that comes from momentary pleasure and satisfaction of desire. Likewise, someone who thinks that the work of gymnastic is to make the body beautiful may be led to believe that cosmetics has done the work of gymnastics. Such a person has not discriminated between a bodily beauty that results from an underlying good condition of the body and one that is externally induced. In each case, they are deceived because they mistake a consequence for the true good aimed at by the art.
This may also help us to understand Socrates' claim that the parts of flattery can't give an account of the nature and the causes of that with which they deal. Socrates might mean that the practitioners of flattery do not themselves understand that feeling good and beauty are only genuine goods of the body when they have as their underlying causes health and good bodily condition. On this account, the flatterers are not themselves aware of this distinction and concealing it, but are ignorant of it.
Socrates concludes by spelling out two complete proportions comprehending all four parts of flattery and the genuine arts for which they substitute themselves. First, as cosmetics is to gymnastic, so is sophistry to legislation. Second, as cookery is to medicine, so is rhetoric to justice. Socrates has specified neither the genuine good conditions of soul aimed at by legislation and justice nor the spurious goods aimed at by the corresponding parts of soul flattery. (465c-e)
I will try to fill out these missing parts of the analogy by drawing on the following things: analogy with the genuine and spurious goods of the body, to the extent that Socrates has spelled these out; other things that Socrates has said about the parts of politics and the corresponding parts of flattery; our own sense of the things indicated by these four terms, legislation, justice, sophistry, rhetoric.
From the things said by Socrates in this dialogue about medicine, its work seems to be mostly concerned with the removal of disease and the restoration of health. This fits with the etymology of the Greek word translated as medicine, i.e., iatrike, the healing art. This makes medicine seem to be primarily corrective or restorative. This would fit with an interpretation of justice as retributive or penal justice, understood as an attempt to restore justice to the souls of those who have been infected with injustice, as shown by their law-breaking deeds.
From the things said by Socrates in this dialogue about gymnastic, its work seems to be concerned with bringing about a good condition of the body, insofar as this can be achieved by exercise. Some of the results seem to be strong and toned muscles and a healthy complexion. These in turn contribute to bodily beauty. One might think that gymnastics was thereby aiming at a part of health, and thus would be subordinate to medicine, but Socrates says nothing to indicate that he is thinking of it this way. Indeed, the choice of legislation as the part of politics corresponding to it would seem to suggest that it is more, rather than less, comprehensive than medicine. Perhaps the good condition of body at which gymnastic aims is a level of excellence over and above mere health, the condition of an athlete, and not just of a healthy human being. If so, then would legislation aim at a virtue of soul above and beyond justice? This would correspond to an understanding of sophistry as a practice that claims to teach virtue, perhaps a level of virtue needed to be a leader, or even a legislator, and not a mere citizen, for whom justice might suffice. This understanding would seem to be compatible with things said later in the Gorgias (520b) and in other Platonic dialogues.
How is this account of rhetoric as a kind of flattery related to the account that emerged from Socrates's questioning of Gorgias? In Gorgias's account, the power of persuasion is central. In Socrates' account, persuasion is not mentioned. In both accounts, rhetoric is said to have something to do with justice and politics. Gorgias says that rhetoric speaks about the just and the unjust, but aims at freedom and rule over others. Socrates says that rhetoric presents itself as concerned with justice conceived as a good condition of the soul, but actually provides some kind of pleasure or gratification under the guise of justice, perhaps vengeance against enemies or freedom from being punished for one's own crimes. By omitting any reference to persuasion in his analogy, Socrates leaves open at this point the question of whether persuasion has a legitimate place within the art of politics.
Section C: The possibility of a non-flattering rhetoric
Socrates returns to this question late in the dialogue, and late in his conversation with his third interlocutor, Callicles. Callicles is a young and wealthy Athenian who appears to have political ambitions. He admires some of the great men of Athens' recent past, and is disturbed by Socrates's apparent claim that all rhetoric is nothing but flattery, and its implication that his political heroes have been nothing but flatterers of the Athenian people. In the course of discussing this question with Callicles, Socrates returns several times to the distinction he made between arts which aim at the good and flattering knacks which aim at the pleasant, while appearing to aim at the good.
The first time Socrates recurs to this distinction comes after he has induced Callicles to give up the claim that pleasure is the good and to agree that some pleasures are good and others bad. After reviewing the distinction, he gets Callicles to agree that all kinds of music and poetry, including tragedy, are examples of flattering rhetoric, concerned only to give pleasure and not to improve the listeners. (500d-502d)
Socrates then asks Callicles about the rhetoric addressed to the assembly of free men in Athens and to those in other cities. Here for the first time Socrates entertains the possibility that there is a kind of rhetoric that would not be flattery, but presumably an art. Those using such rhetoric would have to aim at the best in their speaking, and Socrates immediately interprets this to mean speaking in such a way that the citizens will be best. He contrasts this with those who seek only to gratify the citizens, without caring whether they become better or worse, while at the same time despising the common good and aiming only at the speaker's private good. (502d-503a)
In his response, Callicles says that the answer is not so simple. Some who speak in the assemblies care about the people, but others are such as Socrates says. Callicles's formulation of the alternative, "caring about the people" is somewhat vaguer than Socrates's "speaking in such a way as the citizens will be best." (503a)
Socrates replies that, if Callicles is right, then rhetoric will be twofold, one part being flattery, a base mob oratory, while the other is noble. Socrates now specifies the goal of the noble kind more precisely. It is to proceed in such a way as the citizens' souls become as good as possible, and to strive to say the things that are best, whether they are more or less pleasant to the hearers. (503a-b)
Callicles proposes four great men from Athens' recent past as examples of political men who have practiced a non-flattering kind of rhetoric. Socrates is doubtful, but postpones a decision until he gives even further specification to what this would mean. (503b-c)
Socrates argues as follows. Any craftsman strives to produce order and regularity in the object of his art. Thus, if rhetoric is to be an art, it must do the same. If the object of its art is the human soul, then it will strive to produce order and regularity in it. Order and regularity of the human soul are justice and temperance. Therefore, a non-flattering rhetoric will strive to produce justice and temperance in the human soul, and this is what it must mean to try to make the citizens as good as possible. (503d-504d
When, after some detours, Socrates returns to apply this standard to the four Athenian political men admired by Callicles, he ceases to speak of rhetoric, and instead speaks of the proper work of a political man. Socrates now argues that none of Callicles's heroes meets this standard because in every case the citizens eventually turned against them, exiling or prosecuting them. Socrates is willing to concede that the citizens were acting unjustly in doing so, but claims that this very fact is evidence of the failure of these political leaders, since it shows that they failed to make the citizens just. (515d-516e)
Socrates concludes that they have shown that they know of no man who was good with respect to the political things. Furthermore, if the political men admired by Callicles were rhetoricians, they employed neither the true rhetoric nor the flattering kind, for in either case, they would not have been thrown out. Socrates seems to mean that if they had used the true rhetoric they would have made the citizens just, and thus would not have been thrown out. On the other hand, if they had used the flattering rhetoric, the citizens would have been gratified, and would not have thrown them out. (516e-517c)
Callicles reacts with indignation at the suggestion that his heroes did not accomplish any greater deeds than the political men of contemporary Athens. Socrates now gives an account of what they did which does locate them somewhere between flatterers and good political men. In providing ships and walls and arsenals, they were like those who provide food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty and clothing for those who are cold. In this account, they are compared not to those who gratify bodily desires for pleasure, but to those who supply genuine bodily needs. Those who do this are now said to be subservient to the arts which genuinely care for the body, namely medicine and gymnastic, which ought to rule over them and make use of them on the basis of medicine's and gymnastics' knowledge of what is best for the body. (517c-519a)
Although Socrates does not make this distinction explicit, he here suggests that, besides the flatteries which illegitimately substitute themselves for the arts of gymnastics and medicine, there are also genuine arts for supplying bodily needs. These arts are subservient to, but not necessarily in conflict with, medicine and gymnastics. By analogy, then, there might be genuine arts for supplying needs of the soul, which are subservient to, but not in conflict with, justice and legislation. This might remind us of Gorgias's example in which he, using rhetoric, was able to persuade a patient to undergo medical treatment prescribed by a doctor, when the doctor was not able to do so. This suggests the possibility that there might be a true, if not a noble, rhetoric, which supplies persuasion as a genuine need of the soul, but must do so under the supervision of an art of politics which knows the good of the soul in a more comprehensive way.
Let us try to summarize the outcome of this discussion with Callicles. Socrates suggests that if there were to be a noble rhetoric, it would have to do the same work as the art of politics, i.e., caring for the human soul by trying to make it better, i.e., more temperate and more just. Socrates seems dubious about the existence of such a noble art of rhetoric. Yet in his last exchange with Callicles, Socrates suggests the possibility of a less demanding standard for a "true" art of rhetoric. Just as there may be genuine arts for supplying the basic needs of the body for food, drink, clothing and shelter (e.g., farming, weaving, and building), so there might be genuine arts for supplying basic needs of the soul, perhaps including being persuaded about things one does not know. Just as these arts for supplying the body's basic needs are subordinate to the arts which promote the good condition of the body, i.e., gymnastic and medicine, so the arts which supply the basic needs of the soul, perhaps including rhetoric, would be subordinate to the art of politics, which promotes the good condition of the soul. On this account, a flattering practice would arise when one of the subordinate arts broke away from the rule of its governing art, and usurped its place, while aiming at the pleasant rather than the good.
Socrates only hints quietly, towards the end of the dialogue, at this possibility of a legitimate, but subordinate, kind of rhetoric, while the overwhelming emphasis of the dialogue is on the problematic character of a form of rhetoric that aspires to grant its possessor unlimited political power without subordinating this power to any concern for the common good. I suggest that this was a rhetorical choice on the part of both Socrates and Plato, but one that I will not at present attempt to explain.
Let us now turn to Aristotle, who makes a different rhetorical choice.
Part II: Rhetoric in Aristotle's Rhetoric
Aristotle begins his discussion of rhetoric with the claim that rhetoric is the counterpart, literally, the antistrophe, of dialectic. (1354a1) For those familiar with the uses of these two terms in Plato's dialogues, this claim may be startling. As we have just seen, rhetoric seems to be severely criticized by Socrates in the Gorgias, while in the Republic, dialectic is praised as the kind of thinking in which the highest kind of knowing is sought.
Aristotle's comparison involves both an elevating of rhetoric and a lowering of dialectic. Both are concerned with the making of arguments, chains of reasoning in which conclusions are said to follow from premises. Both are distinguished from scientific reasoning, reasoning that results in knowledge, because they do not start from premises that are known through themselves. Topics, (00a25-30) Both rhetoric and dialectic may start from universally shared opinions, although dialectic may also start from opinions shared not universally, but by the wise or reputable. (100a30-31, b21-23) Rhetoric is restricted to short arguments, and may omit obvious premises in its reasoning. Dialectic is said to be sometimes investigative, that is, in search of the premises which would justify some conclusion. (101a36-b4)
Dialectic deals with arguments on any non-scientific subject, while rhetoric is confined to a political context. It deals with matters concerning action and which are within our power to do, that is, matters about which we deliberate. (1356b37-1357a7, 1357a22-30, 1359a37-b1) For Aristotle, to deliberate is to think about which means one should choose to reach a given end. Excellence in deliberation follows from an intellectual virtue called prudence or practical wisdom, which can only belong to someone who also possesses the moral virtues. Aristotle divides rhetoric into three kinds, depending on a more specific characterization of the political context in which it operates. It is called deliberative when it seeks to persuade some decision-making body about what is advantageous or disadvantageous. It is called forensic when it seeks to persuade the jury in a law court to return a verdict about the just and the unjust. It is called epideictic when it seeks to persuade an audience that someone is worthy of praise for the nobility or blame for the baseness of his character or actions. (1358a36-1358b29)
The arguments that rhetoric makes fall into three categories. They may seek to establish the speaker's character, to move the audience to some emotion, or simply to show that some conclusion follows from premises accepted by the audience. (1356a1-4) The art of rhetoric consists in knowing how to find the available means of persuasion for any claim that falls within its sphere. (1355b25-6)
Since rhetoric thus appears to be an ability to make persuasive arguments in specific political contexts, Aristotle says that it is an offshoot of dialectic and politics, and that it is subordinate to politics. (1359b9-12)
Let us try to assess how Aristotle's account responds to the issues about rhetoric raised in the Gorgias. He agrees that rhetoric is about speeches that produce persuasion, although he restricts its power more than Gorgias does. It knows how to find the available means of persuasion in each case, but this implies that there may be limits to the available means, and thus to the persuasive power of rhetoric. From Aristotle's point of view, Gorgias exaggerates the power of rhetoric. Aristotle agrees with Gorgias when he assigns rhetoric to a political context, but disagrees when he extends its power beyond that context. It does not deal with the same matters as any art or science, and hence presumably does not have the power which Gorgias attributes to it, to persuade a crowd that the speaker knows more than the possessor of any given art. To the extent that Aristotle regards rhetoric as less powerful than Gorgias does, he consequently also regards it as less dangerous than Socrates seems to do.
While Aristotle has denied that rhetoric can appear to know the subject matter of an art or science, there nonetheless remains a question about its relation to excellence in deliberation, which flows from prudence or practical wisdom. Socrates asks Gorgias whether the rhetorician will be able to seem to know the just and the unjust, the good and the bad, the noble and the base without knowing these things, and if so, will Gorgias teach his pupils the just and the unjust before teaching them rhetoric. The analogous question for Aristotle is whether possessing the art of rhetoric allows one to appear to possess practical wisdom without possessing it, and if so, whether rhetoric should only be taught to those who already possess practical wisdom.
Another form of this question concerns the relationship of rhetoric to politics. In the Gorgias, Socrates claimed that politics was an art which seeks to make the soul as good as possible, which he interprets to mean as just and temperate as possible. Early in the dialogue, he treats rhetoric as a form of flattery which pretends to be a part of politics, but actually aims at gratifying the soul's desire for pleasure, rather than seeking to make it better. Towards the end of the dialogue, he hints that there might be a kind of rhetoric which supplies some need of the soul in subservience to the art of politics, which knows the good of the soul and how to produce it.
Aristotle calls rhetoric an "offshoot" of dialectic and politics. There is much ambiguity, however, in Aristotle's account of what politics is. On his account of the intellectual virtues, as given in Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics, it would seem that politics can be neither a science nor an art. It cannot be a science, because science concerns only things that cannot be other than they are, while politics concerns human affairs, which can be other than they are. It cannot be an art, because art concerns human making, on Aristotle's account, whereas politics concerns human action. This leaves some form of practical wisdom as the intellectual virtue of which politics is most likely to be a species. Aristotle is usually evasive on this point, using the article before the adjective 'politike', thereby making it a substantive without deciding what kind of substantive it is.
The upshot seems to be that Aristotle's account is similar to that suggested by Socrates in this respect: rhetoric is by its nature and ought to be in practice subordinate to politics. It differs in that politics is not said to be an art, but rather a comprehensive kind of practical wisdom that enables one to deliberate well about the means to the most comprehensive ends of the political community. The difficulty in both cases is how to assure that this subordination takes place, and how to avoid the possibility that rhetoric will be used to impersonate politics and substitute it for it, without possessing the intellectual virtue appropriate to the guidance of the human soul towards the good.
One further word about how rhetoric is distinct from politics. It would seem that the function of rhetoric is to persuade the citizens to accept the conclusions of politics about what is for their good, without enabling them to share in whatever knowledge or understanding is involved in politics. This understanding of the relationship presupposes some kind of aristocracy, in which there are rulers who do in fact possess some kind of knowledge or practical wisdom which most of the citizens do not possess. We might wonder how the situation would be changed if there were no such distinction, either because no one possessed such practical wisdom or because no one possessed it to a markedly greater degree than anyone else or because those who possessed it lacked political power. Would this make rhetoric more important and perhaps more dangerous? Might this possibility lie behind Socrates' rhetorical decision to stress the dangers of rhetoric?
Part III: Rhetoric as a Liberal Art
With this much by way of assistance from Plato and Aristotle, let me turn to the question of whether or not rhetoric is a liberal art. This requires us to say something about what it means to be a liberal art. This in turn poses the question whether a liberal education is defined as an education in the liberal arts or whether liberal arts are defined as those which make an important, perhaps essential, contribution to a liberal education. If we choose the former, we must first find some independent criteria for determining what constitutes a liberal art, and then show how liberal education cultivates those arts.
I prefer to start with an understanding of the goal of liberal education, and to judge the status of claims to be a liberal art with reference to that goal. I will summarize very briefly an account of the goal of liberal education, at least in the form of it that we practice at St. John's, that I have elaborated at length elsewhere (Dean's Statement, 2006). That goal is to help us to begin to lead an examined life.
This requires that we try to become aware of the fundamental beliefs that govern our lives, and that we examine those beliefs in dialogue with both the authors of the books we read and our fellow students. Such examination requires us to confront the most fundamental questions that have been raised by the greatest thinkers in our tradition, and to consider and assess the conflicting answers that have been articulated and argued for by them. We must then try to think through and come to terms with these questions and their possible answers. Whatever beliefs we emerge with should be the results of self-conscious reflection and choice. Moreover, we should gain a respect for the distinction between belief and knowledge, and a consequent recognition that different, and even conflicting beliefs, can be held by thoughtful and decent human beings.
There are at least two difficulties in seeing how rhetoric would play a role in liberal education thus conceived. First, Gorgias, Socrates and Aristotle all seem to agree that rhetoric is persuasive speech in a political context, where practical decisions need to be made. But liberal education as I have described it, while it will ultimately have a bearing on how one lives one's life, is not focused on making immediately practical decisions. Indeed, it turns one away from such decisions so that one can reflect on the most fundamental presuppositions which underlie them. Second, the work of rhetoric seems to be to produce persuasion in the listeners by starting from the given beliefs of those listeners, while the central activity of liberal education is precisely the questioning of those given beliefs./p>
I will try to find a way around these two difficulties. I will argue first, that it is not necessary to confine rhetoric to a political context, and second, that rhetoric can be used to call preexisting beliefs into question.
In the first conversation between Socrates and Gorgias, the rhetoric practiced by the latter is said to involve making persuasive speeches in political assemblies. When Socrates responds to Polus's questioning about rhetoric, he says that what he calls rhetoric is a part of something ignoble, called flattery, and that this is a semblance of a part of politics. In his later conversation with Callicles, Socrates allows Callicles to open the question about whether there is a non-flattering form of rhetoric practiced by political men.
While all three of these conversations thus seem to treat rhetoric as involved in politics, there was a stage in Socrates's questioning of Gorgias when rhetoric had been defined simply as an art that produces persuasion, before Socrates's questioning about its subject matter induced Gorgias to restrict it to political assemblies. This is indeed the arena in which Gorgias practices it, but this may be simply because he and his potential pupils are interested in political power. No intrinsic connection was ever made between an art of producing persuasion and its restriction to political audiences and political topics.
Socrates did make a distinction between a persuasion that produces knowledge and a persuasion that produces belief without knowledge. The latter kind of persuasion can only work on an audience that lacks knowledge of the subject matter about which it is being persuaded. Socrates suggests that someone practicing this kind of persuasion will be most likely to be successful in speaking to crowds, since crowds are not likely to possess specialized knowledge. This is as close as he comes to an argument linking an art of persuasion to a political audience. The link, however, is only between persuasion not resulting in knowledge and an audience that is multitudinous.
Let us then consider rhetoric in a broader sense, not confined to a political context, but simply as a skill at producing persuasion in speech, no matter the context. Socrates, in his conversation with Gorgias, had even included under persuasion the work of those arts which persuade by teaching, and result in knowledge. Although he goes on to exclude this kind of persuasion from Gorgias's kind of rhetoric, it is not clear that there could not be a rhetoric involved in this kind of persuasion. Aristotle, however, insists that the art of rhetoric does not apply to the subject matter of any science, that is, where there is demonstrative reasoning from principles known through themselves.
I now want to argue that rhetoric in this broader sense is necessarily and rightly involved in the kind of liberal education that we pursue at St. John's, in at least three ways. Rhetoric is used by the authors of the books we read in their attempts to communicate with their readers; it is used by all of us in our classroom conversations; and it should be used in the writing of papers.
First let us consider how rhetoric might be involved in the books we read. I will discuss two works from opposite ends of the spectrum as regards the prominence of the role of rhetoric. In Euclid's Elements, the format of a sequence of logical proofs might seem to leave no room for rhetoric. In the Gorgias itself, as an example of a Platonic dialogue, a rhetorical situation is placed squarely in front of us by the dramatic depiction of a conversation in a specified setting.
Scientific demonstration in Aristotle's sense is at best a rather rare phenomenon. Of all the books we read, perhaps the most plausible candidate for one that consists largely of scientific demonstrations is Euclid's Elements. Let us suppose that the definitions, common notions and postulates are the kind of self-evident or known through themselves principles that Aristotle requires for the starting points of a science, and, moreover, that all of Euclid's propositions are valid proofs. Would it follow that the Elements is devoid of rhetoric, of any attempt to persuade?
First of all, in the broadest sense of persuasion as allowed by Socrates, the very form of demonstration is a kind of persuasion. If we are genuinely led from things that are self-evident and undeniable, by necessary steps, to conclusions which were not previously evident to us, then we have come to believe what we did not believe before, that is, we have been persuaded. In this broad sense, even demonstration itself is a kind of rhetoric.
But if we follow Aristotle in excluding demonstrative reasoning from rhetoric, one still might ask what is involved in making demonstrative reasoning possible. The self-evident starting points have to be formulated in speech. Might there not be better and worse ways of doing this? You may have already had some discussion about whether or not Euclid's definition of a point is as clear, intelligible and persuasive as it might have been. What if there is a tension between stating a principle in a way which will make it serviceable as a starting point for demonstration and in a way which makes it most accessible to the beginning student? Should we call rhetoric the art which tries to come up with the statement which best negotiates this tension?
Let me mention some other considerations which might have concerned Euclid in his composition of the Elements. There are often different ways of proving the same propositions. How did Euclid decide which of these ways to choose? While later propositions often require the use of earlier ones in their proofs, the sequence of propositions is not entirely determined by this dependence. Moreover, the first consideration affects the second, that is, different proofs might require different sequences of propositions. Hence the mere idea of presenting a demonstrative sequence of geometrical propositions does not determine what that sequence must be. What then determines Euclid's choice of sequence and his grouping of propositions into books? Is Euclid concerned with a kind of persuasion and/or teaching that goes beyond the content of individual propositions? Would it be right to call rhetoric the art of composition which helps him to arrange his book so as to achieve this persuasion or teaching?
The considerations I have suggested in the case of Euclid apply with even more force to the great majority of the books we read which have a lesser claim to be presenting demonstrative reasoning than Euclid does. In each case, the author must make choices about sequence and organization, not to mention other choices about such things as the degree of presence of the author's persona, the extent of statements of intention or summaries, the use of quotation or reference to other books, the use of metaphor, analogy, stories, jokes, etc. To the extent that these choices are made with a view to persuading the reader to believe something, it seems fair to call these rhetorical choices.
This very claim, however, leads to the second objection that I raised against the place of rhetoric in a liberal education. If rhetorical persuasion consists of arguing from beliefs already accepted by the audience, then how can the art of rhetoric ever be used to call into question our previously accepted beliefs? Moreover, how can an author, writing for an indeterminate audience, know what beliefs he might find in his readers? Let me suggest that the extent to which an author has confronted, wrestled with and responded to these questions is an important measure of the greatness of the works of that author.
By this measure, not to mention others, Plato is clearly one of our greatest authors. Moreover, Plato's dialogues provide a good illustration of how an author might address these issues, because the dialogue form places those issues so squarely in front of us. In a Platonic dialogue, a main character, usually Socrates, engages in conversation with one or more interlocutors. Sometimes there is a larger audience listening in and we are told more or less about it. In cases where there are multiple interlocutors, we are allowed to see how Socrates treats them differently. Sometimes we are given hints about what the rest of the audience thinks and how it is responding. Thus the issue of how a speaker might take into account the initial beliefs of his audience is laid out before us.
In the case of Socrates, moreover, explicit questioning of those beliefs is a major part of his activity. Thus to the extent that other readers might share the beliefs that Socrates is questioning, the rhetorical structure of the Platonic dialogue allows also for the questioning of the readers' beliefs. But because the rhetorical situation depicted in the dialogue has further complications of the sort I have indicated, it also provides further opportunities for thoughtful readers to be induced to raise further questions, beyond the ones that Socrates explicitly poses to his interlocutors.
Let us turn back to the Gorgias to consider a simple example of how this might work. We have already seen that Socrates treats the status of rhetoric somewhat differently in the pieces of his conversation we have examined with his three different interlocutors, Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles. Let me now go back and sketch the dramatic set up of the rhetorical situation, from which I originally abstracted. As the dialogue begins, Gorgias has just finished giving a sample display of his rhetorical skill to a private audience at the house of an Athenian gentleman, when Socrates arrives with his follower Chaerephon. Gorgias is not an Athenian citizen, but a teacher of rhetoric who wanders from city to city in search of paying students. Hence we can infer that his previous display was probably a pitch to potential students, and that they remain as part of the audience for the ensuing conversation. (Socrates himself calls attention to this later in the conversation.) The potential students are likely to be young Athenians with political ambitions, who want to learn how to speak persuasively in the assembly and the law courts. It is possible that some fathers of these young men might also be in the audience, as they would have to pay the bills for instruction in rhetoric.
Thus Socrates's questioning of Gorgias is for Gorgias both a challenge and an opportunity. How he fares will affect his reputation and hence his likelihood of gaining students. I will mention just one rhetorical choice that I think Socrates makes in this situation. After Gorgias shows some initial caution in his answers, Socrates goads him to vaunt the power of rhetoric. When asking him what good rhetoric accomplishes, Socrates does so by quoting an old drinking song, in which the doctor, the gymnastics trainer and the money-maker all vaunt the good that their arts supply. This leads Gorgias to respond in kind, with the vaunt that rhetoric provides freedom and rule over others, even to the point of making others your slaves. Socrates chooses not to try to deflate Gorgias's claim that rhetoric has this much power, but rather to try to show how dangerous such great power would be. I would suggest that this is a rhetorical choice on Socrates's part, to allow the fathers in the audience to be alarmed and the sons to continue to be attracted. The fact that Gorgias later thinks it necessary to argue that teachers of rhetoric should not be blamed for the unjust use of it by their students indicates that Gorgias recognizes the danger of alarming the fathers. Thus even though Socrates has not explicitly questioned Gorgias's claims on behalf of the power of rhetoric, attention to the rhetorical situation might lead us to wonder whether Socrates's decision to leave them unchallenged necessarily means that he accepts them.
There are many other examples one might give from the Gorgias. A thorough reading of the dialogue would involve careful consideration of the complex rhetorical situation as it develops through the whole dialogue. I myself am very far from having accomplished such a thorough reading, but I would welcome your help in pursuing it further in the question period. The Platonic dialogues may constitute an extreme case, where a large piece of the rhetorical strategy of the work involves the depiction of a rhetorical situation, with an implicit invitation to the reader to reflect on the implications of that situation for the content of what is being said.
If we become aware, however, that any written work has a rhetorical dimension, then there is the possibility of reflecting on that dimension and considering how it might affect our evaluation of the content of what is being said. If an author is aware that at least some of his readers will do this, then the author can make use of this possibility to pose questions for that sort of reader. For example, an author might appear to take for granted a certain belief in one part of his presentation, only to call it into question, explicitly or implicitly, later on.
Thus awareness of the rhetorical dimension of the books we read is an important skill in learning to use those books to call our own beliefs into question. In this sense, rhetoric is an important liberal art, and one which reading these books and discussing them with others give us ample opportunity to practice and develop.
What then about the role of rhetoric in class discussion? To what extent is it consonant with the purpose of self-examination for us to attempt to persuade one another, and to do so artfully? There seem to be at least two dangers or difficulties in supposing that it is appropriate to use rhetoric to persuade one another. First, there is the danger that we will simply try to persuade others of what we already believe, and hence will not examine our beliefs by letting them be called into question. Second, there is the danger that we will seek to persuade by simply appealing to the preexisting beliefs of others, and will not help them to call their beliefs into question.
There are at least two antidotes to these dangers. First, even if a seminar began as an attempt by each member to persuade the others of what that member already believes (sometimes early freshman seminars do approximate to this worst case scenario, as some among you may be able to testify), this very clash of attempts to persuade should expose the existence and possible persuasiveness of points of view different from those with which each participant began. Second, it should not take long for students to realize that nothing worthwhile is accomplished, not even persuasion, when arguments are made back and forth from differing sets of premises. Only by identifying the premises of the rival arguments and proceeding to question and examine them is there any hope of genuine learning, inquiry and self-examination.
Once this realization dawns upon us, does rhetoric then become superfluous? I don't think that it does, although its role changes to a subordinate one. As we read the books, listen to one another, and try to think things through, we will continue to form judgments with varying degrees of conviction. It remains important that we take our own judgments seriously enough to try to articulate them clearly and persuasively, even if simple persuasion of our listeners is no longer the primary goal. Instead, we want to make our best case precisely in order to evoke the most thoughtful responses and the most cogent objections. If we have anticipated and addressed the more obvious objections, we can spare our interlocutors the trouble of making them, and invite them to start their responses at a higher level. Moreover, as we gain experience of conversing with our fellow students, we begin to get a sense of how they think and which of their beliefs they are least likely to call into question. We can then begin to look at our arguments with their eyes, and to articulate our own arguments in the light of the objections we think they are likely to make. As a way of adjusting our speech to the beliefs of our audience, this is a kind of rhetoric, even if persuasion is not its ultimate goal. We might say that the goal is to make the most persuasive case possible, although this is for the sake of eliciting the most cogent counter case, rather than for the sake of persuading. This is not so far from what Aristotle describes as the task of rhetoric, to find the available means of persuasion.
One might ask why the process I have just described is not better described as dialectic than rhetoric. Insofar as the process aims at discovering the most cogent argument simply, it would be right to call it dialectic. Insofar as the process is carried on by human beings, rather than by pure intellects, however, it remains mixed with rhetoric. Human beings always have some attachment to beliefs that they have not adequately examined and therefore discussion among them always needs to take account of this to some extent. I can put this in terms of the image of the cave in Plato's Republic, for those of you who are familiar with it. Pure dialectic could only take place among a plurality of people, all of whom had emerged from the cave. Any conversation involving those still in the cave necessarily involves rhetoric.
In addition to the roles of rhetoric in liberal education that I have just argued for, in reading great books with an awareness of their rhetorical dimension and in helping to foster fruitful seminar discussion, it also, by extension, plays a role in the writing of essays. This follows naturally from what I consider the proper understanding of a St. John's essay. The purpose of such essays is to allow students to pursue the kinds of questions that emerge in class discussion and to think them through in a more orderly and uninterrupted way than can be done in class, where the thoughts of others, however provocative and helpful, can often deflect one from developing one's own thought more completely. Student papers can often go awry, however, from lack of attention to rhetoric, that is, from lack of any consideration of an audience to whom the paper is addressed, and to whom it attempts to be clear and persuasive.
I would suggest the following rhetorical practice when writing a paper. Imagine that you are writing it for an ideal classmate as your audience: someone who has read and studied the material with at least as much care as you have, who is a careful, respectful and open-minded listener, but who is willing and able to raise acute and troubling objections. Sometimes it may be useful to attribute some particular adversarial opinions to your ideal listener, but not always. Then write your paper as if trying to make the best case you can to this ideal listener, while acknowledging and responding to his or her objections.
It might also seem that your growing awareness of the rhetorical dimension of the books you are reading could help you to shape your own writing, but I suggest that you exercise some caution here. It can be dangerous to take great books as your rhetorical model and standard. It can be intimidating and counterproductive to try to imitate works of this degree of complexity and subtlety. As Socrates sometimes says, one's first attempt at pottery should not be to make a wine jar, that is, the largest piece of pottery.
Having argued that rhetoric in a broad sense has an important place in liberal education, as an aid in reading, discussing, and writing, all in the service of beginning to lead an examined life, what about political rhetoric, the only kind discussed by Socrates in the Gorgias and Aristotle in the Rhetoric? Does it too have a place in liberal education?
Political rhetoric is characterized by Socrates and Gorgias as addressed to political gatherings and as about the subjects of the good and bad, just and unjust, noble and base. Aristotle defines its subject matter more precisely as matters about which we deliberate, about which we can decide how to act. We saw earlier that the tendency of rhetoric is to move from given beliefs to conclusions which are persuasive because they are seen to follow from those previously accepted beliefs. I tried to show how the dialogic context with a focus on questioning of given beliefs could check and modify this tendency of rhetoric. In a deliberative context, however, this tendency is reinforced rather than checked. On Aristotle's account of deliberation, the end is given and the decision to be made concerns finding the most appropriate means to that end. If the end is given, this implies some given set of beliefs which has determined this end. Deliberation hence cannot afford to call these beliefs into question. Moreover, in the political gatherings envisioned by Gorgias, Socrates and Aristotle, speakers do not speak to one another, but each addresses a large group, the assembly or a jury, which has the power to make the decision, but not to question the speakers.
Thus to focus on the development of skill in this kind of speaking would require students to adopt a habit of mind directly contrary to that required by the questioning and self-examination at the heart of liberal education. Thus training in the kind of political rhetoric practiced by Gorgias would be, at the very least, not helpful to the ends of liberal education.
There is a second important reason why training in such political rhetoric is incompatible with a liberal education. Socrates emphasizes the danger of the power of political rhetoric in the hands of someone who does not know what justice is. He argues that, if there is a non-flattering kind of rhetoric, it would have to be subordinate to justice as a part of the art of politics. Aristotle agrees that rhetoric should be subordinate to politics, understood as a comprehensive kind of practical wisdom.
The activity of liberal education, however, presupposes that our opinions about justice are questionable and in need of examination. No institution devoted to liberal education can presuppose that it has the definitive answer to the question, what is justice? Thus no such institution can claim to convey such knowledge to its students, much less to make them just. Such institutions would then be subject to the same accusation Socrates makes against Gorgias if they sought to make their students skilled in political rhetoric, while being unable to teach them what justice is or to make them just.
Not only is the kind of political rhetoric practiced by Gorgias an inappropriate skill for cultivation in a liberal education, it is also an increasingly marginal skill in modern political life. There is no modern political assembly like the assembly of Athenian citizens and modern juries are much smaller and more circumscribed in their powers than their Athenian counterparts. Modern political rhetoric has been largely subsumed under advertising, that is, it has been assimilated to the marketing of a product.
Yet might there be a different kind of political rhetoric suited to the modern world? The deliberative bodies in which most of the collective decisions of modern life are made are committees. In their size and mode of operation, committees have some similarities to St. John's classes. While the opposition between the deliberative drive to conclusions and the reflective questioning of presuppositions remains crucial, committees at least allow for back and forth conversation, as opposed to the making of long speeches to a silent audience. Hence some of the rhetorical skills acquired in the St. John's classroom may prove themselves useful in this kind of deliberative setting. Moreover, the pluralism of modern society often brings to the deliberative table people with very different fundamental beliefs. While the appropriate response in this context is not usually, as it is in seminar, to call those beliefs into question, nonetheless experience in thinking about how to speak to others whose fundamental beliefs differ from one's own may also prove to be a useful skill in the modern world. Finally, I have argued that our use of rhetoric in class discussions subordinates the goal of persuasion to the goal of self-examination. While this is different from the subordination to the common good aimed at by justice or politics, it is nonetheless a kind of practice in the exercise of rhetoric as an art subordinate to a certain kind of common good. Thus, while it is not the goal of liberal education to develop the rhetorical skills most suited to the deliberative work of modern society, this may, to some extent, be a by-product of the liberal education we pursue at St. John's College.
I hope that I have made an argument persuasive enough to call into question some of your beliefs, and provocative enough for you to want to call into question some of mine.