What value does rhetoric have in the United States of 2016? When the Oxford dictionaries name “post-truth” as the word of the year, rhetoric’s place in the world should be obvious.
It was by a very skillful use of the “available means of persuasion” that Donald Trump gained himself the role as 45th president of this nation. Eight years ago, although those on the left will chafe at this suggestion, Barack Obama surely leaned more heavily on his skills in rhetoric than on his incredibly thin list of accomplishments to take that office.
But is this the sort of rhetoric that we seek to deploy, regardless of our political, social, moral, ethical, religious, aesthetic, or other predilections? Might we not try to achieve something more?
With a history, at least in the Western tradition, ranging back to the Athenian law courts, rhetoric has always been about making the stronger case. Socrates was criticized for making the weaker argument seem the stronger. That, Socrates, Aristotle, and we should agree is not true rhetoric but sophistry.
Rhetoric, however, will be devalued when it is allowed to descend into sophistry, a movement that has been allowed to flourish, unfortunately, across much of the academic and media landscape.
An article at The Federalist makes a strong argument for rhetoric (without naming the discipline) over sophistry. In that piece, author D.C. McAlister suggests that
Post-truth is not the fault of social media or of current politics. These are symptoms, not the disease. The disease is an American society that has closed its mind to objective truth and is now being forced to live with the conflict and chaos that ensues.
McAlister lays the bulk of the blame for this move at the feet of those on the left. Here, I think, she oversimplifies. Far too many people in our culture, liberal and conservative, have become averse to any facts that do not fit with their preconceptions.
Take a simple example. Over the past couple of years we have heard a segment of the population take to the streets and chant “Black lives matter.” Another group, often sympathetic to the first, said “All lives matter,” and were held up as closeted Klansmen. Rather than listening to each other through disagreement and grievance, we saw “BLM” advocates dismissed as a rabble exploiting perpetual victimhood while ignoring the violence within their community. At the same time, “ALM” advocates were pilloried as white privileged maintainers of a patriarchal system ignoring centuries of abuse. Who was right? Unfortunately, the animus flew too fiercely for anyone to learn much of anything in the exchange.
Civil discourse is not like mathematics. Truth will always be a contested value, leaving some to feel that rhetoric has “made the weaker argument the stronger,” but the alternatives to it–everyone shouting and no one listening, rule by might, or cultural disintegration–make the messiness of true rhetoric far more appealing.
Rhetoric has an essential place in our society as it calls people who believe that there is such a thing as truth to work out what that truth is, despite their enormous differences. As we have seen in the past, rhetoric will not cause differences to melt into nonexistence, but when people of good will, though they disagree, actually talk with and listen to each other, there is hope for progress.
St. Augustine of Hippo (in book 4 of his On Christian Doctrine) said it best:
Who will dare to say that truth is to take its stand unarmed against falsehood. Since the faculty of eloquence is available for both sides…why do not good men study to engage it on the side of truth?
Is This Our Best Rhetoric?
What value does rhetoric have in the United States of 2016? When the Oxford dictionaries name “post-truth” as the word of the year, rhetoric’s place in the world should be obvious.
It was by a very skillful use of the “available means of persuasion” that Donald Trump gained himself the role as 45th president of this nation. Eight years ago, although those on the left will chafe at this suggestion, Barack Obama surely leaned more heavily on his skills in rhetoric than on his incredibly thin list of accomplishments to take that office.
But is this the sort of rhetoric that we seek to deploy, regardless of our political, social, moral, ethical, religious, aesthetic, or other predilections? Might we not try to achieve something more?
With a history, at least in the Western tradition, ranging back to the Athenian law courts, rhetoric has always been about making the stronger case. Socrates was criticized for making the weaker argument seem the stronger. That, Socrates, Aristotle, and we should agree is not true rhetoric but sophistry.
Rhetoric, however, will be devalued when it is allowed to descend into sophistry, a movement that has been allowed to flourish, unfortunately, across much of the academic and media landscape.
An article at The Federalist makes a strong argument for rhetoric (without naming the discipline) over sophistry. In that piece, author D.C. McAlister suggests that
McAlister lays the bulk of the blame for this move at the feet of those on the left. Here, I think, she oversimplifies. Far too many people in our culture, liberal and conservative, have become averse to any facts that do not fit with their preconceptions.
Take a simple example. Over the past couple of years we have heard a segment of the population take to the streets and chant “Black lives matter.” Another group, often sympathetic to the first, said “All lives matter,” and were held up as closeted Klansmen. Rather than listening to each other through disagreement and grievance, we saw “BLM” advocates dismissed as a rabble exploiting perpetual victimhood while ignoring the violence within their community. At the same time, “ALM” advocates were pilloried as white privileged maintainers of a patriarchal system ignoring centuries of abuse. Who was right? Unfortunately, the animus flew too fiercely for anyone to learn much of anything in the exchange.
Civil discourse is not like mathematics. Truth will always be a contested value, leaving some to feel that rhetoric has “made the weaker argument the stronger,” but the alternatives to it–everyone shouting and no one listening, rule by might, or cultural disintegration–make the messiness of true rhetoric far more appealing.
Rhetoric has an essential place in our society as it calls people who believe that there is such a thing as truth to work out what that truth is, despite their enormous differences. As we have seen in the past, rhetoric will not cause differences to melt into nonexistence, but when people of good will, though they disagree, actually talk with and listen to each other, there is hope for progress.
St. Augustine of Hippo (in book 4 of his On Christian Doctrine) said it best:
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