Grassi, Ernesto. Rhetoric as Philosophy

Grassi, Ernesto. Rhetoric as Philosophy: The Human Tradition. Trans. John Michael Krois and
Azodi. Southern Illinois UP: Carbondale, IL. 1980.

“The problem of rhetoric—as the speech that acts on the emotionspcan be treated from two points of view. It can be considered simply as a doctrine of a type of speech that the traditional rhetors, politicians, and preachers need, i.e., only as an art, as a technique of persuading” (18).

“Theoretical thinking, as a rational process, excludes every rhetorical element because pathetic influences—the influences of feeling—disturb the clarity of rational thought” (18).

“Locke writes:
But yet if we would speak of things as they are, we must allow that the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness; all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment; and so are perfect cheats.” (18).

“Kant writes:
“Rhetoric so far as this is taken to mean the art of persuasion, i.e., the art of deluding by means of a fair semblance [as ars oratoria], and not merely excellence of speech (eloquence and style0, is a dialectic, which borrows from poetry only so much as it is necessary to win over men’s minds to the side of the speaker before they have weighed the matter, and to rob their verdict of its freedom. . .(19).

“The indicative or allusive [semeinein] speech provides the framework within which the proof can come into existence” (20).

“Such speech is immediately a ‘showing’ ==and for this reason ‘figurative’ or ‘imaginative,’ and thus in the original sense ‘theoretical’ (theorein—i.e., to see]” (20)>

“If the image, the metaphor, belongs to rhetorical speech (and for this reason it has a pathetic character), we also are obliged to recognize that every original, former, ‘archaic’ speech (archaic in the sense of dominant, arche archomai; archontes or the dominants) cannot have a rational but only a rhetorical character” (20).

“This original speech, because of its ‘archaic’ character, sketches the framework for every rational consideration, and for this reason we are obliged to say that rhetorical speech ‘comes before’ every rationtional speech, i.e., it has a ‘prophetic’ [prophainesthai] character and never again cah be comprehended from a rational, deductive point of view” (20).

“we must distinguish between two kinds of language: the rational language, which is dialectical, mediating, and demonstrative, i.e., apodictic and without any pathetic character, and the semantic language, which is immediate, not deductive or demonstrative, illuminating, purely indicative, and which has a preeminence opposite the rationsal language. On the basis of its figurative, metaphorical character, this language has an original pathetic essence” (21).

“It seems useful to quote another Aristotelian passage: ‘’The principles—all or some—must necessarily be lent more belief that what is deduced. He who arrives at a certain knowledge through proof must necessarily . . .know and believe the principles to a higher degree than what is decuced from them’ (Anal. Post. 72a 37)” (26).

“The techne of rhetoric, as the art of persuasion, of forming belief, structures the emotive framework which creates the tension within which words, questions that are dealt with, and actions that are discussed, acquire their passionate significance” (26).

“Since emotional life unrolls in the framework of directly indicative signs, a word must evoke these signs in order to relieve or to soothe the passions. As a passionate, and not exclusively rational, being, man is in need of the emotive word” (26).

“So over the centuries, under the aspect of the relationship between content and form, the thesis was again and again developed that images and rhetoric were to be appreciated primarily from outside, for pedagogical reasons, that is, as aids to ‘alleviate’ the ‘severity’ and ‘dryness’ of rational language” (26).

“According to the traditional interpretation Plato’s attitude against rhetoric is a rejection of the doxa, or opinion, and of the impact of images, upon which the art of rhetoric relies; at the same time his attitude is considered as a defense of the theoretical, rational speech, that is, of episteme” (28).