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Black, Edwin. "The Prospect of Rhetoric: Twenty-five Years Later. " In Making and Unmak- ing the Prospects of Rhetoric, edited by Theresa Enos and Richard McNabb, 21-128. Mahway, N. J. : Erlbaum Press, 1997.
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Farrell, Thomas. "An Elliptical Postscript. " In Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Inter- pretation in the Age of Science, edited by Allan G. Gross and William M. Keith, 317-29. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997.
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Gaonkar, Dilip. "The Idea of Rhetoric in the Rhetoric of Science. " In Rhetorical Herme- neutics, edited by Alan Gross and William Keith, 25-88. Albany: SUNY, 1997.
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Graham, Stephen, and Simon Marvin. Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities, and the Urban Condition. London: Routledge, 2001.
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27-38.
[ part1 ]
Rhetoric Revealed
? Should We Name the Tools?
Concealing and Revealing the Art of Rhetoric
Carolyn R. Miller
"Socrates: My accusers . . . told you that you must be careful not to let me deceive you--the implication being that I am a skillful speaker. I thought that it was peculiarly brazen of them to tell you this without a blush, since they must know that they will soon be effectively confuted, when it becomes obvi- ous that I have not the slightest skill as a speaker--unless, of course, by a skill- ful speaker they mean one who speaks the truth. "1
Throughout its troubled history, two opposing impulses have persisted within rhetoric, an impulse toward self-aggrandizement and another toward self-denial. Plato's Gorgias announces grandly that rhetoric is "the greatest boon, for it brings freedom to mankind in general and to each man domin- ion over others. "2 Cicero's Crassus claims that "in every free nation, and most of all in communities which have attained the enjoyment of peace and tran- quillity, [eloquence] has always flourished above the rest and ever reigned supreme. "3 This one art, he says, has the ability "to raise up those that are cast down, to bestow security, to set free from peril, to maintain men in their civil rights. "4 And rhetoric is not only powerful, it is ubiquitous; it can speak on any subject: as Plato's Gorgias claims, "rhetoric includes practically all other faculties under her control. "5 Thus rhetoric vaunts itself, both in the academy and in the public sphere.
Such self-aggrandizement is not unfamiliar to contemporary minds, as rhetoric has experienced a disciplinary and intellectual renaissance, with jour- nals and books, curricula and symposia, devoted to its power and ubiquity. We have said that rhetoric is "epistemic," that it affects the conduct of in- quiry and the substance of knowledge across the disciplines. We have com- mitted ourselves to using the powers of rhetoric to meet challenges in the public realm, challenges to social justice, democratic process, public respon- sibility, and civility. Kenneth Burke, in an anaphoric, epanaleptic aphorism we love to quote, told us that "wherever there is persuasion there is rhetoric.
20 Carolyn R. Miller
And wherever there is 'meaning' there is 'persuasion. '"6 Rhetoric's imperialism has reached such a pitch recently that critical alarms have been sounded, urg- ing "attenuations" of its epistemic claims and challenging its ambitions as a "universalized," "promiscuous," "free-floating," "interpretive metadiscourse. "7
Criticism like this helps to counter rhetoric's grand ambitions, but there is another countervailing force, and that is rhetoric's own enduring impulse toward self-denial. Here, rhetoric seeks not to "flourish" or to "reign," but to disappear, to get out of the way, possibly even to admit to being "mere rhet- oric. " The motto for this impulse is that the art of rhetoric lies in concealing the art: ars est artem celare. 8 Rhetorical treatises, beginning at least with Aris- totle, point out the need for rhetorical artifice and strategy to remain hidden: "authors should compose without being noticed and should seem to speak not artificially but naturally. (The latter is persuasive, the former the opposite. )"9 George Kennedy calls this passage "perhaps the earliest statement in criticism that the greatest art is to disguise art. "10 In De Inventione, Cicero noted that brilliance and vivacity of style "can give rise to a suspicion of preparation and excessive ingenuity. As a result of this most of the speech loses conviction and the speaker, authority. "11 Quintilian put the matter plainly: "if an orator does command a certain art . . . , its highest expression will be in the conceal- ment of its existence. "12
Rhetoric, it seems, must deny itself to succeed. Michael Cahn has called this rule "the very heart of rhetoric," right from its beginning. 13 The principle has become embedded in the tradition, a commonplace passed along and kept alive by writers who include Puttenham, La Rochefoucauld, Butler, Swift, Pope, Burke, Rousseau, and Wilde. The principle is modeled for the Renais- sance in Castiglione's concept of sprezzatura, glossed by Richard Lanham as a "rehearsed spontaneity" and described by Castiglione himself as a capacity ensuring that "art is hidden and whatever is said and done seems without effort or forethought. "14 Sprezzatura is celebrated in the English Renaissance from Herrick to Sidney to Shakespeare. 15 Another Renaissance figure who serves for us as the paragon of dissimulation is Machiavelli, who advises the prince that because it is sometimes necessary to do evil, it is also necessary to dissimulate, to construct what we might now call "plausible deniability," so that "everyone sees what you appear to be, [but] few know what you really are. "16 But the principle of rhetorical concealment is more than the everyday dissimulation of intentions: it is the conviction that the means by which intentions are concealed must also remain undetectable; in other words, we must be convinced that no dissimulation is going on; it is a dissimulation of means as much as of ends. Thus, if "all a rhetorician's rules / Teach nothing but to name his tools," it is best if the tools--and their names--remain under wraps when Sir Hudibras sallies forth.
According to Cahn, rhetoric is the only art with this tradition of self-denial, the one art that "has to live with the requirement of concealing its achievement
in order to attain recognition. "17 Indeed, the ancient arts that were often com- pared with rhetoric, such as medicine, cookery, flute-playing, navigation, and gymnastics, do not seem to have much to hide, and neither do such contem- porary arts as engineering or architecture. We can use and appreciate their products or results even if we happen know a great deal about how they are produced, what materials, ingredients, processes, and techniques go into their success. But other arts are different, and these are used by Plato in a series of complex comparisons and classifications that suggest rhetoric's affinity with arts such as cosmetics, seduction, enchantment, hunting, and military strat- egy. 18 Here the story is different, suggesting that Cahn may not be correct about rhetoric's unique need for concealment. Cosmetics, for example, part of Socrates' elaborate comparison of the sham arts and the true arts in the Gor- gias, would seem to require concealment. 19 Like theatrical illusion, the effect of the cosmetic art dissipates the more we know about its part in the creation of beauty. We admire the skill involved in exercising the art rather than the appearance of the wearer, the art itself rather than its results.
If dissimulation and concealment are indeed necessary for rhetorical success, we face a number of problems as we contemplate both the public work of rhetoric and the educational role of rhetoric. If rhetoric can be more effective, more useful, more powerful, if it remains concealed, what can it mean for rhetoric to go public? What can its "public work" be? Is there a self- defeating premise built into the educational project? Or an entailment of ever more widespread cynicism? If, through the sustained rhetorical education and public acceptance we seek, rhetoric is indeed revealed as a Gorgianic power available to everyone, will public discourse or our social conditions actually improve? The dilemma that intrigues me is epitomized in a New Yorker cartoon, where the public work of rhetoric is unconcealed by naming the tools.
In this essay, I spend some time exploring the principle of concealment in more detail, drawing primarily on the multiple ways that it is expressed in the classical tradition, because the ancients were astute observers of the work- ings of rhetorical power, particularly in the public realm. I examine these sources for what they can reveal about the justifications for and consequences of concealment. The sources give some clues to the conditions in which rhet- oric must work and thus the possibilities for its public role. And I close with some observations about what these conditions mean for the relationship be- tween rhetoric's public work and rhetoric's role in the education of citizens for that work.
The classical sources are suffused with observations and advice about the necessity for concealment. 20 They reveal a series of recurring themes that jus- tify the need to conceal the art of rhetoric. These themes seem to derive from two foundational assumptions that are fully naturalized in our understandings
Should We Name the Tools? 21
22 Carolyn R. Miller
? (C) The New Yorker Collection 2000. Alex Gregory from cartoonbank. com. All rights reserved
of how humans use language: an adversarial model of human relations and a mimetic model of language.
Human Relations Are Adversarial
1. The dominant and most frequent theme is one I call suspicion. This theme appears in the passage by Aristotle quoted earlier: artifice is not persuasive, because it makes people suspect "someone plotting against them. "21 We treat the intentions of others as plots against us in a zero-sum game: if you win, I lose. You are likely to be trying to cheat me out of something, to deceive me, so I must be suspicious. Athenian suspicion was embedded into a law against deceiving the democracy, a law justified in Demosthenes' statement to the assembly that "A man can do you no greater injustice than telling lies; for, where the political constitution is based on speeches/words, how can it be safely administered if the words/speeches are false? "22
Two examples from the advice about concealment suggest how pervasive the theme of suspicion is in the classical tradition:
There is an inevitable suspicion attaching to the unconscionable use of figures. It gives a suggestion of treachery, craft, fallacy, especially when your speech is addressed to a judge with absolute authority. . . . So we
find that a figure is always most effective when it conceals the very fact of its being a figure. 23
Care must be taken to avoid exciting any suspicion in this portion
of our speech, and we should therefore give no hint of elaboration in the exordium, since any art that the orator may employ at this point seems to be directed solely at the judge. 24
2. The second theme, spontaneity, identifies the notion that statements we can trust are those that come easily and naturally; conversely, a premeditated statement, one that is obviously crafted and constructed beforehand, deserves our suspicion. For example, the Rhetorica Ad Herennium cautions about the use of certain figures involving word-play: "[such figures] are to be used very sparingly when we speak in an actual cause, because their invention seems impossible without labour and pains. "25 The principle of spontaneity presup- poses that dissimulation requires more preparation and effort than telling the truth--it requires precisely the effort of concealment. Spontaneity thus serves as a kind of guarantee that no concealment can have occurred and is thus generally understood as a sign of truth or credibility. Here, for example, is Longinus again: "For emotion is always more telling when it seems not to be premeditated by the speaker but to be born of the moment; and this way of questioning and answering one's self counterfeits spontaneous emo- tion. "26
But note the "seems" in the quotation and the possibility of counterfeit emotion. Spontaneity itself can be an effect created with no less labor than highly figured speeches, as Cicero makes clear in this passage about the ora- tor Antonius: "His memory was perfect, there was no suggestion of previous rehearsal; he always gave the appearance of coming forward to speak without preparation, but so well prepared was he that when he spoke it was the court rather that often seemed ill prepared to maintain its guard. "27
In On the Sophists, Alcidamas suggests that "the style of extemporaneous speakers" is most effective and can be imitated. Quintilian also concedes that spontaneity may be artificial: "Above all it is necessary to conceal the care expended upon it [artistic structure] so that our rhythms may seem to possess a spontaneous flow, not to have been the result of elaborate search or com- pulsion. "28
3. Closely related to spontaneity is the theme of sincerity. Spontaneity affects the trustworthiness of statements, and sincerity affects our trust in the speaker; in this way spontaneity produces sincerity (or, to be more precise, the impres- sion of spontaneity produces an impression of sincerity). 29 Here is Quintilian, for example: "Who will endure the orator who expresses his anger, his sorrow or his entreaties in neat antitheses, balanced cadences and exact correspon- dences? Too much care for our words under such circumstances weakens the
Should We Name the Tools? 23
24 Carolyn R. Miller
impression of emotional sincerity, and wherever the orator displays his art unveiled, the hearer says, 'The truth is not in him. '"30
Similarly, the Rhetorica Ad Herennium cautions that "we must take care that the Summary should not be carried back to the Introduction or the Statement of Facts. Otherwise the speech will appear to have been fabricated and devised with elaborate pains to as to demonstrate the speaker's skill, advertise his wit, and display his memory. "31
The sincere speaker says what he or she really believes, which should require no effort, and is more interested in the truth than in persuasive influ- ence. Such a speaker treats communicative relations as cooperative rather than adversarial, or perhaps as though they were cooperative rather than adver- sarial. But cooperation itself may be a disarming strategy, a distraction, a way of concealing adversarial intentions.
The themes of suspicion, spontaneity, and sincerity reinforce each other and together presuppose deeply adversarial communicative relationships, as illustrated in this formulation by Alcidamas: The truth is that speeches that have been laboriously worked out with elaborate diction (compositions more akin to poetry than prose) are deficient in spontaneity and truth, and, since they give the impression of a mechanical artificiality and labored insincerity, they inspire an audience with distrust and ill-will. 32
Adversarial relationships figure prominently in Plato's classification of the arts, mentioned earlier. He classifies rhetoric with the combative, acquisitive, or conquering arts, such as boxing, wrestling, hunting, and military strat- egy. 33 The comparison of rhetoric to these arts is endemic to the entire clas- sical tradition. In such competitive endeavors, knowledge of the opponent's art makes it less effective, reducing surprise and enabling countermaneuvers. The hunter and the general both need to conceal the practice of their arts, because the acquisition they seek is--almost by definition--at the expense of others, who will resist. These arts are necessarily adversarial, and thus for them concealment plays an essential strategic role.
The adversarial spirit, and comparisons between verbal and physical con- test, permeate the rhetorical tradition. Indeed, the sophistic principle of the dissoi logoi, the Aristotelian admonition to argue both sides of the question, and Ciceronian argumentation "in utramque partem" all instantiate the adver- sarial spirit. Aristotle observes that "it would be strange if an inability to de- fend oneself by means of the body is shameful, while there is no shame in an inability to use speech. "34 Cicero asks, "What . . . is so indispensable as to have always within your grasp weapons wherewith you can defend yourself, or challenge the wicked man, or when provoked take your revenge? "35 And Quintilian claims, "This gift of arrangement is to oratory what generalship is to war. The skilled commander will know how to distribute his forces for bat- tle, what troops he should keep back to garrison forts or guard cities, to secure supplies, or guard communications, and what dispositions to make by land
and by sea. "36 In perhaps the earliest source, Gorgias made the comparison between persuasion and physical force prominent in his Encomium of Helen. The adversarial arts were taught and practiced in ancient Greece and Rome in a general culture of agonism in which the ground rule is that both sides cannot win. Such agonism is inherent in the forensic encounter, which was the paradigmatic rhetorical situation for much of ancient practice and teach- ing. Much deliberative rhetoric was also agonistic, with clearly defined ad- versaries advocating contrary policies. Recent scholarship has explored the way that this agonistic culture influenced rhetoric. Walter Ong's study of the "adversative" spirit in human thought and culture emphasizes the "highly agonistic" sources of rhetoric as a formal art for the world of public debate, and in her study of rhetoric and athletics in ancient Greece, Debra Hawhee notes the multiple ways that the language of athletics (boxing and chariot racing, in particular) became the language of sophistic rhetoric; she claims that an "athletic notion of agonism" informed early Greek rhetorical practice and pedagogy. 37 Noting that Gorgias's epitaph reportedly said that he "armed the soul for contests of excellence," Scott Consigny argues that we can best interpret Gorgias's slim corpus against the widespread agonism of Greek cul- ture. 38 John Poulakos claims that, for Plato, the word for orator (rhetor) and
the word for contestant (agonistes) are "virtual synonyms. "39
Roman rhetoric was also grounded in agonism. 40 The handbooks, for exam- ple, presuppose a hostile or resistant audience in their advice on the insinua- tio, or indirect introduction, which makes the concealment theme explicit and with it all our worst fears about rhetoric. Cicero's youthful De Inventione describes the insinuatio as "an address which by dissimulation and indirection unobtrusively steals into the mind of the auditor. "41 The insinuatio is to be used in a "difficult" case, in which the auditors are opposed, if not actually hostile, to the proposition to be defended. Cicero says that the audience can be "pacified" or made more "tractable" by strategies that substitute favorable topics for offensive ones, acknowledge the sources of offense and agree with them, work "imperceptibly" to win goodwill away from one's opponents, and "conceal" one's intention to defend the proposition that will offend. 42 The contemporaneous Rhetorica Ad Herennium provides similar advice, conclud- ing with the observation that the insinuatio seeks to make the audience recep- tive "covertly, through dissimulation" (occulte, per dissimulationem). 43 If we see through these strategies, we immediately suspect that we are being deceived. The assumption of adversarial relations is not merely a vestige of some ear- lier time but an important force in contemporary culture. Kenneth Burke, of course, understood well the centrality of adversarial relations in human life, characterizing rhetoric as "par excellence the region of the Scramble, of insult and injury, bickering, squabbling, malice and the lie, cloaked malice and the subsidized lie. "44 Lakoff and Johnson have shown how deeply the "argument is war" metaphor is embedded in everyday language. 45 Others suggest that
Should We Name the Tools? 25
26 Carolyn R. Miller
contemporary culture has become too aggressive and polarized. Deborah Tannen, for example, has claimed in The Argument Culture that an "adversar- ial frame of mind" pervades the media, politics, law, and education: "Nearly everything is framed as a battle or game in which winning or losing is the main concern. "46 She finds these adversarial relations to be at least partly re- sponsible for our increasing alienation and loss of community and ultimately to be "damaging to the human spirit. "47 In one of his last books, Wayne Booth described the adversarial version of rhetoric as "win-rhetoric" and, like Tannen, decried its widespread use in politics and the media. He urged us to distinguish between honorable and dishonorable kinds, based on the justice of the cause. Win-rhetoric using deceptive strategies in a cause that the speaker knows to be unjust is what Booth calls "rhetrickery," and he, like Tannen, urges on us a less adversarial approach to communication, which he calls "listening-rhetoric. "48 Our distaste for agonism we owe not so much to the ancients as to our more immediate predecessors, Enlightenment political the- orists, who recoiled from the bloody religious wars and divisive nation build- ing of the early modern period with a campaign against rhetoric, as both Stephen Toulmin and Bryan Garsten have shown. 49
Under the assumption of adversarial relations, rhetoric's problem is plain. Like the general, the orator/advocate must win; for both, the cause must prevail, and for both, the cause justifies any strategic means. For rhetoric, expedience becomes the overriding virtue and dissimulation one of the most effective stratagems in the arsenal. Odysseus models these dubious virtues for the Greeks: he is crafty, flexible, duplicitous; in Sophocles' Philoctetes he proclaims, "What I seek in everything is to win. "50 He is, as James Kastely has argued, the "embodiment of rhetoric. "51 At times, notes Don Herzog in his study of cunning, Odysseus seems ingenious and admirable and at times devious and reprehensible. 52 Like rhetoric.
Language Is (or Should Be) Mimetic
The belief that suspicion on our part, and spontaneity and sincerity on the part of our interlocutors, can protect us against deceptive concealment motivated by adversarial relations rests upon another assumption: that language can be mimetic. If the speaker says what he or she sincerely believes, spontaneously, without premeditation or artifice, then words will reveal the truth unproblem- atically. The principle of mimesis presupposes that language can (and should) represent nature, or belief, directly, that words and things can (and should) cor- respond. To the Greek way of thinking, truth itself is a revealing (a + le^theia: un-concealment) that removes obscurity or deception. Among the Romans, a fragment from Cato the Elder is often quoted to similar effect: "rem tene, verba sequentur" (Fr. 15; grasp the subject, the words will follow). George Campbell maintained that the "most essential" quality of oratory is "perspicuity," which he defined as "transparency, such as may be ascribed to air, glass, water, or any
other medium through which material objects are viewed. "53 Rhetorical crit- ics in much of the twentieth century maintained what Gaonkar has referred to as the "transparency thesis," the assumption that oratory is uninterest- ingly determined by its content, that it is a "mirror" of its object. 54
When words and things correspond, no rhetoric need be involved; facts, beliefs, and intentions are revealed by the language itself, by a natural mimetic correspondence between language and the world, under a "degree zero of rhetoric. "55 Philosophers have long hoped for such a language: the correspon- dence theory of truth, in which statements and facts can be matched up together, has its roots in Plato and Aristotle but extends to Bertrand Russell and others in the early twentieth century who sought a theory-neutral obser- vation language. 56 Francis Bacon had advocated purifying the language of the "marketplace" in favor of terms that are close to observation; Thomas Sprat urged scientists to "return back to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men deliver'd so many things, almost in an equal number of words"; and scientists like Linnaeus, Lavoisier, and Whewell spent no little effort attempt- ing to control the vocabulary of science. 57 But ever since Gorgias argued that we cannot put the truth into words, that language is in essence deceptive because words and things are incommensurable, these efforts have been more hopeful than successful. 58
The mimetic theory persists, however, and the adversarial model helps ex- plain its persistence. Because you can use language to lie (that is, to conceal what you believe to be the case or what you believe to be your intentions with respect to making the case to someone), then in order to be believed, you need to draw attention away from the fact that you are using language. One of the ways we do that is to urge on others (and ourselves) the principle of mimesis: suspicion of the possible lie is reduced if language is believed to be determined by whatever is the case, not by the interventions of the speaker. Thus when language is understood to be mimetic, spontaneity and sincerity serve to counteract suspicion. We might conclude, then, that an adversarial model of social relations requires--or at least wants very badly--a mimetic theory of language. A mimetic theory of language allows for the possibility that truth can be told, that we can hold our adversaries to account for doing so, and that we can get closer to the possibly concealed truth by unconceal- ing our adversary's rhetorical strategies.
Bjiker, Weibe. Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1997.
Introduction 13
14 David J. Coogan and John M. Ackerman
Black, Edwin. "The Prospect of Rhetoric: Twenty-five Years Later. " In Making and Unmak- ing the Prospects of Rhetoric, edited by Theresa Enos and Richard McNabb, 21-128. Mahway, N. J. : Erlbaum Press, 1997.
Blair, Carole. "'We Are All Prisoners Here of Our Own Device': Rhetoric in Speech Com- munication after Wingspread. " In Making and Unmaking the Prospects for Rhetoric, edited by Theresa Enos and Richard McNabb, 29-36. Mahway, N. J. : Erlbaum Press, 1997.
Booth, Wayne. "The Scope of Rhetoric Today. " In The Prospect of Rhetoric: Report of the National Development Project, edited by Lloyd F. Bitzer and Edwin Black, 93-114. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice Hall, 1971.
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Bruffee, Ken. "Collaborative Learning and the Conversation of Mankind. " In Cross-talk in Comp Theory: A Reader, edited by Victor Villanueva, 415-34. Urbana, Ill. : National Council of Teachers of English, 2003.
Culler, Jonathon. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. Ithaca, N. Y. : Cornell University Press, 1982.
Cushman, Ellen. "The Rhetorician as an Agent of Social Change. " College Composition and Communication 47 (1996): 7-28.
de Certeau, Michel. "Walking in the City. " In The Practice of Everyday Life, 91-114. Berke- ley: University of California Press, 1984.
Ehninger, Douglass. "Report of the Committee on the Scope and Place of Rhetorical Studies in Higher Education. " In The Prospect of Rhetoric: Report of the National Devel- opment Project, edited by Lloyd F. Bitzer and Edwin Black, 208-19. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice Hall, 1971.
Farrell, Thomas. "An Elliptical Postscript. " In Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Inter- pretation in the Age of Science, edited by Allan G. Gross and William M. Keith, 317-29. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997.
Flower, Linda, and John Hayes. "A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing. " In Cross-talk in Comp Theory: A Reader, edited by Victor Villanueva, 273-98. Urbana, Ill. : National Council of Teachers of English, 2003.
Gaonkar, Dilip. "The Idea of Rhetoric in the Rhetoric of Science. " In Rhetorical Herme- neutics, edited by Alan Gross and William Keith, 25-88. Albany: SUNY, 1997.
------. "Rhetoric and Its Double: Reflections on the Rhetorical Turn in the Human Sciences. " In Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader, edited by John L. Lucaites, Celeste M. Condit, and Sally Caudill, 194-212. New York: Guilford Press, 1999.
Graham, Stephen, and Simon Marvin. Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities, and the Urban Condition. London: Routledge, 2001.
Greene, Ronald. "Orator Communist. " Philosophy and Rhetoric 39 (2006): 85-95.
Gross, Alan, and William Keith. Introduction. In Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science, edited by Alan Gross and William Keith, 1-24.
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King, Andrew. "The Rhetorical Critic and the Invisible Polis. " In Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science, edited by Allan G. Gross and William M. Keith, 299-314. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997.
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27-38.
[ part1 ]
Rhetoric Revealed
? Should We Name the Tools?
Concealing and Revealing the Art of Rhetoric
Carolyn R. Miller
"Socrates: My accusers . . . told you that you must be careful not to let me deceive you--the implication being that I am a skillful speaker. I thought that it was peculiarly brazen of them to tell you this without a blush, since they must know that they will soon be effectively confuted, when it becomes obvi- ous that I have not the slightest skill as a speaker--unless, of course, by a skill- ful speaker they mean one who speaks the truth. "1
Throughout its troubled history, two opposing impulses have persisted within rhetoric, an impulse toward self-aggrandizement and another toward self-denial. Plato's Gorgias announces grandly that rhetoric is "the greatest boon, for it brings freedom to mankind in general and to each man domin- ion over others. "2 Cicero's Crassus claims that "in every free nation, and most of all in communities which have attained the enjoyment of peace and tran- quillity, [eloquence] has always flourished above the rest and ever reigned supreme. "3 This one art, he says, has the ability "to raise up those that are cast down, to bestow security, to set free from peril, to maintain men in their civil rights. "4 And rhetoric is not only powerful, it is ubiquitous; it can speak on any subject: as Plato's Gorgias claims, "rhetoric includes practically all other faculties under her control. "5 Thus rhetoric vaunts itself, both in the academy and in the public sphere.
Such self-aggrandizement is not unfamiliar to contemporary minds, as rhetoric has experienced a disciplinary and intellectual renaissance, with jour- nals and books, curricula and symposia, devoted to its power and ubiquity. We have said that rhetoric is "epistemic," that it affects the conduct of in- quiry and the substance of knowledge across the disciplines. We have com- mitted ourselves to using the powers of rhetoric to meet challenges in the public realm, challenges to social justice, democratic process, public respon- sibility, and civility. Kenneth Burke, in an anaphoric, epanaleptic aphorism we love to quote, told us that "wherever there is persuasion there is rhetoric.
20 Carolyn R. Miller
And wherever there is 'meaning' there is 'persuasion. '"6 Rhetoric's imperialism has reached such a pitch recently that critical alarms have been sounded, urg- ing "attenuations" of its epistemic claims and challenging its ambitions as a "universalized," "promiscuous," "free-floating," "interpretive metadiscourse. "7
Criticism like this helps to counter rhetoric's grand ambitions, but there is another countervailing force, and that is rhetoric's own enduring impulse toward self-denial. Here, rhetoric seeks not to "flourish" or to "reign," but to disappear, to get out of the way, possibly even to admit to being "mere rhet- oric. " The motto for this impulse is that the art of rhetoric lies in concealing the art: ars est artem celare. 8 Rhetorical treatises, beginning at least with Aris- totle, point out the need for rhetorical artifice and strategy to remain hidden: "authors should compose without being noticed and should seem to speak not artificially but naturally. (The latter is persuasive, the former the opposite. )"9 George Kennedy calls this passage "perhaps the earliest statement in criticism that the greatest art is to disguise art. "10 In De Inventione, Cicero noted that brilliance and vivacity of style "can give rise to a suspicion of preparation and excessive ingenuity. As a result of this most of the speech loses conviction and the speaker, authority. "11 Quintilian put the matter plainly: "if an orator does command a certain art . . . , its highest expression will be in the conceal- ment of its existence. "12
Rhetoric, it seems, must deny itself to succeed. Michael Cahn has called this rule "the very heart of rhetoric," right from its beginning. 13 The principle has become embedded in the tradition, a commonplace passed along and kept alive by writers who include Puttenham, La Rochefoucauld, Butler, Swift, Pope, Burke, Rousseau, and Wilde. The principle is modeled for the Renais- sance in Castiglione's concept of sprezzatura, glossed by Richard Lanham as a "rehearsed spontaneity" and described by Castiglione himself as a capacity ensuring that "art is hidden and whatever is said and done seems without effort or forethought. "14 Sprezzatura is celebrated in the English Renaissance from Herrick to Sidney to Shakespeare. 15 Another Renaissance figure who serves for us as the paragon of dissimulation is Machiavelli, who advises the prince that because it is sometimes necessary to do evil, it is also necessary to dissimulate, to construct what we might now call "plausible deniability," so that "everyone sees what you appear to be, [but] few know what you really are. "16 But the principle of rhetorical concealment is more than the everyday dissimulation of intentions: it is the conviction that the means by which intentions are concealed must also remain undetectable; in other words, we must be convinced that no dissimulation is going on; it is a dissimulation of means as much as of ends. Thus, if "all a rhetorician's rules / Teach nothing but to name his tools," it is best if the tools--and their names--remain under wraps when Sir Hudibras sallies forth.
According to Cahn, rhetoric is the only art with this tradition of self-denial, the one art that "has to live with the requirement of concealing its achievement
in order to attain recognition. "17 Indeed, the ancient arts that were often com- pared with rhetoric, such as medicine, cookery, flute-playing, navigation, and gymnastics, do not seem to have much to hide, and neither do such contem- porary arts as engineering or architecture. We can use and appreciate their products or results even if we happen know a great deal about how they are produced, what materials, ingredients, processes, and techniques go into their success. But other arts are different, and these are used by Plato in a series of complex comparisons and classifications that suggest rhetoric's affinity with arts such as cosmetics, seduction, enchantment, hunting, and military strat- egy. 18 Here the story is different, suggesting that Cahn may not be correct about rhetoric's unique need for concealment. Cosmetics, for example, part of Socrates' elaborate comparison of the sham arts and the true arts in the Gor- gias, would seem to require concealment. 19 Like theatrical illusion, the effect of the cosmetic art dissipates the more we know about its part in the creation of beauty. We admire the skill involved in exercising the art rather than the appearance of the wearer, the art itself rather than its results.
If dissimulation and concealment are indeed necessary for rhetorical success, we face a number of problems as we contemplate both the public work of rhetoric and the educational role of rhetoric. If rhetoric can be more effective, more useful, more powerful, if it remains concealed, what can it mean for rhetoric to go public? What can its "public work" be? Is there a self- defeating premise built into the educational project? Or an entailment of ever more widespread cynicism? If, through the sustained rhetorical education and public acceptance we seek, rhetoric is indeed revealed as a Gorgianic power available to everyone, will public discourse or our social conditions actually improve? The dilemma that intrigues me is epitomized in a New Yorker cartoon, where the public work of rhetoric is unconcealed by naming the tools.
In this essay, I spend some time exploring the principle of concealment in more detail, drawing primarily on the multiple ways that it is expressed in the classical tradition, because the ancients were astute observers of the work- ings of rhetorical power, particularly in the public realm. I examine these sources for what they can reveal about the justifications for and consequences of concealment. The sources give some clues to the conditions in which rhet- oric must work and thus the possibilities for its public role. And I close with some observations about what these conditions mean for the relationship be- tween rhetoric's public work and rhetoric's role in the education of citizens for that work.
The classical sources are suffused with observations and advice about the necessity for concealment. 20 They reveal a series of recurring themes that jus- tify the need to conceal the art of rhetoric. These themes seem to derive from two foundational assumptions that are fully naturalized in our understandings
Should We Name the Tools? 21
22 Carolyn R. Miller
? (C) The New Yorker Collection 2000. Alex Gregory from cartoonbank. com. All rights reserved
of how humans use language: an adversarial model of human relations and a mimetic model of language.
Human Relations Are Adversarial
1. The dominant and most frequent theme is one I call suspicion. This theme appears in the passage by Aristotle quoted earlier: artifice is not persuasive, because it makes people suspect "someone plotting against them. "21 We treat the intentions of others as plots against us in a zero-sum game: if you win, I lose. You are likely to be trying to cheat me out of something, to deceive me, so I must be suspicious. Athenian suspicion was embedded into a law against deceiving the democracy, a law justified in Demosthenes' statement to the assembly that "A man can do you no greater injustice than telling lies; for, where the political constitution is based on speeches/words, how can it be safely administered if the words/speeches are false? "22
Two examples from the advice about concealment suggest how pervasive the theme of suspicion is in the classical tradition:
There is an inevitable suspicion attaching to the unconscionable use of figures. It gives a suggestion of treachery, craft, fallacy, especially when your speech is addressed to a judge with absolute authority. . . . So we
find that a figure is always most effective when it conceals the very fact of its being a figure. 23
Care must be taken to avoid exciting any suspicion in this portion
of our speech, and we should therefore give no hint of elaboration in the exordium, since any art that the orator may employ at this point seems to be directed solely at the judge. 24
2. The second theme, spontaneity, identifies the notion that statements we can trust are those that come easily and naturally; conversely, a premeditated statement, one that is obviously crafted and constructed beforehand, deserves our suspicion. For example, the Rhetorica Ad Herennium cautions about the use of certain figures involving word-play: "[such figures] are to be used very sparingly when we speak in an actual cause, because their invention seems impossible without labour and pains. "25 The principle of spontaneity presup- poses that dissimulation requires more preparation and effort than telling the truth--it requires precisely the effort of concealment. Spontaneity thus serves as a kind of guarantee that no concealment can have occurred and is thus generally understood as a sign of truth or credibility. Here, for example, is Longinus again: "For emotion is always more telling when it seems not to be premeditated by the speaker but to be born of the moment; and this way of questioning and answering one's self counterfeits spontaneous emo- tion. "26
But note the "seems" in the quotation and the possibility of counterfeit emotion. Spontaneity itself can be an effect created with no less labor than highly figured speeches, as Cicero makes clear in this passage about the ora- tor Antonius: "His memory was perfect, there was no suggestion of previous rehearsal; he always gave the appearance of coming forward to speak without preparation, but so well prepared was he that when he spoke it was the court rather that often seemed ill prepared to maintain its guard. "27
In On the Sophists, Alcidamas suggests that "the style of extemporaneous speakers" is most effective and can be imitated. Quintilian also concedes that spontaneity may be artificial: "Above all it is necessary to conceal the care expended upon it [artistic structure] so that our rhythms may seem to possess a spontaneous flow, not to have been the result of elaborate search or com- pulsion. "28
3. Closely related to spontaneity is the theme of sincerity. Spontaneity affects the trustworthiness of statements, and sincerity affects our trust in the speaker; in this way spontaneity produces sincerity (or, to be more precise, the impres- sion of spontaneity produces an impression of sincerity). 29 Here is Quintilian, for example: "Who will endure the orator who expresses his anger, his sorrow or his entreaties in neat antitheses, balanced cadences and exact correspon- dences? Too much care for our words under such circumstances weakens the
Should We Name the Tools? 23
24 Carolyn R. Miller
impression of emotional sincerity, and wherever the orator displays his art unveiled, the hearer says, 'The truth is not in him. '"30
Similarly, the Rhetorica Ad Herennium cautions that "we must take care that the Summary should not be carried back to the Introduction or the Statement of Facts. Otherwise the speech will appear to have been fabricated and devised with elaborate pains to as to demonstrate the speaker's skill, advertise his wit, and display his memory. "31
The sincere speaker says what he or she really believes, which should require no effort, and is more interested in the truth than in persuasive influ- ence. Such a speaker treats communicative relations as cooperative rather than adversarial, or perhaps as though they were cooperative rather than adver- sarial. But cooperation itself may be a disarming strategy, a distraction, a way of concealing adversarial intentions.
The themes of suspicion, spontaneity, and sincerity reinforce each other and together presuppose deeply adversarial communicative relationships, as illustrated in this formulation by Alcidamas: The truth is that speeches that have been laboriously worked out with elaborate diction (compositions more akin to poetry than prose) are deficient in spontaneity and truth, and, since they give the impression of a mechanical artificiality and labored insincerity, they inspire an audience with distrust and ill-will. 32
Adversarial relationships figure prominently in Plato's classification of the arts, mentioned earlier. He classifies rhetoric with the combative, acquisitive, or conquering arts, such as boxing, wrestling, hunting, and military strat- egy. 33 The comparison of rhetoric to these arts is endemic to the entire clas- sical tradition. In such competitive endeavors, knowledge of the opponent's art makes it less effective, reducing surprise and enabling countermaneuvers. The hunter and the general both need to conceal the practice of their arts, because the acquisition they seek is--almost by definition--at the expense of others, who will resist. These arts are necessarily adversarial, and thus for them concealment plays an essential strategic role.
The adversarial spirit, and comparisons between verbal and physical con- test, permeate the rhetorical tradition. Indeed, the sophistic principle of the dissoi logoi, the Aristotelian admonition to argue both sides of the question, and Ciceronian argumentation "in utramque partem" all instantiate the adver- sarial spirit. Aristotle observes that "it would be strange if an inability to de- fend oneself by means of the body is shameful, while there is no shame in an inability to use speech. "34 Cicero asks, "What . . . is so indispensable as to have always within your grasp weapons wherewith you can defend yourself, or challenge the wicked man, or when provoked take your revenge? "35 And Quintilian claims, "This gift of arrangement is to oratory what generalship is to war. The skilled commander will know how to distribute his forces for bat- tle, what troops he should keep back to garrison forts or guard cities, to secure supplies, or guard communications, and what dispositions to make by land
and by sea. "36 In perhaps the earliest source, Gorgias made the comparison between persuasion and physical force prominent in his Encomium of Helen. The adversarial arts were taught and practiced in ancient Greece and Rome in a general culture of agonism in which the ground rule is that both sides cannot win. Such agonism is inherent in the forensic encounter, which was the paradigmatic rhetorical situation for much of ancient practice and teach- ing. Much deliberative rhetoric was also agonistic, with clearly defined ad- versaries advocating contrary policies. Recent scholarship has explored the way that this agonistic culture influenced rhetoric. Walter Ong's study of the "adversative" spirit in human thought and culture emphasizes the "highly agonistic" sources of rhetoric as a formal art for the world of public debate, and in her study of rhetoric and athletics in ancient Greece, Debra Hawhee notes the multiple ways that the language of athletics (boxing and chariot racing, in particular) became the language of sophistic rhetoric; she claims that an "athletic notion of agonism" informed early Greek rhetorical practice and pedagogy. 37 Noting that Gorgias's epitaph reportedly said that he "armed the soul for contests of excellence," Scott Consigny argues that we can best interpret Gorgias's slim corpus against the widespread agonism of Greek cul- ture. 38 John Poulakos claims that, for Plato, the word for orator (rhetor) and
the word for contestant (agonistes) are "virtual synonyms. "39
Roman rhetoric was also grounded in agonism. 40 The handbooks, for exam- ple, presuppose a hostile or resistant audience in their advice on the insinua- tio, or indirect introduction, which makes the concealment theme explicit and with it all our worst fears about rhetoric. Cicero's youthful De Inventione describes the insinuatio as "an address which by dissimulation and indirection unobtrusively steals into the mind of the auditor. "41 The insinuatio is to be used in a "difficult" case, in which the auditors are opposed, if not actually hostile, to the proposition to be defended. Cicero says that the audience can be "pacified" or made more "tractable" by strategies that substitute favorable topics for offensive ones, acknowledge the sources of offense and agree with them, work "imperceptibly" to win goodwill away from one's opponents, and "conceal" one's intention to defend the proposition that will offend. 42 The contemporaneous Rhetorica Ad Herennium provides similar advice, conclud- ing with the observation that the insinuatio seeks to make the audience recep- tive "covertly, through dissimulation" (occulte, per dissimulationem). 43 If we see through these strategies, we immediately suspect that we are being deceived. The assumption of adversarial relations is not merely a vestige of some ear- lier time but an important force in contemporary culture. Kenneth Burke, of course, understood well the centrality of adversarial relations in human life, characterizing rhetoric as "par excellence the region of the Scramble, of insult and injury, bickering, squabbling, malice and the lie, cloaked malice and the subsidized lie. "44 Lakoff and Johnson have shown how deeply the "argument is war" metaphor is embedded in everyday language. 45 Others suggest that
Should We Name the Tools? 25
26 Carolyn R. Miller
contemporary culture has become too aggressive and polarized. Deborah Tannen, for example, has claimed in The Argument Culture that an "adversar- ial frame of mind" pervades the media, politics, law, and education: "Nearly everything is framed as a battle or game in which winning or losing is the main concern. "46 She finds these adversarial relations to be at least partly re- sponsible for our increasing alienation and loss of community and ultimately to be "damaging to the human spirit. "47 In one of his last books, Wayne Booth described the adversarial version of rhetoric as "win-rhetoric" and, like Tannen, decried its widespread use in politics and the media. He urged us to distinguish between honorable and dishonorable kinds, based on the justice of the cause. Win-rhetoric using deceptive strategies in a cause that the speaker knows to be unjust is what Booth calls "rhetrickery," and he, like Tannen, urges on us a less adversarial approach to communication, which he calls "listening-rhetoric. "48 Our distaste for agonism we owe not so much to the ancients as to our more immediate predecessors, Enlightenment political the- orists, who recoiled from the bloody religious wars and divisive nation build- ing of the early modern period with a campaign against rhetoric, as both Stephen Toulmin and Bryan Garsten have shown. 49
Under the assumption of adversarial relations, rhetoric's problem is plain. Like the general, the orator/advocate must win; for both, the cause must prevail, and for both, the cause justifies any strategic means. For rhetoric, expedience becomes the overriding virtue and dissimulation one of the most effective stratagems in the arsenal. Odysseus models these dubious virtues for the Greeks: he is crafty, flexible, duplicitous; in Sophocles' Philoctetes he proclaims, "What I seek in everything is to win. "50 He is, as James Kastely has argued, the "embodiment of rhetoric. "51 At times, notes Don Herzog in his study of cunning, Odysseus seems ingenious and admirable and at times devious and reprehensible. 52 Like rhetoric.
Language Is (or Should Be) Mimetic
The belief that suspicion on our part, and spontaneity and sincerity on the part of our interlocutors, can protect us against deceptive concealment motivated by adversarial relations rests upon another assumption: that language can be mimetic. If the speaker says what he or she sincerely believes, spontaneously, without premeditation or artifice, then words will reveal the truth unproblem- atically. The principle of mimesis presupposes that language can (and should) represent nature, or belief, directly, that words and things can (and should) cor- respond. To the Greek way of thinking, truth itself is a revealing (a + le^theia: un-concealment) that removes obscurity or deception. Among the Romans, a fragment from Cato the Elder is often quoted to similar effect: "rem tene, verba sequentur" (Fr. 15; grasp the subject, the words will follow). George Campbell maintained that the "most essential" quality of oratory is "perspicuity," which he defined as "transparency, such as may be ascribed to air, glass, water, or any
other medium through which material objects are viewed. "53 Rhetorical crit- ics in much of the twentieth century maintained what Gaonkar has referred to as the "transparency thesis," the assumption that oratory is uninterest- ingly determined by its content, that it is a "mirror" of its object. 54
When words and things correspond, no rhetoric need be involved; facts, beliefs, and intentions are revealed by the language itself, by a natural mimetic correspondence between language and the world, under a "degree zero of rhetoric. "55 Philosophers have long hoped for such a language: the correspon- dence theory of truth, in which statements and facts can be matched up together, has its roots in Plato and Aristotle but extends to Bertrand Russell and others in the early twentieth century who sought a theory-neutral obser- vation language. 56 Francis Bacon had advocated purifying the language of the "marketplace" in favor of terms that are close to observation; Thomas Sprat urged scientists to "return back to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men deliver'd so many things, almost in an equal number of words"; and scientists like Linnaeus, Lavoisier, and Whewell spent no little effort attempt- ing to control the vocabulary of science. 57 But ever since Gorgias argued that we cannot put the truth into words, that language is in essence deceptive because words and things are incommensurable, these efforts have been more hopeful than successful. 58
The mimetic theory persists, however, and the adversarial model helps ex- plain its persistence. Because you can use language to lie (that is, to conceal what you believe to be the case or what you believe to be your intentions with respect to making the case to someone), then in order to be believed, you need to draw attention away from the fact that you are using language. One of the ways we do that is to urge on others (and ourselves) the principle of mimesis: suspicion of the possible lie is reduced if language is believed to be determined by whatever is the case, not by the interventions of the speaker. Thus when language is understood to be mimetic, spontaneity and sincerity serve to counteract suspicion. We might conclude, then, that an adversarial model of social relations requires--or at least wants very badly--a mimetic theory of language. A mimetic theory of language allows for the possibility that truth can be told, that we can hold our adversaries to account for doing so, and that we can get closer to the possibly concealed truth by unconceal- ing our adversary's rhetorical strategies.
