Ethics and the Orator: The Ciceronian Tradition of Political Morality
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Ethics and the Orator: The Ciceronian Tradition of Political Morality
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Overview
For thousands of years, critics have attacked rhetoric and the actual practice of politics as unprincipled, insincere, and manipulative. In Ethics and the Orator, Gary A. Remer disagrees, offering the Ciceronian rhetorical tradition as a rejoinder.
Remer’s study is distinct from other works on political morality in that it turns to Cicero, not Aristotle, as the progenitor of an ethical rhetorical perspective. Ethics and the Orator demonstrates how Cicero presents his ideal orator as exemplary not only in his ability to persuade, but in his capacity as an ethical person. Remer makes a compelling case that Ciceronian values—balancing the moral and the useful, prudential reasoning, and decorum—are not particular only to the philosopher himself, but are distinctive of a broader Ciceronian rhetorical tradition that runs through the history of Western political thought post-Cicero, including the writings of Quintilian, John of Salisbury, Justus Lipsius, Edmund Burke, the authors of The Federalist, and John Stuart Mill.
“Gary Remer’s very fine new book could not be more familiar or more central to contemporary politics.” —Perspectives on Politics
“Well illustrates ways in which Cicero was perhaps the classical political thinker most concerned with the transcendence of the common good.” —The Review of Politics
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226439334 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 12/22/2022 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
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Ethics and the Orator
The Ciceronian Tradition of Political Morality
By Gary A. Remer
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2017 The University of ChicagoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-43933-4
CHAPTER 1
Rhetoric, Emotional Manipulation, and Morality: The Contemporary Relevance of Cicero vis-à-vis Aristotle
Responding to the long-standing criticism of political rhetoric as inherently manipulative — used by politicians to control the citizenry through undue emotional appeals — scholars have turned to Aristotle's Rhetoric for what they see as a nonmanipulative, morally acceptable conception of political rhetoric. As already stated in the introduction, I look to the less obvious rhetorical thinker, Cicero — so easily portrayed, based on his own words, as a master of emotional manipulation — for a moral conception of rhetoric. In this chapter, I evaluate the two rhetoricians' approaches to morality, rhetoric, and the emotions, specifically emotional manipulation, making use of Nathaniel Klemp's (2011) two conditions of manipulation: first, that it requires the use of hidden or irrational force to affect another's choices; and, second, that it is intentional (62–64). I consider two moral breaches stemming from emotional manipulation. The first moral breach — consequentialist, exemplified by Plato in the introduction — is when politicians, in manipulating an audience's emotions, hinder their listeners from recognizing what is good or beneficial. The second moral breach — nonconsequentialist, represented by Kant in the introduction — is when politicians manipulate their listeners rhetorically, thereby undermining their listeners' autonomy.
Describing the Rhetorical Emotions
Aristotle
Toward the beginning of the Rhetoric, Aristotle delineates three pisteis (singular: pistis) or means of persuasion" that are entechnic (i.e., "artful"), that the speaker "invents" to persuade the audience. (Atechnic [i.e., "nonartful"] pisteis are preexisting proofs not created by the speaker, e.g., witnesses, testimony of slaves taken under torture, contracts.) The three pisteis are (1) ethos, the means of persuasion that "are in the character of the speaker"; (2) pathos, in which there is persuasion "through the hearers when they are led to feel emotion by the speech"; and (3) logos, or proof based on rational arguments (Aristotle 1991, 1.2; Wisse 1989, 13–17).
Although ethos in Aristotle may superficially resemble a type of emotional appeal that produces in the audience a feeling of trust toward the speaker, it does not evoke emotions. (The emotions in Cicero, as will be seen, are divided between pathos and ethos.) Ethos is the element of speech that presents the speaker as "worthy of credence; for we believe fair-minded people to a greater extent and more quickly [than we do others]." In contrast, pathos aims at effecting an emotional response in the audience (Aristotle 1991, 1.2.4; Wisse 1989, 33–34). For Aristotle, orators do not use ethos to elicit sympathy or any similar emotion toward themselves; such appeals to sympathy are part of pathos.
Ethos affects judgment through the audience's confidence in the speaker's veracity, whereas pathos, in Aristotle, influences judgment through variations in the emotions. Thus, in the second book of the Rhetoric, where he analyzes the individual emotions most completely, Aristotle (1991) defines the emotions (pathe) as "those things which, by undergoing change, people come to differ in their judgments and which are accompanied by pain and pleasure, for example, anger, pity, fear, and other such things and their opposites" (2.1.8). Aristotle discusses twelve emotions in some detail (2.2–11): anger (orge), mildness or calmness (praotes), love or friendly feeling (philia), hate (misos) or enmity (ekhthra), fear (phobos), confidence (tharsos), shame (aiskhyne), kindliness (kharis), pity (eleos), righteous indignation (nemesan), envy (phthonos), and emulation or eagerness to match the accomplishments of others (zelos).
Aristotle describes the pathe as engendering judgment but does not clearly explain how. The now dominant explanation is that emotions affect judgment through beliefs. If we accept that Aristotle adopts a cognitive approach to emotion, then beliefs elicit emotions, whose variations (caused by these initial beliefs) influence other beliefs or decisions (i.e., judgments) about policies or a defendant's guilt or innocence (Konstan 2006, 37). Aristotle lends support to this explanation in the Rhetoric immediately following his definition of the twelve emotions. He tells us that each emotion must be discussed in three ways. Using the example of anger, Aristotle indicates that we must determine: (1) the state of mind of people who are angry; (2) "against whom are they usually angry"; and (3) "for what sort of reasons" (Aristotle 1991, 2.1.8). The mention of objects ("against whom") and grounds ("reasons") is important because "it strongly suggests that Aristotle does not dissociate cognition from emotion" (Fortenbaugh 1970, 54–56). Aristotle does not conceive of emotions as unthinking sensations or feelings; if he did, he could not analyze an emotion's objects and grounds.
Aristotle's discussion of individual emotions supports this interpretation. Before analyzing anger and fear, Aristotle (1991) defines them: "Let anger be [defined as] desire, accompanied by [mental and physical] distress, for conspicuous retaliation because of a conspicuous slight that was directed, without justification, against oneself or those near to one" (2.2.1); "[l]et fear be [defined as] a sort of pain or agitation derived from the imagination of a destructive or painful evil" (2.5.1). In both instances, Aristotle implies that a thought or belief is essential to the emotion (Fortenbaugh 1970, 55–56). Anger requires the belief that one has been conspicuously slighted without justification. Fear presupposes the thought of an impending evil. In either case, when the thought is absent, so is the emotion. Therefore, if I am shown that the reasons for my emotion are not relevant, then my emotion should disappear or diminish (Nussbaum 1996, 311). Emotions are "responsive to cognitive modification" and are treated in the Rhetoric, especially the second book, as distinct from impulses (Leighton 1996, 223–24).
I have argued that Aristotle primarily assumes a cognitive approach to the emotions. Aristotle does not, however, adopt this approach without exception in the Rhetoric. At times, Aristotle advises the speaker to affect the listeners' emotions without basing these emotions on thinking. The most glaring example of such a noncognitive appeal — which is also deceptive — occurs in the third book of the Rhetoric, where Aristotle, in discussing style, argues that the listener will be affected by the emotions of the speaker: "and the hearer suffers [literally, "shares the pathos of"] along with the pathetic speaker, even if what he says amounts to nothing. As a result, many overwhelm their hearers by making noise" (Aristotle 1991, 3.7.5; Wardy 1996, 79). Aristotle (1991) assumes that the lexis (style) the speaker adopts can directly influence the hearer's emotions, if the style is coordinated with the desired emotion (3.7.3). Another instance of eliciting emotions without instilling any prior belief is found in Book 3, in Aristotle's discussion of delivery. Although Aristotle disparages delivery in oratory as "vulgar" and independent of "facts" and "true justice," he states that one "should pay attention to delivery, not because it is right but because it is necessary." Delivery is "something that has the greatest force" because it can "affect the audience," given "the sad state of governments" and "the corruption of the audience" (3.1.3–6). Unlike the previous example, Aristotle does not explicitly refer to pathos in the case of delivery. But it is difficult to explain how delivery affects the audience other than emotionally without prior cognition. (Delivery does not persuade through argument or ethos.) And, as Aristotle observes in the same chapter, Thrasymachus discusses delivery in his account of emotional appeals (3.1.7).
Cicero
Although I argue that Aristotle and Cicero approach the emotions in rhetoric differently — and those differences have political and moral implications — Cicero begins his analysis of the emotions much like Aristotle; Cicero also adopts the threefold division of pisteis into ethos, pathos, and logos. In the section of De oratore devoted to the invention of arguments, Cicero uses the character Antonius to introduce the three means of persuasion. Antonius explains that, when composing a speech, he initially devotes himself to creating rational arguments and "[a]fter that, I consider very carefully two further elements: the first one recommends us or those for whom we are pleading [ethos], the second is aimed at moving the minds of our audience in the direction we want [pathos]." Antonius reiterates this point by stating that "the method employed in the art of oratory ... relies entirely upon three means of persuasion: proving that our contentions are true [argumentation], winning over our audience [ethos], and inducing their minds to feel any emotion the case may demand [pathos]" (Cicero 2001a, 2.114–116).
In contrast to Aristotle, who categorizes all emotional appeals under pathos, Cicero (2001a) divides them between two pisteis, ethos and pathos. Ethos's goal is to win over the hearers "to feel goodwill toward the orator as well as toward his client" (2.182). Cicero shows that, like Aristotle, he intends ethos to demonstrate the orator's (or the client's) moral character. Cicero has Antonius say: "Well then, the character, the customs, the deeds, and the life, both of those who do the pleading and of those on whose behalf they plead, make a very important contribution to winning a case. ... Now people's minds are won over by a man's prestige, his accomplishments, and the reputation he has acquired by his way of life" (2.182). Unlike Aristotle, however, for whom ethos establishes the speaker's trustworthiness without eliciting emotions, Cicero seeks to effect, through ethos, an emotional response in the audience. This difference between Cicero and Aristotle is supported by Cicero's use of conciliare (winning over), a verb that "clearly implies a form of acting upon the emotions" (Fantham 1973, 267–68). For example, Cicero (2001a) has Antonius speak of winning goodwill (benevolentiam conciliare), to persuade through ethos, and of winning esteem (conciliat caritatem), an emotion associated with ethos; Antonius employs conciliare when speaking of the orator winning love (amor), an emotion classified under pathos (2.115, 2.182, 2.206–207; Gill 1984, 159). Aristotle, however, says nothing of winning the audience's goodwill in relation to ethos (Fortenbaugh 1988, 261–62).
Although Cicero uses conciliare — a relatively mild verb — when speaking of ethos and pathos, to describe the orator's appeal to pathos he usually employs more forceful verbs, such as permovere (excite, affect with violent emotion), impellere (compel, constrain), incitare (arouse), capere (s eize), excitare (stir up), and movere and commovere (move and arouse) (2001a, 2.185–87, 2.211–15). This use of powerful verbs suggests the main difference between the types of emotions contained in ethos and pathos. For Cicero, pathos is an appeal to the vehement emotions, whereas ethos elicits the more gentle emotions (Cicero 1939b, 128–29). Regardingethos, Cicero (2001a) has Antonius explain that the effect of bolstering a man's character through his "prestige, his accomplishments, and the reputation he has acquired by his way of life" is "enhanced by a gentle tone of voice on the part of the orator" (2.182). In contrast to the orator employing pathos, who uses "vigorous oratory" displayed in "some form of sharp and violent emotional arousal to set the juror's hearts aflame," the speaker evoking ethos speaks "in a quiet, low-keyed, and gentle manner" (2.183). In discussing proof from ethos, however, Cicero has Antonius refrain from specifying which emotions comprise the leniores affectus (2.212; May 1988, 10–11). The particular passions contained in pathos, that "mode of speaking ... which stirs the hearts of the jurors quite differently" (Cicero 2001a, 2.185), are similar to those pathe Aristotle considers in the Rhetoric, but are identified as violent in Cicero and not similarly designated in Aristotle (Cicero 2001a, 2.206–211; Wisse 1989, 34, 242–45): affection (amor), hate (odium), anger (iracundia), envy (invidia), pity (misericordia), hope (spes), joy (laetitia), fear (timor), and grief (molestia).
Although the particular emotions that Cicero lists as relevant to pathos are comparable to Aristotle's pathe in theRhetoric, Cicero, unlike Aristotle, does not define emotion. And nowhere in De oratore does Antonius "offer anything like a clear general statement concerning the nature of emotional response" (Fortenbaugh 1988, 269–70). Rather, Antonius seems to go out of his way to avoid analyzing emotions conceptually. For example, when alluding to debates between Hellenistic philosophers on the emotions, Antonius asserts that it matters not if an orator knows "whether anger was a disturbance of the mind or a desire to avenge pain" (Cicero 2001a, 1.220). Likewise, Cicero has his interlocutors avoid determining whether or not an emotion is the result of beliefs, that is, whether or not to adopt, like Aristotle does, a cognitive approach to emotions.
Although Cicero does not determine the relation between emotion and cognition, De oratore is filled with passages that characterize emotional appeals as rhetorical attempts to overpower the audience's rational capacities — passages that imply that emotions are blind impulses detached from cognition. For example, Cicero (2001a) contrasts ethos and pathos with reasoned argument when Antonius argues that nothing is more important in oratory than for "the orator to be favorably regarded by the audience [ethos], and for the audience itself to be moved in such a way as to be ruled by some strong emotional impulse [pathos] rather than by reasoned judgment [logos]" (2.178). Antonius's point seems to be that the orator can, and should, bypass the hearer's thought processes by appealing to the emotions. Likewise, Cicero has Antonius distinguish between argumentation, on the one hand, and "winning favor" and "stirring emotions," on the other, with Antonius stating about the latter proofs that "I concentrate particularly on the aspect that is most able to move people's hearts" (2.292–93; see also 2.129, 2.214, 2.337).
On closer inspection, however, Cicero does not necessarily oppose reason and emotion. Thus, emotions may be cognitively based without resulting from formal argument. For example, Cicero describes how Antonius established the character of his client, Manius Aquillius, by making him "stand where all could see him," after which he "tore open his shirt, and exposed his breast, that his countrymen might see the scars that he bore on the front of his body," scars from the wounds he received in defense of Rome (Cicero 1953c, 2.5.3; 2001a, 2.124, 2.194–96). Antonius does not establish Aquillius's character here with explicit argumentation. Nevertheless, by "expos[ing] to the jurors the scars on the old general's chest," Antonius instills the thought in his audience that Aquillius is a man of good character because he was willing to sacrifice his life for the Republic.
Not only does Cicero recognize that beliefs create emotions, but, more specifically, he acknowledges that rational argumentation can engender emotions. In De oratore, Publius Sulpicius Rufus lauds his legal antagonist, Antonius, for using commonplaces against Quintus Caepio and for filling the proceedings with hatred, indignation, and pity (Cicero 2001a, 2.203; see also 2.108–109). That commonplaces are employed in inventing arguments and that Sulpicius links Antonius's use of commonplaces with overwhelming the audience with emotions shows that Sulpicius does not view argumentation as being opposed to emotional appeals. And Antonius's claim that "I bested your [i.e., Sulpicius's] accusation in the case not so much because the jurors were informed, but because the jurors were informed, but because their minds were affected" (2.197–201) is consistent with his eliciting emotions through argumentation. What Antonius means is that he employed arguments to mislead the audience by diverting its attention from the issues relevant to the debate, so that the audience's emotions will be inflamed. His arguments, like many others that Cicero condones, are still rational arguments, even if not germane to the question at hand.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction
Prologue: Quintilian and John of Salisbury in the Ciceronian Tradition
1 Rhetoric, Emotional Manipulation, and Morality: The Contemporary Relevance of Cicero vis-à-vis Aristotle
2 Political Morality, Conventional Morality, and Decorum in Cicero
3 Rhetoric as a Balancing of Ends: Cicero and Machiavelli
4 Justus Lipsius, Morally Acceptable Deceit, and Prudence in the Ciceronian Tradition
5 The Classical Orator as Political Representative: Cicero and the Modern Concept of Representation
6 Deliberative Democracy and Rhetoric: Cicero, Oratory, and Conversation
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index