Why Rhetoric Is Philosophy

Abstract

The theory that philosophy is rhetoric, or, worse still, that rhetoric is philosophy, causes scandai. In traditional philosophy we look for objectivity, in other words, what the object is for itself. We look therefore for non-subjectiyity, for ahistoricity. This has resulted in the rejection, on the part of traditional metaphysics, of everything that can disturb rational access to the object; that is, any rhetorical language linked to time and place or influenced by emotion and which distracts from man's proper logicai processes. Consequently the very fact of posing the question of the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric, with the doubt about whether rhetoric can hâve a speculative function, appears extremely unexpected and problematic. The theory of the preeminence of logic and therefore of rational language implying the exclusion of rhetorical language from the field of speculation characterizes Western thought and leaves its seal upon it: from Piato with Gorgias, from scholasticism to Cartesian rationalism, up until German idealism from Kant to Hegel, with its total devaluation of rhetoric. In this connection traditional philosophy arrives at an important admission for our present argument: it is obliged to recognize that rational language does not reach the passions, the whole emotional, affective side of man. This is a de facto recognition of the limitations of rational language. Rhetorical language is therefore assigned a persuasive function; passions must be dominated by reason. If man abandons has rationality, his privilege in comparison with other living beings, he sinks to their level, precisely to that level of passion which is blind and without