We Are Rhetoric. Get Over It!

Abstract

This chapter argues that after the initiative of Peter Ramus (1515–1572) philosophy became too committed to believing that we understand our world via logical reasoning. Pre-Ramus philosophy took it for granted that how we reason is oriented in particular ways by persuasive activities. Pre-Ramus philosophy had more of a balance between Aristotle’s counterparts of, on the one hand, “dialectic,” that is reasoning, and on the other hand, “rhetoric,” that is persuasion over what choices to take when we reason. Modern life sees rhetoric as to do with deception or as archaic. But treating the term “rhetoric” in this way throws out the baby with the bath water. It hinders awareness of the degree to which masses of persuasive activity constantly orients our reasoning. This blinkering means that the inevitable, always-present persuasive forces in mass society are not popularly acknowledged. Analysis and recognition of this influence is compartmentalised to the more remote and sometimes derogated and lampooned elite sphere of the intellectual and the academic. By contrast, all children who went to school in the Middle Ages studied rhetoric as a central part of their curriculum. This chapter is about the need for a wider realisation that we are not simply logically reasoning beings. It argues that we need to acknowledge that we are formed by rhetoric as much as by dialectic and that we need to culturally and emotionally engage with this fact. We “are” rhetoric, and we need to get over it.

(This chapter quotes classical and previous generations’ scholarship written before the advent of gender inclusive expression.)