Rhetoric and Politics

Citation
Perelman, Chaim. “Rhetoric and Politics.” Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol. 3, no. 1, 1984, pp. 129-134.

Summary
Perelman's definition of rhetoric - "the theory and practice of persuasive communication." (129)

Perelman's "new rhetoric" encompasses the entirety of informal reasoning, "all forms of argumentation, all the reasoning which Aristotle called dialectic, in opposition to the analytical reasonings, which formal logic studies." (129) If this is how rhetoric is being formulated, and if it takes for its object "'the study of discursive techniques functioning to provoke or increase the support of minds to the theses which one presents for approval,' rhetoric's role is central in politics." (129) And not just politics, but education, too. Yet rhetoric has been reduced and scorned, as it has been relegated to a theory of style. The rise of epideictic discourse no longer puts rhetoric into a directly agonistic sphere, the way that judicial rhetoric does; instead, its competition is among individual speakers developing individual theses as ornately as possible, but having no direct competition of ideas - "this genre is at the heart of rhetoric as we conceive of it because upon it depends all argumentation over values." (130)

For Perelman, it seems "dangerous to confuse a type of speech with that which became its literary imitation, and more specifically, to confuse the goal sought by an orator in an epideictic discourse with the effect which an artist who imitates this sort of discourse seeks to produce in order to display his skill." (130) (Does this give too little power or credibility to literature?)

"The goal of the orator in the epideictic discourse is to contribute to the enhancement of values, to create a spiritual communion around common values. This holds true whether they are abstract values such as liberty or justice, or concrete values, such as Athens or soldiers fallen in combat." (131) A difference between epideictic speech and judicial speech - in judicial speech, a range of perspectives can be presented, with speakers advocating for different perspectives. But in epideictic, the speaker must establish themselves as the voice of the community, giving voice to what is collectively felt and valued.

"In order for a democratic regime to function, that is, in order for a minority to accept the decision of the majority, after deliberation, the values common to all members of the community must be considered more fundamental than those which tend to separate it. Without these values, without the spiritual unity which the epideictic discourse properly reinforces, there is neither a majority nor a minority, rather two antagonistic groups which clash, where the strongest group dominates the weakest and where nothing counts except the power struggle." (131-132)

The insufficiency of armed force to ensure cooperation and enforce. "The wawr in Vietnam, the revolt in Iran, have proved that the superiority of arms doesn't prevail in the long run, if the combatants are not convinced that they fight for the good cause." (132) (I wonder - is there a way to perform Leff and Terrill's work on imitatio? Is doing criticism and applying theory more or less like doing a "cover" of a song? Could I re-write Perelman's essay with contemporary examples?)

For Perelman, "positivism and Marxism have contributed to the decline of Europe by propagating skepticism and cynicism regarding values." (133) My knee-jerk reaction is to defend ideology, but maybe there is something more Felski-esque going on here, in which Perelman's objection is to the continual undermining, the over-emphasis on the "de-" prefix of critique; so what's missing is the substitution or return to the "re-" prefix, to reinvent and see again - again, as Leff calls for in his hermeneutical rhetoric.

"To conclude, it seems impossible to me, unless we want to return to barbarism, to eliminate rhetoric as I know it from political life. Such a conception would furthermore eliminate the role of practical reason, that is, the role of philosophical reason in the conduct of men." The problem of philosophical discourse presenting itself as revolutionary, for Perelman, is that they are more evolutionary - getting into our consciousness slowly, so a philosopher-king really just imposes philosophy on his subjects, the way theocracy imposes religion. And even more damning for philosophy, "there is no philosophy without freedom of thought, opposed to all forms of constraint. If it is true that epideictic discourses are essential to the formation of a community spirit, then the discourses of philosophers prelude the formation of a universal community, over and above all particulars. Even if the political organization of such a community were only a dream or a utopia, it is important that their efforts tend to give the prevalent position to reason, that is, to the universal in human affairs." (134)

-Does Perelman lean too much in favor of philosophy and the universal? Certainly seems to go against rhetoric that values the particular and the local. Perhaps the problem is his emphasis on argument and agon; what is the role of agon in post-criticism, and how does that interact with its place in rhetoric? Is rhetoric for argumentation and persuasion, or something else?