The articles in this series were delivered as speeches at the end of the Spring 2025 semester for Rosary College’s Speech and Rhetoric course. Student’s were prompted to take a stance on Socrates’ vision of rhetoric as a morally formative force.
Near the middle of the 5th century BC, the Greek city-state of Sparta waged war on the pre-eminent Peloponnesian city of the time, Athens. Athens, while economically and navally powerful, was unable to meet the military might of Sparta, and would’ve succumbed to its domineering neighbor if it weren’t for the stratagems of a single politician, Pericles, who’d been at the forefront of Athenian politics for almost thirty years. Using his significant sway over the Athenian populace, he managed to bypass Sparta’s superiority and preserve Athens throughout the war.
Survival against Sparta wasn’t Pericles’ only achievement. During his political career, he promoted a form of populism with laws that “empowered” the lower-class citizens, changing the face of the Athenian democracy—as well as the people themselves—and solidifying the formation of the Athenian empire.
What enabled Pericles’ high level of influence? Writing almost four hundred years later, the Sicilian historian Diodorus, in his Bibliotheca, records that Pericles “far excelled all his fellow citizens in skill of oratory” (12.39.5). His charismatic public speaking was perhaps the most important factor that allowed him to gain popularity, and also to ultimately form the shape of the government and the populace. Without his rhetoric, Pericles’ influence likely wouldn’t have come to bear.
That rhetoric has an effect on people is apparent. But what, precisely, is this effect? In what way did Pericles manage to change Athens—and was it for better or worse? How did the campaign speeches of, say, Barack Obama or Donald Trump influence the people they were addressed to? Rhetoric, while only being a tool in itself, has a personal impact which is fundamentally determined by the intention and motive of the speaker. Poor intentions give audiences an echo chamber of their own opinions, resulting in moral degeneration, while better intentions seek to guide the audience towards a laudable goal.
But before we go too far, we should figure out what we mean when we say “rhetoric.” We could bring up the definitions given by Aristotle or Plato, but instead, let’s consider what I’m doing right now. In this discourse, there are three factors at play: the speaker or writer (we’ll just say “rhetor” for ease), which is me, the audience, which is you, and the discourse itself, which is this paper. I’m employing rhetoric in the third factor—that is, I’m using it in this discourse.
So rhetoric is a tool used in discourse between a rhetor and an audience. But what is it a tool for? Why am I using (or trying to use, or failing to use) rhetoric at this moment? Aristotle would say “persuasion,” and basically that means the rhetor is trying to make his audience think in a certain way. He has an objective, and he wants his audience to adhere to that objective. For example, I want to convince you that the way we use rhetoric personally affects our audiences. That’s my objective, and that’s what I’m trying to use rhetoric to accomplish.
But that isn’t a final end. Rhetors try to make people think in certain ways so that they’ll do certain things. As we’ll see, it’s this goal that’s the crux of the matter. People don’t practice rhetoric for rhetoric’s sake; they want to influence their audiences in a very specific way which varies from rhetor to rhetor.
But I’m getting ahead of myself again. As we indicated above, rhetoric itself is no more than a tool which doesn’t have moral value in and of itself, and thus doesn’t inherently have a tendency to influence audiences one way or another. This concept is what Aristotle’s treatise on rhetoric, titled (you’ll never guess) Rhetoric, comes from. At the very beginning of book one, Aristotle notes that “it is possible to inquire the reason why some speakers succeed . . . and every one will at once agree that such an inquiry is the function of an art” (1.1). The word that Aristotle uses for “art” is tékhnē, a “skill” or “craft”; he’s saying that, because it can be systematically taught, rhetoric is a “skill.”
Skills, like all tools, don’t have moral quality, and we can’t pass moral judgment on them. Why do we bring that up? We can’t say that rhetoric is inherently bad and damaging to people, and we also can’t say that it’s inherently good and always benefits people. Think of a skill for successfully creating and running a business. There are a lot of ways you can benefit people with that skill, like providing for needs in a community, and there are also a lot of ways you can harm people, like financial exploitation. Does that make the skill itself good or bad? No: like rhetoric, it’s a neutral tool. This is how Aristotle addresses rhetoric in his treatise; he goes over the various methods and practices of rhetoric without discussing its potential for either harm or benefit, because he knows that, in itself, it’s neutral.
But, like business skills, rhetoric is never found on its own. As we mentioned above, it’s always in the context of a relationship between the rhetor and the audience, one that’s defined by the goals and motives of the rhetor. These motives can fall under a wide variety of fields.
The most thorough treatment of bad motives occurs in Plato’s Gorgias. In Socrates’ dialogue with the sophist Gorgias, he calls rhetoric “a knack . . . For producing a certain gratification and pleasure” (462c), a knack which he calls “flattery . . . because it guesses at what’s pleasant with no consideration for what’s best” (465a). Socrates compares this to cooking tasty but unhealthy foods: it gives you what you want even though it isn’t good for you.
Why would someone employ this flattery? Socrates indicates that this “gratification of the citizens” and treatment of “the people like children” is due to a slighting of “the common good for the sake of their own private good” (502e). Specifically, Socrates is talking about “Themistocles . . . Cimon, Miltiades and Pericles” (503c). All of these were Athenian politicians who used their rhetorical skills to elevate their own positions and ostracize (often literally) their opponents. They weren’t interested in benefitting their audience; they just wanted the crowds’ favor. Because of that, they would give the audiences whatever made them happy—like Pericles’ populist laws—regardless of whether it was actually good or bad.
In this case, the objective of the rhetor is the mere support of his audience, so he gives the audience whatever they want to hear. This results in an echo chamber of the audience’s own opinions, and, if habituated, can lead to an intellectual closure. Because of the poor intentions of the rhetor, the audience is harmed.
However, the intentions of the rhetor aren’t always bad. In Isocrates’ fictional court defense, Antidosis, Isocrates defends his method of public speaking by labelling it a way to improve the citizens of Athens. He says that he tries “to persuade the whole city to undertake activities which will lead to their own happiness” (85), and, in response to accusations against him, he asks, “How is it reasonable that an individual who exhorts all citizens to better and more just leadership of Greece could corrupt his students?” (86).
In Isocrates’ view, by using rhetoric to speak about noble topics, he’s improving the situations and characters of his audience. His intention, according to him, is the well-being of the citizens, and this results in their benefit. When the motive of the rhetor is ordered towards the audience and the honest discovery of the best course of action or true opinion, their opinions are challenged and their minds are broadened.
All this seems to give the rhetor a very controlling position, like he’s manipulating the minds of the audience. The reality is nothing that drastic, but the fact remains that we’re influenced by the people we listen to. When somebody attempts to convince us, in a speech or in a piece of writing, they inevitably have a reason for what they do—even if they’re not fully conscious of it. As Plato highlights, if this aim is bad, the people are intellectually harmed, but as Isocrates is quick to respond, the aim can be good, and the people can benefit. It all depends on the motive of the rhetor.
How, then, should rhetoric be used? If we think about the most famous speeches in recent years, most of them probably have something to do with political elections—presidential ones, most prominently. What motive does a politician, say, Donald Trump, have for employing rhetoric? Is it to improve the minds and characters of his audience? Or is it to ratify their support so they’ll check the right box in a ballot?
Rhetoric today is a widely-abused tool that’s not improving anybody’s character. It’s easy to condemn vote-grabbing politicians, but a form of rhetoric that we often don’t think of immediately is our own writing. I write all kinds of things—I’m sure you do as well. What’s our purpose in writing an article or book? Is it to echo the opinions our audience already has so we’ll receive the check and build our following? Or is it to actually convince our readers of the truth, for their benefit and for our own? Rhetoric, in speech or in writing, is an influential tool—but if our intentions aren’t rightly ordered, we just might be abusing it.
