On Rhetoric

What makes for fine rhetoric in an age of disinformation? Clearly, this is distinct from the techniques employed by corporate motivational speakers, tele-evangelists or self-help gurus. A useful starting point is to examine Aristotle’s views on Rhetoric, who argued that speech can produce persuasion (pistis) either through the character (êthos) of the speaker, the emotional state (pathos) of the listener, or the argument (logos) itself. Artistotle divides rhetoric into three branches. Deliberative speech that sets out to persuade or dissuade. Judicial speech that accuses or defends, and Epideictic speech that praises or blames.

He sub-divides this into deliberative speech, where there is advice to do something or a warning. Churchill from the back benches warning about the rise of Hitler is a good example of this form. Furthermore, a judicial speech which is intrinsic to the advocate is what he terms an epideictic speech. These include, among others, funeral and celebratory speeches. Abraham Lincoln’s speech Gettysburg Address a good example of the last.

In his dialogue’s, Plato, Aristotle’s predecessor, was primarily responsible for bringing the founder of all philosophy Socrates to the world. Unlike Aristotle, however, Socrates was deeply sceptical of all sorts of rhetoric. The Socratic method invites scepticism and ultimately may perhaps lead us into an intellectual dead end, in so far as it never answers anything but questions everything. Thus, the dark arts of rhetoric were despised by Socrates, which may have been a contributory factor to his conviction and execution for impiety, not least as a result of the play The Clouds by Aristophanes which satirises him.

The Socratic method, however, largely ends in aporia, meaning a matter being unresolved. Interestingly, discrediting arguments is crucial to an advocate raising doubts before a jury. The Socratic method also utilises elenchus which discards unsustainable arguments one by one. Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (1927) puts it this way: ‘When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’

Stunned and Possessed

Socrates was obviously a very effective persuader in the Aristotelian sense, or as another great orator Alcibiades put it, all who listened were ‘stunned and possessed.’ Nevertheless, he clearly had a point about the dangers of rhetoric. He encapsulated this beautifully at his own trial, which is referenced in Plato’s Apology

How you have felt, O men of Athens, at hearing the speeches of my accusers, I cannot tell; but I know that their persuasive words almost made me forget who I was – such was the effect of them; and yet they have hardly spoken a word of truth. But many as their falsehoods were, there was one of them which quite amazed me; – I mean when they told you to be upon your guard, and not to let yourselves be deceived by the force of my eloquence.

Used for a just cause rhetoric can be highly effective and great force for the good, either in the Aristotelian sense or in Aquinas’. Yet it can also be used for nefarious purposes. That distinction ought to focus the mind on what is good and bad rhetoric, or oratory, and indeed whether it is only good if the motivations behind it are good. Clearly bad rhetoric in the moral sense can be effective. Propaganda is probably best illustrated by Goebbels. This is what he said about the burning of the books before some 40,000 people in Berlin:

No to decadence and moral corruption … The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is to this end that we want to educate you. … And thus, you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past.

Notably, in my last piece for Cassandra Voices I recalled the focus of Karl Kraus’ final anti-fascist text Third Walpurgis Night (1933) not on Hitler but on his rhetorician facilitator Goebbels. Or consider the facility with words of another satanic figure Aleister Crowley even in text:

I am gold, I am God, 
Flesh to thy bone, flower to thy rod.
With hoofs of steel I race on the rocks
Through solstice stubborn to equinox.
And I rave; and I rape, and I rip, and I rend
Everlasting, world without end
Hymn to Pan (1913)

Unfortunately, practitioners of witchcraft, magic, or sorcery often seem drawn to the dark arts. In this respect the conventional definition of a warlock (a male witch) is an oath breaker, and no great orator or advocate intentionally misleads. There are other gradations of rhetoric as a dark art. Sorcery is low grade. Magic a higher form. Sorcery is merely results-driven. There is no consultation of principle. It has often been termed a crime against God and humanity. Thus, Goebbels and Crowley are examples of effective but morally bad oratory but given different moral positions in my view, distortion comes first as inappropriate oratory.

Legal Ambiguity

Judicial or legal speech is ambiguous, and is capable of distortion, as when Cicero the great orator and trial lawyer defended Murena for bribing an electoral outcome against the highly ethical Cato. Cicero knew he got an obviously guilty man off for political reasons.

As Aristotle recognised, however, any speech involves the effect on the listener. Thus, in Leni Riefenstahl’s classic documentary The Triumph of the Will (1936) the spellbinding oratory of Hitler is amply demonstrated, crucially with brilliant cross-cutting to the starry-eyed admiration of those choosing to believe. The film is not unlike watching an American evangelical Christian meeting.

So, who were the great orators? Excluding examples from Classical Antiquity such as Pericles I discuss a few:

Aneurin Bevin

Aneurin Bevin was the architect of the NHS, who became the most loathed and loved man in England. This socialist gadfly with the sharpest of tongues engaged in a long-term sparring match with Winston Churchill. He was also intrinsic to Atlee’s resignation and Churchills appointment. Churchill once called him ‘a squalid nuisance’ not least when he was appointed Minister for Health in 1945. He was biased by a typically inappropriate Bevin question in 1942, at the nadir of the war: ‘The Prime Minister wins debate after debate and loses battle after battle.’

Bevin had a real conception of the truth, describing advertising as ‘an evil service.’ He also welcomed an opportunity to prick ‘the bloated bladder of lies with the poniard of truth.’ He was also clairvoyant saying: ‘Soon, if we are not prudent, millions of people will be watching each other starve to death through expensive television sets.’

He was also remarkably acerbic in exposing stupidity. About his political opponent Anthony Eden he said: ‘Beneath the sophistication of his appearance and manner he has all the unplumbable stupidities and unawareness of his class and type.’ He described the Tories more generally as ‘worse than vermin.’

Benjamin Disraeli

Then there was the great adversary of Gladstone and architect, along with Metternich of peace in Europe, the Sephardic Jew Benjamin Disraeli, who also a great novelist.

Disraeli loathed the puritanical Gladstone, who was also a great orator. Unsurprisingly, the feeling was mutual. At one point he differentiated between the words misfortune and calamity with reference to his foe: ‘If Gladstone fell in the Thames, that would be a misfortune. But if someone fished him out again, that would be a calamity.’

Moreover, Mark Twain attributed a crucial phrase applicable to our age to the British politician: ‘There are three types of lies — lies, damn lies, and statistics.’

He was also a master of rebuttal, a crucial skill for an advocate. A fellow M.P. once said to him: ‘Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease,’ to which he replied: ‘That depends Sir, whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.’

Furthermore, he was acutely conscious of stupidity and pettiness, saying: ‘To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge;’ and ‘Little things affect little minds.’

He also displayed a degree of Socratic self-reflexiveness stating that

One of the hardest things in this world is to admit you are wrong. And nothing is more helpful in resolving a situation than its frank admission.”

 

Winston Churchill

The historical ledger reveals his role as First Lord of The Admiralty in causing the disaster that was Gallipoli, while the people of Dresden, who took seventy years to rebuild the Fraenkische, have never forgiven the actions of Bomber Harris, which admittedly Churchill was contrite about. Hitler’s great opponent was responsible for a long list of war crimes, not least a certain blindness to the welfare of other races – just ask the Bengalis – but as an Orator in a time of great crisis he was unparalleled.

In his first speech upon uniting Labour and Conservatives against a common foe he said: ‘I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ And after the near-disaster at Dunkirk he said:

This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large, or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.

Also, memorably after Montgomery’s victory at Tobruk, when the tide had turned he said:

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is the end of the beginning. 

He was also given to witty if chauvinistic asides, sometimes difficult to disentangle from his evil doppelganger F.E. Smith, particularly with respect to Lady Astor the first female member of parliament. The following statement is said to have occurred with another M.P. Bessie Braddock. ‘Sir’ she said, ‘you are drunk,’ to which he replied:  ‘And you, Bessie, are ugly. But I shall be sober in the morning, and you will still be ugly.’

Clarence Darrow

Clarence Darrow was the greatest trial lawyer that ever lived in my view, but also an inspiration behind progressivism, a desire derived from a group of like-minded people, including Oliver Wendelll Homes to improve society. His career is littered with triumphs, including the greatest plea in mitigation ever in Leopold and Lowe and his staunch defence of anti-racism in the Scottsdale case. Often considered merely a sophisticated country bumkin lawyer, he was in fact an incredible orator.

This is what he had to say about criminal defence lawyers:

To be an effective criminal defense counsel, an attorney must be prepared to be demanding, outrageous, irreverent, blasphemous, a rogue, a renegade, and a hated, isolated, and lonely person – few love a spokesperson for the despised and the damned.

And in The Scopes Trial we find the greatest cross-examination ever of his opponent the prosecutor William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate and religious fundamentalist:

Bryan:  A witness had testified on Bishop Ussher’s theory that the Earth was formed in 4004 B.C.

Darrow: That estimate is printed in the Bible?

Bryan: Everybody knows, at least, I think most of the people know, that was the estimate given.

Darrow: But what do you think that the Bible itself says? Don’t you know how it had arrived?

Bryan: I never made a calculation.

Darrow: A calculation from what?

Bryan: I could not say.

Darrow: From the generations of man?

Bryan: I would not want to say that.

Darrow: What do you think?

Bryan: I do not think about things about which I do not think.

Darrow: Do you think about things about which you do think?

Above all there is the famous peroration in that case

If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and needs feeding.

Darrow’s agnosticism, incidentally, may be attributed to a sense of doubt intrinsic to trial lawyers. Indeed, he wrote extensively about Voltaire, who was also a man of doubt, reason and with a sensitivity to miscarriages of justice.

Martin Luther King

First there was his description of wisdom: ‘In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.’ And on the subject of tolerance he said: ‘There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.’ Also a common theme evident in all the great orators, was his hatred of ignorance: ‘Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.’ But let me sign off this article with perhaps the greatest public rhetorical statement ever, which remains apposite to our age:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

Feature Image: A fresco by Cesare Maccari (1840-1919) depicting Roman senator Cicero (106-43 BCE) denouncing Catiline’s conspiracy to overthrow the Republic in the Roman senate. (Palazzo Madama, Rome).