International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

In 1967 the assertion that rhetoric is epistemic attracted immediate attention from rhetorical scholars. The assertion was taken to imply that rhetoric generated a sort of knowledge. The purpose of the claim was to establish a fresh justification for the study and practice of rhetoric. In short, it was an answer to a line of reason beginning with Plato, who argued that rhetoric was a form of deception, practiced only under questionable circumstances by suspect persons. The dominant response to the strong tendency to view rhetoric with suspicion was to present the art of →  Persuasion as vital in making the truth effective. The problem with that position, adherents of the claim that rhetoric is epistemic argued, is that it implies that rhetoric is only necessary under questionable conditions. If truth can be known, but cannot be explained sufficiently by those who know it to gain the assent of others whose assent is somehow necessary, then a sort of lie must be told to the latter by the former. Put differently, those not able to grasp truth must be deceived into thinking that they do. That implies that those who know truth are not in a position simply to demand adherence and perhaps ought to be. Therefore, rhetoric, if justified as making the truth effective, is anti-democratic. Epistemology, taken as the theory of knowledge, seemed to a number of scholars to be a better platform ... log in or subscribe to read full text