This series began by addressing what seems to be some of the underlying fractures in the culture of modern Western Civilization, universally—and in America, particularly.
In general, I’m asserting that hope for cultural renewal lay not in the ideological culture wars of the left and right but in a renewal of the people’s imagination who make up that culture.
I believe Christian humanism offers the most viable vision for cultural renewal because its essential focus reaches the place where culture begins, human faith and imagination. Because the tenets of Christian humanism focus on the primacy of rhetoric, a return to the sources, and the development of a historical sensibility, it can provide a way forward that emphasizes, not war, but human flourishing through discourse, creativity, and hope.
In this post, I will be specifically exploring the claim that Christian humanism’s focus on the primacy of rhetoric provides a means of cultivating rational public discourse.
To say rational public discourse is lacking in the modern West would be an egregious understatement. As demonstrated in an earlier post, the social censorship of rational public discourse now looms ominously over the culture.
In short, I explained in that post how Western culture, at least in this generation, seems to have failed to acquire a level of rational and emotional intelligence adequate to properly understand and discuss competing truth claims. Believing their clever pith and logical fallacies to be a substitute for substance, they satisfy themselves with mantras and maxims—that is, they only know how to use memes and sound bites that can be shouted at rallies and posted on social media. In other words, these “culture warriors” believe they can “will to power” their particular ideology, and therefore, employ innumerable fallacious arguments, emotional weapons, and legal tactics to achieve their desired end.
This approach can only end badly.
Interestingly enough, given all the technology afforded the modern world to keep people connected and communicating, it has actually done more to exacerbate the cultural divide and silence rational discourse than anyone could have imagined.
This is where learning and practicing the art of rhetoric is key.
One problem is that the term rhetoric, in modern culture, is met with a mountain of suspicion. Upon hearing the term, people immediately think negatively. They conjure images of lying politicians and cheesy infomercials promising substantial weight loss and whiter teeth in just four easy payments.
But that is sophistry—manipulating language to get an advantage. According to Aristophanes, it’s the art of using language to get out of paying one’s bills. Sophistry is unjust because it focuses on using language to manipulate an audiences’ emotions for the purpose of winning an argument. Aristotle rightly warned, “appeals to emotion warp the judgment.”
Rhetoric is otherwise.
According to Aristotle, it is the art concerned with “modes of persuasion,” but it is not formulaic (although there are formulas involved), meaning it is not a set of rules to be used to win an argument. Rather, it is a faculty of the mind, like reason or memory, concerned with discovering the best argument–one that is true, good, and beautiful.
Scott Crider, professor of English at the University of Dallas, captures the importance of the truth value of rhetoric in his book, The Office of Assertion:
The most important of its proofs is that rhetoric is a liberal art which liberates one both to defend oneself against untrue persuasions and to fashion true ones. Often, those untrue persuasions are one’s own; after all we are all familiar with the sophist within, that part of us who arises, especially in haste or anger, to utter sham arguments, arguments that–in calmer, more reflective moments–we know are mistaken. So rhetoric can free one even from one’s own ignorance, disclosing the weaknesses of one’s own idea; having done so, it can then free others. Indeed, in freeing others, one frees oneself.
For rhetoric to get at the truth, for it to be good, it must be employed by a good person. Aristotle rightly explains that the difference between sophistry and rhetoric is the condition of the soul of the one employing the art. A person with a good soul will seek the truth. One with a bad soul will use the art unjustly to gain an advantage.
But rhetoric is concerned with more than just the truth value of an argument; it is also concerned with arguing the truth in a beautiful way. King Solomon addresses this in his proverb, or pithy maxim, which is itself a rhetorical device: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.”
To put it plainly, we might say the art of rhetoric is a good person offering the best argument in the most appropriate manner.
Christian humanists, like Desiderius Erasmus, and his friend and fellow humanist, Thomas More, understood the importance of ancient rhetoric and employed its canons–powerfully and delightfully, I might add–in a time when Europe was beginning to explode in its own culture war.
Thomas More’s, Utopia, is one great example of the Christian humanists’ use of rhetoric.
Erasmus’s works offer even finer examples. Peter Mack, the author of A History of Renaissance Rhetoric, 1380-1620, presenting at a conference for the Renaissance Society of America, said of Erasmus’s use of rhetoric:
Several of Erasmus’s most celebrated works, including Adagia, Ciceronianus, De Copia, De Conscribendis Epistolis, and Ecclesiastes, are contributions to the theory and teaching of rhetoric. Some of these books, which were first conceived as aids to Erasmus’s private tutoring in the 1490s, were among the most influential rhetorical texts of the sixteenth century. At the same time, rhetorical approaches influence Erasmus’s understanding of texts and the genre, structure, and style of many of his later works.
In his book, Mack actually opines that Erasmus “improved classical and medieval rhetorical teaching.”
Erasmus’s Praise of Folly, written for More, is both a demonstration of his mastery of the art and the power of the art itself. One example of Erasmus’s delightful power of rhetoric masterfully employed was supplied in a previous post describing the obstacle of motivating the modern youth to pursue Christian humanism and cultural renewal.
Take, for another example, a passage in the same book where Folly describes the disposition of grammar teachers, saying they “are the most wretched of men, the most miserable, the most forsaken of God—or so they would be unless I mitigated the awfulness of their profession by dabbling them with the sweet dew of my madness.”
Folly goes on in a humorous fashion, saying how teachers find great joy, as well as an outlet for their frustration, by terrifying the schoolchildren with their “glowering expressions and thundering voices.” In fine rhetorical fashion, what Erasmus is really doing, is showing how foolish it is to despise or misjudge the vocation of an educator.
As can be seen in these couple examples, rhetoric enables one to communicate uncomfortable truths in a delightfully powerful way. But this is, proverbially speaking, just the tip of the iceberg. Recovering the art of rhetoric has the power to cultivate rational public discourse about sensitive and divisive issues toward a profitable end for all people involved–that is, toward human flourishing.
What needs to be stated, in conclusion, is everyone is a rhetorician. Since we’ve already seen, just by looking at modern culture’s social media, what bad rhetoricians or sophists, looks like; what remains to be seen is who will choose to be a good one.
This is why recovering Christian humanism is essential to cultural renewal. Because its essence is rooted in Christianity and at least one of its tenets is focused on the art of rhetoric, recovering Christian humanism will help cultivate the rational public discourse so desperately needed toward healing the fractures in our modern Western culture.
In the last few posts, I will address the other tenets–a return to the sources and the recovery of historical consciousness. Be sure to subscribe if you’d like to stay up with this series.
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