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September 2, 2003
One of the ways that philosophy changes when it becomes a part of political life is that it becomes a form of rhetoric---the bare bones of argument are wrapped with the techniques of either persuading or dissuading others from taking a particular course of action, such as selling Telstra.
Rhetoric, within the philosophical tradition has a bad image. Ever since Plato's Gorgia rhetoric is seen as unethical: ie., as distorting the truth, as emotional manipulation and as demagoguery. Plato's negative image of rhetoric as the opposite of reason was reinforced by John Lock and Immanual Kant.
The echoes of that historical charge can be heard today. We hear it in the way neo-liberal economists dismiss their critics as scientifically ignorant and irrational. Today unethical also means expedient, by which is meant a selling out to an instrumental reason that governs the country. Hence deliberative rhetoric---the oratory and debate that takes place in our liberal political institutions---is seen to work within the horizons of instrumental economic reason that is transforming society into a marketplace.
The contemporary grounds for the negative image of rhetoric can be found in the elitist use of rhetoric by politicians in liberal democracy. These politicians must rely of ordinary citizens for support to get re elected and some of them see citizens as the public, as the people, as the mass. They presuppose a hierarchical relationship between politician and citizens based on a natural superiority of the elite professional politician to rule over the mass.
These politicians manipulate the people into doing what they want. The classic example is with the justification for the recent war on Iraq. The reason given were spurious: Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction, Iraq's connections to al Quaeda, Iraq's involvement in the September 11, Iraq constituting a subtantive threat to Australia. The speeches of the orator war politicians were primarily a manipulation of people's emotions to gain their support for the war. These orator politicians dominated politics through speech whilst the silent manipaulated listerners were denied their right political participation and autonomous s decisionmaking. Hence the street protests. These were then mocked by the orator politicians as anti-American and supporting the enemy. More emotional manipulation as a way of ensuring their hold on power.
It is therefore understandable that the supporters of deliberative democracy see rhetoric as morally suspect and so turn to the idea of conversation as being more democractic.
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