Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, ed., Essays on Aristotle's Rhetoric. Essays on Aristotle's Rhetoric. by Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, Review by: Reviewed by G. H. Rudebusch Ethics, Vol. 108, No. 2 (January 1998), pp. 424-427 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/233814. Accessed: 29/09/2015 20:10 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at. http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ethics. http://www.jstor.org
424 Ethics January 1998 become and receiving divine assistance cannot be proved. In the General Observation that concludes Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant speaks of the difficulty of reconciling the idea of making oneself good through the use of one s own powers and the idea of being assisted by a foreign influence. He says: And yet the impossibility thereof (i.e., of both these things occurring side by side) cannot really be proved, because freedom itself, though containing nothing supernatural in its conception, remains, as regards its possibility, just as incomprehensible to us as is the supernatural factor which we would like to regard as a supplement to the spontaneous but deficient determination of freedom (p. 179). So I remain unconvinced that Kant has failed to make room for God s assistance within the pure religion of reason. My reservations about some of Hare s conclusions do not diminish my admiration for his book. It is a first-rate contribution to ethics and philosophy of religion. Philip L. Quinn University of Notre Dame Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg, ed. Essays on Aristotle s Rhetoric. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996. Pp. xxiii 441. $50.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper). This intelligent company of essays addresses a wealth of connected scholarly and philosophical issues. In this review, I focus upon the book s treatment of an issue that springs from the very foundation of political as well as ethical theory: the issue is the tension produced by, on the one hand, the apparently essential immorality of rhetorical technique, which we find repellent, and, on the other hand, rhetoric s enormous powers to benefit humanity, which we find irresistible. Jacques Brunschwig, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Stephen Halliwell, T. H. Irwin, C. D. C. Reeve, Amélie Rorty, and Robert Wardy all speak to this tension. Since part of what can seem despicable about rhetoric is its willingness to play upon the emotions of the audience, the essays on emotion are also of significance: Christopher Carey, John Cooper, Dorothea Frede, Stephen Leighton, Martha Nussbaum, and Gisela Striker contribute here. The book would have been improved if the individual authors had critically considered each other s contributions. Even to set side by side their thoughts on the same topic is made difficult by the lack of indices, either of subjects or of texts cited. Rhetoric is the power to persuade one s fellow citizens, not by instruction, which calls for expertise, but rather in cases where limitations prevent appropriate instruction, such as when the audience cannot keep track of a long argument. Aristotle is clear that such cases call for rational considerations, but of a noninstructional nature (Burnyeat, pp. 91 110). Rhetoric is not aimed at those who lack mature and authoritative powers of practical reason slaves, children, and women for Aristotle (Politics 1.5.6 7); young children for us such are excluded from the decision-making process altogether (Reeve, p. 201). Hence the audience possesses intelligence but lacks ability, training, time, or inclination for expert instruction (cf. Irwin, pp. 143 44). The ethical tension arises as follows.
Book Reviews 425 Political wisdom enables its fortunate possessors among us to understand that, all things considered, a given ruling or law concerning, for example, partial birth abortions ought to be made. Among certain audiences, such as graduate seminars in ethical or political theory, we can use our political wisdom and its powers of technical argumentation to instruct willing and able colleagues in the process of finding this truth. But such a process will not persuade the nonspecialists in the judicial or political arena. For such audiences, not political wisdom but an offshoot (Rhet. 1.2.7) of it is needed: rhetoric, taking its convictions from political wisdom without needing wisdom s technical expertise, will by its general knowledge of the audience (its religion, gender, and so forth) know what considerations will prove, or give the necessary appearance of proving, the politically correct conclusion to such an audience s satisfaction. If the true principles or valid inferences are too far removed from common sense, or if the true conclusions can be reached only by overly complicated argument, it may be that neither truth nor validity is appropriate for rhetorical argument. Although common sense often correlates with truth (Rhet. 1.1.12), in some cases the orator must argue from false premises, use invalid inferences, or argue to false conclusions in order to cast things in such a way that common sense will be persuaded. Wardy catalogs the particular types of chicanery countenanced by Aristotle (pp. 73 80). There are subtle restrictions (developed by Irwin, pp. 144 70); in particular, what is not true should be the least misleading falsehood possible. Of the contributors, Irwin gives the best, however dubious, defense of the morality of this process. The orator need not claim that he is teaching his audience..., and the audience do not expect to learn... from him. They expect him to argue according to his honest moral convictions about what it is best to do..., and if they are to be persuaded by his honest convictions, they must suppose that these convictions are the closest approximation to the truth that is available (p. 149; my emphasis). Not professing to instruct with technical expertise, the orator is not morally committed to the truth in the way the technical expert is. Engberg-Pedersen (pp. 138 39) tries to exonerate rhetoric by noting that it is and is understood to be truth-seeking. Such a solution seems wrongheaded to me: only by separating rhetoric from truth-seeking activity, if at all, can we exonerate it. Perhaps Irwin s casuistry will exonerate the salesperson as well as the partisan columnist and the politician. It will not, alas, exonerate those of us who find ourselves lecturing an overly ambitious syllabus to large sections of underprepared students, even if we feel some convictions of some value (liberalizing ones?) can nonetheless be produced in the audience for we belong to an institution that, unlike sales, journalism, or politics, professes to teach. The moral tension increases when one recognizes that one s audience, in addition to being incapable of using its intelligence in the manner needed for expert instruction, also possesses defective moral character. In particular, an audience may possess in inappropriate ways emotions such as anger, fear, pity, or charity. Such emotions color judgments in ways detailed in the essays by Leighton, Cooper, Frede, Striker, and Nussbaum. In cases where the audience is not suffering from inappropriate emotions, one s goal should not be to produce distorting emotions in them: according to Aristotle s metaphor, this goal is to warp the ruler before you put it to use. But in cases where the ruler is already warped for example, your audience is inflamed with ethic hatred then it is proper for
426 Ethics January 1998 rhetoric to manipulate the emotions of the audience so as to remove the warp, so far as possible, from the ruler. It seems now that, in our deliberations with the citizens of our community, we have left behind the Kantian scruples which make us respectful of the rationality of others and come short of the clinical benevolence of the doctor for the patient of psychological therapy: short of pure benevolence since emotive rhetoric, unlike psychiatry, seeks to get its patients to come to devote themselves to the expert s personal or political goals. Reeve sees the immorality of such means but suggests that the ends justify them. Rhetoric, in the right political hands, can be a powerful force for good, counteracting distorting feelings and emotions to move a city toward genuine [well-being] (p. 203). Pace W. H. Auden, whose poetry is a well-chosen epigraph to Reeve s essay, Reeve declares that in the face of external disorder and extravagant lies it is difficult for truth to treasure or heart to bless an inner [Kantian] strictness (p. 203). Frede is harder for me to understand. She declares the dark suspicions that Aristotle permits emotional manipulation as a rhetorical means of proof to be groundless (p. 264). But on the next page she states that working on the audience s feelings (Rhet. 1377b28 31) is a legitimate part of oratory. Nussbaum challenges our Kantian scruples. (In practical application, her own rhetoric has caused offense; see, for example, Robert George, Shameless Acts Revisited: Some Questions for Martha Nussbaum, Academic Questions [Winter 1995 96], pp. 24 42.) Nussbaum argues that our preconception that emotionless reason can find truth is false: In avoiding emotion, one avoids a part of the truth (p. 317). Her proposal is that, when confronted with a question such as, Would a life without friends be complete or incomplete? and Is this a case of courageous action or not? [we ought to] deliberate in an immersed way, consulting [our] fear and love and grief, along with other pertinent judgments. [Our] deliberation will for this reason be... more and not less rational (p. 317). As an interpretation of Aristotle, Nussbaum s account is admittedly unable to explain why Aristotle in fact does not give to philosophical training the goal of emotional refinement, leaving that process to other parts of one s upbringing (pp. 317 18). Nussbaum, like Reeve, notices the desirable goal: philosophy, that is, political wisdom, can design institutions that will allow people to be such that they can, if they wish, be further perfected in the philosophical way (p. 319). The heroine (autobiographical, I take it) of her essay will put her own privileged philosophical enlightenment to the task of bringing the good life and the conditions that produce a good emotional character to her fellow citizens by politics (p. 320; my emphasis) politics means rhetoric. Unlike Reeve, she notices no moral difficulty in the rhetorical means to her admirable goal, perhaps because she may confuse the praiseworthy refinement of emotions produced by good parenting or literature with the at best dubious manipulation of emotion produced by rhetoric. Just as rhetoric has a place only when genuine instruction of the intellect is impossible, so likewise it has a place only when genuine refinement of the emotions is impossible. Hence, while I agree with Nussbaum that there is a philosophical and rational component to genuine emotional refinement, this fact is irrelevant to a defense of the propriety of emotional manipulation in rhetorical practice. It seems to me that the best we can do to defend the propriety of rhetoric s emotional manipulation is to follow Irwin s defense, given above, of shyster logic:
Book Reviews 427 the orator need not claim that he is refining sensibilities with respect to a law or judgment and the audience ought not to expect such refinement. They expect him to appeal to their emotions, and if they are to be moved, they must suppose that the appealed-to emotions are the closest approximation to a refined response that is available. If one endorses a political or legal system in which the many are in the audience and have authority to pass judgment, and if it is impossible to provide expert instruction to such judges, then one must endorse the means for that civic deliberation to take place, and rhetoric is the only possible means for public deliberation. My modest suggestion for social reform would be that disclaimers be required at each rhetorical event stating that neither instruction nor refinement but only conviction and response are the goals: caveat auditor! G. H. Rudebusch Northern Arizona University Fenner, David, ed. Ethics and the Arts: An Anthology. New York and London: Garland, 1995. Pp. 323. $49.00 (cloth). It is hard to know what to say about this book. On the one hand, it is so shoddily produced badly printed, full of typographical errors, with no index, and an introduction that merely strings together the abstracts published for these essays in The Philosopher s Index that it almost begs to be overlooked. On the other hand, it contains clear, thoughtful pieces and is perhaps the only extant volume devoted to ethical issues raised by purported artworks. I say purported artworks advisedly: most of the contributors seem mystified about just what art is, about what difference there might for instance be between art and entertainment. This raises a serious problem to which we will return. First, however, even if the collection might as well be entitled Ethics and the Entertainment Industry, there is much to be praised in it. William Kennick navigates the distinctions among forgery, copy, and reproduction with deft subtlety (pp. 78 90). Francis Sparshott and Peter Karlen lay out clear pictures of what rights consist in the former in order to deny that artworks, per se, have any rights, the latter in order to propose a sensible revision of how property rights in artistic creations are defined (pp. 143 58, 173 84). And four essays, by Noël Carroll, Joel Feinberg, Ernest van den Haag, and Gordon Graham, together provide an excellent map of the reasons a liberal might or might not support government funding of the arts. There are nuggets of excellent insight in most of the other essays, and almost all are well argued and accessibly written. But there is a reason why what is best in the book concerns liberal political theory, and that brings us back to its central problem. Whether artworks require political protection (government funding, absolute freedom from censorship, rights against defacement) to a greater degree than just any product of human creativity turns significantly on the question, What is valuable about art? There is precious little exploration of that question here. Margaret Devereaux, in the course of a wonderful defense of artistic autonomy, notes that artists may be capable of showing us what we might not otherwise see and, thereby, of func-