Historical Trajectories of Dialectic and Rhetoric

Throughout their history together, dialectic and rhetoric have been engaged in an uncertain and sometimes difficult relationship. At its best, dialectic has been the counterpart of rhetoric, the fullest development of argumentative knowledge on any given subject; and at its worst, dialectic has been the useless claptrap of academic disputation. At its best, rhetoric has been the counterpart of dialectic, a means to construct new knowledge and convey it to public audiences following dialectical deliberation; and at its worst, rhetoric has been the aesthetic dress of dialectical thought or the clear transmission of dialectical truth. Throughout their relationship, the meanings of dialectic and rhetoric have shifted according to the personal interests of individual authors, the institutionalized pressures of social forces, and the material circumstances of historical contexts.

It is not my goal in this chapter to provide a definitive description of dialectic and its relationship to rhetoric for each individual figure or historical period I discuss. My goal is to describe the historical relationships between dialectic and rhetoric by selecting from certain influential figures the salient aspects of their approaches to dialectic and rhetoric that illuminate the historical evolution of the concepts. In other words, I intend to paint a picture of dialectic, rhetoric, and their relationship through time in broad historical strokes rather than minute textual pixels. I will first examine the birth of dialectic and rhetoric in sophistic practice and their systematization as arts in Plato's (1961a; 1961b) Gorgias and Phaedrus. I will then trace the evolution of dialectic and rhetoric through various subsequent historical contexts, all of which exert different pressures on the individual characteristics of dialectic and rhetoric and on their relationship together, highlighting conditions of acceptance and rejection and the transformations that have accompanied dialectic and rhetoric throughout their journeys.

DIALECTIC AND RHETORIC IN THE CLASSICAL PERIOD

Before Plato systematized the difference between dialectic (the mutual pursuit of metaphysical truth and ethical action through conversation) and rhetoric (the individual pursuit of popular opinion and public success through uninterrupted speech), many of the fifth-century BCE Sophists made no distinction between a person's knowledge of right and wrong and the language that person used to convey ethical values and recommend right conduct. In the Protagorean text called the Dissoi Logoi, for example, the anonymous author writes, "It is necessary for the man who intends to speak correctly to have a knowledge of whatever things he might discuss and to give the city correct instruction in doing good things and thus prevent it from doing bad ones" (Sprague 1972, sec. 8.6). And in the Defense on Behalf of Palamedes, Gorgias (1972a) points out that Odysseus's own crime is speaking without knowledge: "It is clear that you do not have knowledge of the things about which you make accusation. It follows that since you do have knowledge, you have an opinion. Do you then, O most daring of all men, trusting in opinion, a most untrustworthy thing, not knowing the truth, dare to bring a capital charge against a man?" (sec. 11a.24). For many of the Sophists, then, what they called logôn technê (a phrase that appears in the Dissoi Logoi) was essentially the art of appropriate knowledge and ethical speech. And while what we now know as dialectic may not have been practiced by these Sophists, some of them did base certain aspects of their rhetorical practice on the notion that opposing arguments exist and must be understood.

The fifth-century BCE Sophist Protagoras believed that for every matter there are two opposing arguments (logoi), and the Dissoi Logoi suggests that the opposed arguments are based in the distinction between nature (phusis) and culture (nomos). In what I like to call the garage-sale metaphor, the author of the Dissoi Logoi writes, "I think that if someone should order all men to make a single heap of everything that each of them regards as disgraceful and then again to take from the collection what each of them regards as seemly, not a thing be left, but they would all divide up everything, because not all men are of the same opinion" (Sprague 1972, sec. 2.18). This is the culture argument — that judgments regarding what is seemly and shameful derive from individual and communal values. Later in the Dissoi Logoi, the author provides the opposing argument:

I would be surprised if things which were disgraceful when they were collected should turn out to be seemly and not what they were when they came. At least if people had brought horses or cows or sheep or men, they would not have taken away anything else. Nor, again, if they had brought gold, would they have taken away brass, nor if they had brought silver, would they have taken away lead. Do they then take away seemly things in exchange for disgraceful ones? Now really, if anyone had brought an ugly , would he take him away handsome? (Sprague 1972, sec. 2.26–28)

This is the nature argument — that a thing either is or is not seemly or shameful, and one's individual or cultural values are irrelevant to such judgments. Although the author of the Dissoi Logoi does not suggest any practical rhetorical uses for opposing arguments, any modern reader of the text can see applications to concepts such as invention and audience awareness.

In sophistic dissoi logoi, opposing arguments (nature, culture) exist side by side and are not brought together in any particular way. Interestingly, in Plato's early dialogues, before he had fully formalized what we now know as dialectic, Plato's character Socrates practiced a strategy of argumentation based in the Protagorean distinction between nature and culture. In the Gorgias, Callicles points out how Socrates caught Polus in a contradiction about the nature of rhetoric:

For, Socrates, though you claim to pursue the truth, you actually drag us into these tiresome popular fallacies, looking to what is fine and noble, not by nature, but by convention. Now, for the most part, these two, nature and convention, are antagonistic to each other. And so, if a man is ashamed and dares not say what he thinks, he is compelled to contradict himself. And you have discovered this clever trick and do not play fair in your arguments, for if a man speaks on the basis of convention, you slyly question him on the basis of nature, but if he follows nature, you follow convention. (Plato 1961a, sec. 482e–483a)

Although the Socrates of Plato's Gorgias does claim to favor a method of discourse (called dialogue or dialectic) based on short questions and answers, which he contrasts with the rhetorical speechmaking of his companions, few readers of the dialogue take Socrates seriously since he is the only character who consistently violates the requirement. And this art of dialogue practiced by Plato's early Socrates is employed purely in the service of refutation.

The technical sense of Platonic dialectic emerges much more fully in the middle dialogues, such as the Phaedrus, in which dialectical discourse, through mutual questioning and answering, removes errors of thought caused by the inaccurate perception of reality and clears the way for a brief but profound glimpse at divine truth. Toward the end of the Phaedrus, Plato's character Socrates (so very different from the Socrates of the Gorgias) explains that dialectic consists of two primary steps. In the first step, conversants "bring a dispersed plurality under a single form" through definition (Plato 1961b, sec. 265d). In the second step, conversants "divide into forms" the subject under study (sec. 265e). Plato calls those who "have this ability" (to define and divide a subject, such as love) "dialecticians" (sec. 266b), and dialectic is the methodology Plato associates with philosophy. In the Phaedrus, then, dialectic becomes the mutual pursuit of divine truth through definition and division, and its structural methodology requires questions and answers (not extended speech) since only conversation represents a "living" discourse that evolves through argument and response. And rhetoric, if it is to be a legitimate (not false) art, must also follow a structure mirroring that of dialectic, with an initial concern for definition and a subsequent concern for division into parts, all by means of conversation, not extended speech, which is incapable of response (sec. 258–79). However, even mirroring the structure of dialectic, rhetoric remains little more than the transmission of dialectical truth and could never be considered a methodology appropriate to the loftier pursuits of philosophy.

Aristotle, one of Plato's most famous students, alters the meaning of dialectic and its relationship to rhetoric in significant ways, especially epistemologically but also (though to a lesser extent) methodologically. Epistemologically, Aristotle shifts Plato's definition of dialectic away from the pursuit of metaphysical truth toward the pursuit of reasoned opinion. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle calls rhetoric the counterpart (antistrophos) of dialectic, both of which concern matters of probability (Aristotle 1991, sec. 1354a). In the Topics, Aristotle reinforces this view, suggesting that dialectic enables people to "reason from reputable opinions about any subject"; and, when used as a counterpart to rhetoric, dialectic also enables people, "when putting forward an argument, [to] avoid saying anything contrary to it" (sec. 100a). When deductions deal with universal truths lacking contradiction, they are demonstrative (neither dialectical nor rhetorical); when deductions deal with reasonable opinions, many of which inevitably contain contradictory probabilities, they are dialectical (Aristotle 1984, sec. 100a); when deductions are truncated into audience-specific enthymemes and supported by probable proofs and examples, they are rhetorical (Aristotle 1991, sec. 1355a). Dialectical deductions begin with questions or problems that pose more than one possible position and spin out the contradictory lines of argument possible within each; rhetorical arguments begin with audience-specific claims or propositions and forward a single, coherent position on an issue.

Methodologically, Aristotle retains Plato's general dialectical structure, definition and division, but operationalizes these two steps through topics or sources of argument. Under definition, Aristotle includes such topics as property, genus, sameness, and predication (Aristotle 1984, sec. 101b–104a). Under division, different kinds of dialectical arguments serve to analyze matters for different purposes. Some of these arguments include inductive, deductive, universal, and particular, and their purpose is, in general, to reveal contradictions in the dialectical problem as a whole (sec. 105a), leading to the possibility of more effective (more coherent and convincing, less contradictory and suspicious) rhetoric. For Aristotle, a rhetorical question, the starting point of rhetorical discourse, is singular (should Athens go to war with Sparta?), requiring the rhetor to pick a side (answer yes or no) and make that argument. A dialectical question, the starting point of dialectical discourse, is double (should Athens go to war with Sparta, or not?), requiring the rhetor to consider opposing arguments and judge among them (sec. 105b). While Aristotle shifts Plato's definition of dialectic away from the pursuit of metaphysical truth toward the pursuit of reasoned opinion, he nevertheless retains a clear distinction between the epistemological methods of dialectic and the practical methods of rhetoric. The telos of dialectic is knowledge of distinctions, and the telos of rhetoric is real effects. Although dialectic and rhetoric are counterparts (antistrophos) — that is, both participate in probability, though in different ways and to different ends — they are not a unified whole. One may (and should) inform the other, but each remains distinct.

During the early Republican period following the Roman conquest of Athens, especially throughout the second century BCE, many Greek intellectuals continued to teach (and pass on to other teachers) the arts they had learned and practiced, including rhetoric. However, during this transition in cultural context, instruction in dialectic ultimately lost its double (two-dimensional) sense of conversation and opposing arguments, and it acquired instead a more linear structure devoted to the discovery of truth, which was appropriate to philosophy yet not very useful to the rhetorical practice of the senate and the courts. According to George A. Kennedy, one important development in the second-century BCE period of Roman occupation was a renewed antagonism between teachers of rhetoric and teachers of philosophy, with philosophers relying on Plato's Gorgias as justification for the priority of their discipline over rhetoric (Kennedy 1980, 89). With its loss of connection to the pragmatic art of rhetoric, early Roman dialectic evolved into the one-dimensional practice of logic and the discovery of truth (and rejection of falsity), all for its own sake. There were, of course, attempts to use this specialized dialectic in the service of rhetoric, but they were ultimately unsatisfying, especially to Rome's most successful orator, Cicero. In On Oratory and Orators (or, in Latin, De Orator), composed during the first century BCE, Cicero associates the simplified dialectic of philosophers with the Greek rhetorician, Diogenes, who taught dialectic as "the art of reasoning well, and distinguishing truth from falsehood," or, more generally, "logic" (Cicero 1970, 126). Cicero, however, opposes this reductive dialectic, rehabilitating in his own works its earlier two-dimensional sense, its association with opposing arguments and the avoidance of contradiction, and its commitment to constructing reasoned opinion instead of discovering truth and falsity. This is the dialectic that would serve Roman political and legal interests during the late Republican period and also reconnect dialectic with its counterpart, rhetoric.

One of the central themes of Cicero's (1970)On Oratory and Orators is the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric, which he believed had been split to the detriment of both disciplines, yet dialectic would have to be reformulated (from its earlier identification with logic and truth) in order for this relationship to be reestablished. According to Richard Leo Enos, "Cicero believed that carefully constructed arguments based on probability ought to serve as a guide for the judgment of human conduct. Such an epistemology posited that while truth was imperceptible it was not nonexistent. Consequently, if dialectic could be adapted from the quest for logical certainty and used to attain probable judgments, then a closer approximation to truth could be advanced. Furthermore, eloquence which could direct and clarify perception would serve to aid the dialectical process in the attainment of this goal" (Enos 1988, 39). In On Oratory and Orators, Cicero's Crassus explains that philosophy in general includes the study of physics, reasoning, and ethics (Cicero 1970, 23); and in De Finibus, Cicero situates dialectic within the art of reasoning, as a method of rational argument, judgment, and disputation (Hohmann 2002, 44). Certainly Cicero believed that reuniting rhetoric with dialectical reasoning about probabilities and ethical judgment of human character would benefit the practice of oratory in Republican Rome. However, with the shift from Republican to imperial rule in the Roman territories, Cicero's interest in discovering and conveying effective rhetorical knowledge became viewed as a threat to the new power structure.

By the time Quintilian (1980) wrote The Institutes of Oratory during the first century CE, imperial Rome had become a politically oppressive culture, and the study and practice of rhetoric suffered. Quintilian was ultimately concerned with merging the pragmatic power of rhetoric with the ethical dimension of philosophy; however, the role of dialectic in this merger remains unclear. Toward the end of book 2, Quintilian writes that dialectic is "really a concise form of oratory" (1:361), which may be a reference to Zeno (the closed fist of logic and the open hand of rhetoric) or a concession to release dialectic back to its former status as a linear (one-dimensional) philosophical method concerned with logic and truth (not reasoned opinion), though Quintilian does believe dialectic can also serve oratory, if only in limited ways (1:361). Since the dialectic of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and certain Sophists required the spinning out of contradictory positions, and since contradiction was not allowed in the political power structure of imperial Rome, dialectic shifted, under this historical pressure, from the articulation of contradiction to the articulation of a single (true, or at least accepted) position. This political pressure to consider contradiction to be a form of treason forced those who taught and practiced dialectic to shift its general orientation toward abstract principles of sound reasoning. Quintilian's sense of dialectic, then, represents a nascent (re)linearization in the concept.