A Short and Highly Idiosyncratic History of Rhetoric

By Trish Roberts-Miller

Every history of rhetoric begins with a definition of rhetoric and, unfortunately, this one is no different. The reason that such discussions always begin the same way is that people use the term “rhetoric” in such different ways, and those different meanings imply different histories. Sometimes it’s a derogatory term, meaning something along the lines of “hot air,” sometimes a broad term meaning “audience-oriented discourse,” and sometimes it’s used in almost a technical sense, meaning the discipline of speech that was traditionally called rhetoric.

The breadth of the same term deserves some explaining, and the best explanation I have is that some terms are used to describe a variety of processes, such as “chemistry.” When people talk about “chemistry,” they sometimes mean something in which a person can engage without even knowing, such as the chemistry involved in digestion. In the same way, “rhetoric” can refer to the tendency that beings have to shape their discourse in response to audience—animals will learn quickly what behavior gets them treats, and some animals learn to discern what works with what person. “Chemistry” might also mean the deliberate manipulating of processes, such as the chemistry involved in cooking. Similarly, people can be very good at figuring out just how to shape their discourse, even if self-taught, or taught through nothing more formal than tradition. The term “chemistry” is sometimes restricted to the formal study of chemical processes; in the same way, sometimes “rhetoric” refers only to the formal study of the processes of persuasion.

If one uses the first few definitions of rhetoric, then it would be really impossible to write a history of rhetoric, as it would more or less be a history of social behavior. Even the last definition implies a very broad sense of “rhetoric,” and would include virtually any formal study of language.

Sometimes people use the term “rhetoric” in an even more specific way, to mean a kind of contingency-based argumentation that implies a skeptical epistemology on issues of public policy. For purposes of this history, that is essentially what I mean—that isn’t to say that the other definitions are wrong, nor even that I never use “rhetoric” in those ways, but simply that this makes writing an idiosyncratic history easier. (On a more serious note, it’s simply to restrict “rhetoric” to one kind of rhetoric—what might be called agonistic, or is sometimes called humanistic, Aristotelian, or classical rhetoric.)

By that definition, rhetoric in the west begins in Greece. The traditional explanation is that Draco’s decision to write down the Athenian laws (even with “draconian” penalties for most of them) opened up the possibility of people arguing with authorities as to whether the law was being applied appropriately—that means it opens up the possibility of rhetoric, in at least one sense. When Solon rewrote the constitution, he created a political system in which citizens had considerable ability to use discourse to affect their personal situation (such as by defending or prosecuting a lawsuit) and the polis in general (by participating in arguments about policy).

The Athenian government was called a democracy (rule by the people), although we might balk at that term (given the large number of disenfranchised). It’s generally said that the sudden institution of democracy in Syracuse (as opposed to its slow development in Athens) meant that people needed quick instruction in the skills of speech-making, so that they could recover property lost to dictators. Certain teachers were willing to charge hefty fees in order to teach wisdom (sophe); they were called sophists.

Several of them came to Athens where they drew the attention of Plato (a disciple of Socrates). Plato hated the sophists, and drew a strict line between their teaching and his. His exact attitude toward rhetoric is difficult to determine, as at least one dialogue seems to condemn it (Gorgias) and two point toward the possibility of an ethical rhetoric (Symposium and Phaedrus). The dispute over the order of dialogues (is Phaedrus a reconsideration of his hostility, as Martha Nussbaum argues, or a friendly attitude that turned to hostility?), as well as questions about the irony (that Plato’s dialogues are themselves rhetoric) means that some scholars see Plato as hostile to rhetoric and some see him as hostile only to a certain kind of rhetoric.

Aristotle, Plato’s student, wrote a treatise about rhetoric that replies to Plato’s major criticisms—that it was not connected to knowledge about the soul, that it was inherently unethical, that it was cookery rather than medicine. It is not clear exactly how finished his treatise (generally called Rhetoric but sometimes Art of Rhetoric) was—was it lecture notes that Aristotle’s son put together, his own notes toward a treatise, notes taken by Aristotle’s students? Parts of it seem somewhat contradictory—he seems to say rhetoric is neutral and inherently moral, appeals to emotion are okay and corrupting, rhetoric is like and unlike violence—but I think it fits quite well with what he says about deliberation in Politics and Nicomachean Ethics.

Aristotle’s great discovery in Rhetoric is the “enthymeme”—he noticed that people don’t reason from first principles when speaking to a large audience; they leave the major premise implied. Some people describe the enthymeme as simply a truncated syllogism (syllogism: major premise—all men are mortal; minor premise—Socrates is a man; conclusion—Socrates is mortal. enthymeme: Socrates is mortal because he is a man.), but others describe it as a different way of thinking. In other words, it isn’t simply that an enthymeme is a syllogism with the major premise implicit rather than explicit, but a different way of reasoning. Syllogisms have a major premise about which one can be certain, but enthymemes rely on premises that are accepted by one’s audience. The premise, therefore, might be particularly accepted, but not universally so.

For instance, Americans will generally accept the premise that “democracy is the best form of government,” so a perfectly legitimate enthymeme would be something like “Foreign aid is in the best interest of Brazil because it will stabilize Brazil’s democracy.” To satisfy a philosopher using dialectic and demanding syllogisms with universally true major premises, however, one would need to prove that democracy is in the best interest of Brazil.

The era between Aristotle and Cicero is a little tricky to discuss, as much of the material is fragmentary. It seems that’s when certain ideas were codified, if not developed, such as “stasis theory”. Stasis theory is simply the realization that one can categorize kinds of disagreement—is the real point of disagreement a question of definition, evaluation, application, or policy? Cicero has a wonderful discussion of just how this theory applies to law cases, one that still applies quite well.

With the collapse of the Roman Republic, the very nature of rhetoric changed. It was still a part of a gentleman’s education, but was much more oriented toward decorum and presentation of self—the lack of a deliberative body meant that deliberative rhetoric was much less powerful.

With the rise of the Church, the place of rhetoric became very complicated. Some historians say that rhetoric died, and some say it remained important. Both arguments seem to me legitimate, and simply come down to how “rhetoric” is defined. The early Christian church was itself deeply ambivalent about training in rhetoric, as typified in Paul, Jerome, and Augustine, all of whom were highly trained in rhetoric, but who were also deeply critical of the discipline at various moments (e.g., Paul in Corinthians). Augustine’s De Doctrina defines the general attitude which remained dominant through the Middle Ages—preachers need to be trained in rhetoric so that their sermons are effective, but rhetoric is moral only as long as it is used to promulgate correct doctrine. There was no “rational-critical public sphere”—there were not public fora in which people might use rhetoric to deliberate governmental policies—in that sense, rhetoric was dead.

However, there were public fora in which people used rhetoric to deliberate church policy. In that sense, rhetoric was alive and well. (Of course, while that discourse was highly agonistic, it was not grounded in a skeptical epistemology, so some people maintain it wasn’t really rhetoric.)

Everyone grants that rhetoric became central with the rise of humanism. People self-consciously applied Ciceronian rhetoric in discussions of philosophy, art, and theology. In addition, the Renaissance coincided with a spreading of deliberative power in various areas (although one couldn’t call any of them democracies), so that even a monarchy like England had a parliament in which issues of governmental policy were deliberated.

With the Enlightenment, one sees a strange bifurcation between rhetoric and politics. While parliamentary power increased, and democracies were created, and thus rhetoric became increasingly important in practice, rhetorical theory became less interested in deliberation and more focussed on decorum, resulting eventually in a near-obsession with belles-lettres (style). It is inexplicably odd to me that rhetorical theory began to ignore or minimize deliberative rhetoric at precisely the moment in the history that deliberation became most powerful.

In the nineteenth century, therefore, political rhetoric was displaced by the study of literature. In the twentieth century, especially the thirties and forties, various literary critics revivified rhetoric—e.g., I.A. Richards, Kenneth Burke, Richard Weaver. The rhetorical approach to literature had its strongest advocate in Wayne Booth, who, not coincidentally, was also one of the earliest and strongest advocates of taking the teaching of writing seriously as an intellectual discipline. Meanwhile, people in the relatively newly formed discipline of speech also looked to rhetoric—e.g., Max Black, Lloyd Bitzer (the author of “rhetorical triangle,” often mis-attributed to Aristotle). Philosophy came to rhetoric somewhat later, but the fifties and sixties saw several important philosophers either call attention to rhetoric or call their own work rhetorical—e.g., Hannah Arendt in political theory, Stephen Toulmin in logic, Thomas Kuhn in philosophy of science. The extraordinary expansion of colleges, especially in the sixties, (to which the GI Bill, the space race, draft deferment, and feminism all contributed in their own ways) necessarily involved an expansion in first year writing programs. That expansion, coupled with advocacy by people with impressive credentials and/or writing abilities (Ann Berthoff, Booth, Burke, Peter Elbow) contributed to a growing sense that the teaching of writing was best seen as rhetorical.