Philosophy and Rhetoric: What should be a beautiful relationship

Philosophy as a discipline has placed an emphasis on logos, rationality, in argument over ethos (view of the person) and pathos (look up), two concepts from the field of rhetoric. When philosophers debate it is supposed to be a discussion about the argument itself. Attacks on character, attacks against intentionally weak positions, and slippery slope arguments are all fallacies to be avoided, and the use of one in argument is enough to discredit the argument.

We are then surprised when we get involved in discussions outside of our ivory tower and no one takes the time to listen to our finely nuanced points, rather attacking characters, extraneous—to us anyway—features or points, instead of the argument itself. What have we missed?

Rhetoric, for the ancient Greeks, went hand in hand with philosophy. Aristotle wrote the classic text on rhetoric and public speaking as well as his books on poetry, ethics, politics, and early physics. Philosophy abandoned these other disciplines long ago. Philosophy lost touch and finds its style of argument outdated and ineffectual outside of academia or the journals and podcasts only other philosophers subscribe to.

And yet philosophers can be drawn into a heated emotional debate as easily as anyone. Walking past, for example, a display for antiabortion and seeing aborted fetuses six feet tall leaves a sour taste in our mouths. Our arguments, while well reasoned, seem flaccid when a six foot banner with a simple slogan stares us down. We’ve forgotten what rhetoric is, how powerful images are.

Rhetoric is its own discipline to be distinguished for ‘English’ degrees. Ph.Ds. in rhetoric study a variety of topics. One thing rhetoricians have known is humanity is guided as much by emotion as by rational thought. David Hume theorized as much when he said “rationality is, and should be, the slave of the passions”. Even the most cool headed of us are not immune to the brain numbing flash of anger or frustration at displays that refuse to play by our rules.

Activist groups are excellent visual rhetoricians. They learned that simple messages and powerfully charged images would do more to motivate a lay audience than nuanced argument.

So what does that mean for pure logos? Do we compromise? Give up on purely rational discourse?

NO. Of course not. However, we should remember something we’ve forgotten and that is context. There is a time and a place to do hard philosophy. When grounding theories and the like we should be true to our roots. It is what makes us who we are.

On the other hand, we need to take a page from rhetoric and keep in mind who our audience is. To do philosophy in the public sphere (as it should be done) requires laying aside our theoretic jargon. If philosophy is to be viable in the public sphere, then we should consider how what we say will have meaning in that arena.