Rhetoric, Republicanism and Democracy

 Plato had little praise for rhetoric and oratory. He also had little praise for democracy.  The 2 were, for him, essentially linked. Most of his early dialogues, and indeed The Republic, feature Plato's Socrates showing the Sophists (who were largely focused on Rhetoric and oratory) that their teachings lead to impasse, contradiction and folly. It's true that in one dialogue, The Phaedrus, he has Socrates leave open the possibility of a productive and ethical rhetoric directed towards the apprehension of truth. But more generally, he sees rhetorical arguments as a form of flattery, a way of appealing to irrational elements in an audience to exercise influence on others. Dialectic vs. Rhetoric thus aligns with the Philosophy/Sophistry and Reason/Emotion dichotomies in Plato. Real philosophers are lovers of truth and wisdom; Sophists are only "philodoxers," or lovers of doxa-- i.e. opinion. They also love to influence opinions without necessarily getting closer to truth.

Sophists were professional traveling teachers that had emerged largely to meet needs of litigants. As such, many of them were less committed to finding truth than winning arguments. Some (e.g. Protagoras) denied objective truth altogether, though Plato may exaggerate according to more recent scholars. But he is responding to this aspect of sophists, and seems to assume that all or most rhetoric instantiates these perceived deficits. But Plato also thinks only philosophical elites need to worry about public life  and significant speech in politics. Both in Republic and Laws, there's really little, if any room for most people in the polis to exert any influence over the polity.

In a democracy, or even a mixed constitution that gives citizens a role in public life and governance, rhetoric and oratory are valuable skills if placed within the context of shared civic virtues and constitutional principles. Hence Aristotle, who favored a mixed constitution not too different from Republicanism, is much more supportive of rhetoric as an integral part of public life. Since the kind of polis he endorses leaves room for all citizens (free members of the polis) to play some role in public life, it is important that citizens refine their communicative abilities so that they may discuss and argue cogently and persuasively about policies, laws etc. In a top-down society-- whether headed by philosopher kings or tyrants-- there is little room for argument and persuasion. Coercion and rule by decree is preeminent. So, we can see how the need to communicate well becomes more important when people are given a greater voice. This underlies the rise of rhetoric in those societies in Greece and Rome that invested citizens with not only the right but the obligation to participate in civic debate and policy formation. The rise of trial by jury of fellow citizens, as opposed to authoritarian courts, also made effective argument important in these societies.

For Aristotle governmental, educational (Paideia) legal, philosophical and political communication should be enacted with excellence (arete). He lays out 3 key elements in his rhetoric: ethos, logos and pathos.

Appeal to ethos is the speaker's  appeal to that which is likely to result in the audience conferring trustworthiness and credibility onto that speaker. For example, if one says, "I speak from years of experience as a professor of medicine," this invites the audience to attribute credibility to that speaker.  In cultural and political context, credibility may have less to do with credentials than values and beliefs shared by the speaker and audience. Thus an appeal to religious norms and values when addressing a congregation, or widespread patriotic ideals when addressing a nation show that gaining respect has much to do with ethos in the sense of shared ways of life.

Logos is the element of rationality associated with dialectic or logic. It includes such things as ability to gather relevant info, and finding and presenting good evidence for your claims via well reasoned arguments. Rhetoric without logos can degenerate into baseless propaganda or invective. But any genuine Rhetoric, on the classical model, must be grounded in empirical facts and carefully structured inferences.

Appeal to pathos to the emotions of those you address is crucial if we want to motivate the audience to not just believe an argument but take action based on it. A classic example would be appealing to emotions associated with patriotism, and fear of insecurity in order to motivate people to fight in a (presumably just) war. We also see appeal to pathos in more peaceful campaigns such as the Space Race of the 1950s and 60s that led to the moon landings. More troubling, appeals to resentments and xenophobia may fuel, say, anti-immigration invective which can lead to scapegoating (not that we should assume all immigration should be tolerated as legal; rather the issue here is the possibility of dehumanizing and villainizing out-groups) .

Aristotle and the Romans who expanded on his Rhetoric, viewed appeals to ethos, logos and pathos as something akin to the 3 legs that support a stool. All are equally important. Attention to logos makes what used to be called the "pathetic fallacy" (arguments that rely almost solely on emotions) much less likely. Of course, manipulative speakers may violate the precept of appealing strongly to logos-- but that is not in keeping with classical rhetoric. Ethos is important in a complex society. We don't all know the intricacies of, say, medicine, engineering or physics, and so when speakers appear on, say, TV with their titles and academic affiliations we usually attribute basic credibility to them in a way that we would not if they were just ordinary people with no training or credentials in the domain about which they speak (medicine, cybersecurity or whatever else). Though we are currently seeing decreased trust in putative experts and increased populism, this is still only a matter of degree. We don't ask strangers if a certain pill has any side effects or poses a risk to the body; we look for some type of expertise.

Roman Rhetoric emphasized  the importance of having other people on board with you-- recognizing their importance as fellow citizens (egalitarian bent here, though this won't extend to non-citizens). Another non-elitist aspect is the belief that you can be taught to speak well and govern, that rhetoric is not necessarily an innate talent. Thus a myriad of handbooks on rhetoric and oratory emerged in Republican Rome. Cicero and later Quintillian made important contributions to the field.

The Roman systems divide rhetoric up into 3 branches. 1. Judicial or Forensic  rhetoric appeals mostly to reason in order to judge things that happened in the past. Establishing the guilt or innocence of an accused person is an obvious example of forensic rhetoric. 2. Epideictic or  Demonstrative rhetoric appeals mainly to pathos/passions often in order to make a speech of praise or condemnation. Speeches at weddings, funerals, graduation ceremonies, et al., all concern appeal to the sentiments of the audience. A formal denunciation of a traitor or criminal relies equally on moving the audience. Still, logos must be operative or else we can fall into mere flattery or ad hominem (mere insult). There should be logical reasons based on empirical facts when we speak of a criminal or traitor. 3. Deliberative rhetoric is aimed at influencing actions to be taken such as whether members of the audience will vote X or Y in an election. The interest here is in future outcomes, and the means by which they can be influenced by speech and argument. Again, we can see that in authoritarian systems, this is much less important than Republican and Democratic systems in which citizens have input. So in Republican Rome many handbooks and pedagogical systems for constructing variations and combinations of these 3 branches emerge, which in turn rest on the principle of showing roughly equal concern for appeals to ethos, logos and pathos.

This very short history of Classical Rhetoric should indicate why rhetorical practice is important to thriving democracies and free republics. Rhetoric ultimately rests on some (varying) degree of free speech in public life, which has been rather rare historically. In order to use such freedom of speech with care and skill, we should take some kind of interest in evaluating and making arguments based on the categories of logic ( logos), trustworthines/credibility (ethos) and awareness of emotional factors at play (pathos). Once we learn to analyze the contents of free speech in this way, we are less easily manipulated by others and more capable of expressing ourselves effectively. But does any of this insure that free speech will be used ethically?

No. This is not possible. Rhetoric can be used for good and ill. Free speech always leaves open the possibility that those who use it may do so in ways that are injurious or destructive. This is why both Aristotle and Cicero emphasized that Rhetoric was just one element of a good education. It's proper use depends, for them, on the cultivation of virtues consistent with shared political values such as those enshrined in constitutions. Civic virtues, as the founders of the US liked to say, are necessary to any government that grants a wide range of liberties to citizens. It would be necessary to write another post to explore various paradigms of virtue ethics (which is currently very topical in contemporary ethics and political theory). But clearly, the idea was always that rhetoric be bounded or even constrained by widely shared societal norms and values. When these begin to break down or become fragmented, as in our own time, it is most important to carefully examine the content of speech and journalism for exaggerated appeal to contentious (widely unshared) premises, beliefs, values and norms. An awareness of rhetorical methods, strategies and tropes can help the citizen to be less vulnerable to the machinations of propagandists, ideologues and demagogues. Hopefully, in time we will be able to employ rhetoric constructively within the context of widespread societal values and goals-- in other words within the context of a widely shared political vision of what kind of people we as a nation want to be. For as it says in Proverbs, "Where there is no vision the people shall perish."
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Sources/Further Reading:

Aristotle:

The Art of Rhetoric: Penguin Classics, trans. Hugh Lawson-Tancred

The Nicomoachean Ethics: Oxford World Classics, trans. David Ross

Cicero:

De Inventione- available free via Internet Archive--  https://archive.org/details/cicerodeoratore01ciceuoft

De Oratore-  at  Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/ciceroonoratoryo00cice  and good wikipedia summary here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Oratore

Edward P.J. Corbett and Rosa A. Eberly:

The Elements of Reasoning (2nd Ed.)-- a short but comprehensive and useful overview of both classical and modern rhetoric with lots of examples from contemporary media and politics..