448. Rhetoric

Rhetoric is effective speech: convincing and taking people in and along. There was an article about it last Saturday (26 October 2019) in the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant by Jan Kuitenbrouwer. That recounts the main dimensions of rhetoric, according to Aristotle: logos (logic, facts, arguments), ethos moral  force), pathos (feeling), and Kairos (hitting the target, coming home, fitting, adequate to the context). The last is the least known, but now seems to dominate, together with pathos. Some of that is needed, but there should be balance; good argument, ethical, with feeling and adequacy to those addressed. As simple as possible, no more complicated than needed. Perhaps one should add beauty, good sound and literary quality. Kairos fits with the Aristotelian notion of phronesis, practical philosophy, where one takes into account the context and the conditions of those involved. Logos and ethos should not make speech too heavy, with inappropriate bathos. It should be as light as possible,  a bit like dancing, singing, please. But if logos and ethos are lacking, it becomes playing for the gallery, going for the effect, regardless of truth and ethical rectitude.

We now have politicians lying, and knowing it, for effect only, to enhance their position. 

Communication, by politicians and in the media, seems to be going that way. The imperative has become to get attention and get people along. The way of least resistance, the easiest, the popular and the entertaining.

if this is true, why? Is it laziness, not wanting to exert one’s mind, or habit, what one is used to, brought up in? It is certainly that, in part, a result of commercialisation, market ideology, presenting beauty, glamour and youth as the paragon of value, brought home by the rhetoric of advertising.

Going with the crowd and with the ‘normal’ has always been attractive. But in some cases, communication should haul people out of context, out of their ‘comfort zone’, and have the courage of the unusual.

Rhetoric, and surveillance, are now used to engineer conformity, notably in China, and thereby make things easy and streamlined. Thought and ethical reflection, about good and bad, are no longer required, can be done away with. Communication becomes manipulation.

Is that modern times? Am I old-fashioned? Should I not care? Should it be, can it be reversed, with a modicum of logos and ethos for  the sake of individualism?

I am critical of liberalism, for its lack of ethos for the other person, and of social, public feeling and responsibility, but respect for individuality and variety, difference should be maintained. In the struggle between collective and individual identity, the latter should still prevail.