Have you ever really considered why most of us despise math problems?
While truth is implicit in the mathematical proof itself, with no dressy rhetoric or appeal to emotion needed. Mathematics contains truths of perfect certainty, while politics and associated fields of thought only contain, at best, uncertain truths. Unlike mathematics, rhetoric is concerned with truths that are variable and obscure, and permanently subject to dispute, and it employs the passions as instruments of persuasion. It’s no wonder that Socrates viewed the rhetorician’s art of persuasion as one of the “flattering arts.”
Rhetoric is a discipline for serving the truth by inciting social passions in favor of what a communicator believes is the truth of a matter that operates as a variable or contestable truth, rather than the certain truth apparent in mathematical equations. Of course, it is possible, due to mistake or deception, that rhetoric can be dangerous tool used to deny one can undermine this conception in an opposite way, by denying that there are any truths. This would reduce rhetoric to the exaggeration and untruthful craft that is merely used to exercise or gain power. According to this Nietzchian view, it isn’t truth, but power, that is achieved through rhetoric.
Appeals to emotion are aimed at cleverly concealing power, and only through a “reevaluation of all values” through rhetoric, will this power be achieved. As such, the actual function of societal institutions (including cyberspace) are that communicators can wield their power, achieve order of the masses, and retain their power. Ultimately, to appeal to emotion, rhetoricians must contemplate and carefully craft their words in light of the coveted state of power, which led to the notion of Nietzsche’s “will to power.”
Foucault took these ideas and extended rhetoric as a shaping influence, by which man can create and establish systems of ideas and ways of thinking. Essentially, words and their rhetorical expressions create all things and also establish the order of all things. If the entirety of the world is composed of rhetoric, then every conflict or lawsuit is conceivably fought by two competing breeds of truth. The winner in each such argument is not determined by the ultimate truth of the conflict. Rather, the stronger rhetorician will establish the truth, and thus rhetoric is the means by which to achieve the power. Thus, the actual truth (if there is one) does not really matter to a rhetorician, only the success of his argument that is merely a disguised display of power.
So I ask you, after all that bullshit I just spouted, does it really matter if one has critics?
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Sublime, my dear. Absolutely, postively sublime.
A most humble ‘thank you’ to you, the Goddess of Snark.
Great work Sadie…and no the truth doesn’t matter. We can’t shoot each other so bash each other over the head with words instead.
One of the most illuminating graduate courses I ever took was Classical Rhetoric. The text for the course was Aristotle’s Rhetoric. We read Plato, Thucydides, Shakespeare, Johnson, the Declaration of Independence, and Austen, among others.
We did not have to swallow the “rhetoric” of 20th century Sophists like the French existentialists and other game-playing materialists.
Rhetoric is neutral. It’s too bad we don’t have a separate term for exploitive rhetoric. Aristotle said it most clearly: “Its possible abuse is no argument against its proper use on the side of truth and justice.”
One of the great tragedies of the present age is that so few people read the Greeks properly (directly, without reference to critical interpretations that argue all points of view are legitimate), and fail to understand that the Sophists are alive and thriving, not only in politics and media, but in law schools, English departments, and critical studies. (sigh)
Socrates is worth every serious thinker’s time. For every word of Foucault, Derrida, Rorty, Fish, etc. read and reread an equal amount of Socrates (Gorgias, Alcibiades, Phaedrus, Protagorus). He nails the 20th century Sophists 2500 years before they arrived.
Well of course… Socrates was the original bullshitter. Unfortunately, he fell for the whole “No really… hemlock is an aphrodisiac” line.
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