The Ethics of Rhetoric

Richard M. Weaver. The Ethics of Rhetoric. Washington, D.C.: Regenry/Gateway, 1953; reprint Davis, Calif.: Hermagoras Press. 234 pp with index.

The popular definition of rhetoric includes, at minimum, the elements of bombast and verbal trickery. This understanding has led to a kind of pseudo-sophisticated distrust of rhetoric. A speaker’s or writer’s ideas can often be dismissed simply by declaring, “That’s not an argument, that’s just rhetoric.”

This mistaken understanding is unfortunate. Rhetoric, together with grammar and logic, is a basic tool of thought, a fundamental component of the life of the mind. The failure to master rhetoric cripples careful thinking by leaving people illiterate. Those who cannot critique rhetoric thoughtfully are typically the first to follow demagogues and propagandists.

Some displays of rhetoric are clearly unethical. These occur, for example, when a speaker uses flourishes to make himself seem impressive or half-truths to manipulate his listeners. At its worst, rhetoric can become mere propaganda. These uses are probably what the apostle Paul has in mind when he denounces “excellency of speech” and “enticing words” in 1 Corinthians 1 (a chapter in which Paul shows himself to be a master of rhetoric).

Nevertheless, these are the abuses and not the uses of rhetoric. Rhetoric has a vital role in both speaking and writing. It involves the skill of ordering ideas so that people are able to follow a sequence of thought. It includes the removal of obstacles that would impede legitimate persuasion. An effective rhetor is able to lead his listeners or readers to observe the world from a new and different point of view so that they can intelligently consider its legitimacy.

In other words, rhetoric has an ethic. Richard Weaver is a rhetor. He understands the use and abuse of rhetoric. As the title implies, in The Ethics of Rhetoric he inquires into the nature of ethical rhetoric, contrasting it with the unethical.

Weaver proceeds by way of analyzing historical examples. He begins with a discussion of Plato’s Phaedrus, employing the Socratic dialogue as an analogy for the right use of rhetoric. He contrasts the rhetoric of Bryan and Darrow at the Scopes trial. He critiques Edmund Burke’s argument from circumstances, and he offers a lucid glimpse into the thinking and speechmaking of Abraham Lincoln.

Having led his reader to distinguish ethical from unethical rhetoric, Weaver turns to his contemporary situation (1950s America). He discovers plenty of unethical rhetoric in both press and politics. He notes the tendency to vest secondary terms with ultimate importance, then to load these terms to “great advantage to a nation bent upon organizing its power to be able to stigmatize some neighbor” by employing “the term’s capacity for irrational assumption.”

This is the kind of thing that makes Weaver worth reading. He is another of those authors who deserves an entire shelf in your library—whatever he writes merits pondering. Here is one of his concluding observations.

An ethics of rhetoric requires that ultimate terms be ultimate in some rational sense. The only way to achieve that objective is through an ordering of our own minds and our own passions. Every one of psychological sophistication knows that there is a pleasure in willed perversity, and the setting up of perverse shibboleths is a fairly common source of that pleasure. War cries, school slogans, coterie passwords, and all similar expressions are examples of such creation. There may be areas of play in which these are nothing more than a diversion; but there are other areas in which such expressions lure us down the roads of hatred and tragedy. That is the tendency of all words of false or “engineered” charisma. They often sound like the very gospel of one’s society, but in fact they betray us; they get us to do what the adversary of human being wants us to do. It is worth considering whether the real civil disobedience must not begin with our language.

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