Kant and the Promise of Rhetoric. Scott R. Stroud
By manipulating one’s orientation toward a given communicative act, can one detach such interests while hearing a speech, the paragon of rhetorical practice? For instance, one can admire the beautiful shape or form of “wildflower, a bird, an insect, etc. in order to marvel at it, to love it, and to be unwilling for it to be entirely absent from nature, even though some harm might come to him from it rather than there being any prospect of advantage to him from it” (CJ 5:299). Can one take such an immediate and intellectual interest in a speech or argument? Like the natural object, the speech can represent (1) a threat to the interest of the auditor and (2) an object that is conceptually loaded. Focusing on either of these features decreases the aesthetic impact of such an object. Kant points out that we can take the natural object as if it were free from the limits imposed by (1) and (2); thus it is conceivable that speech artifacts also can be seen as free from their practical effects on us or from their overly intentional nature. How would such auditors orient themselves toward such an art object (a rhetorical artifact) to render it artful on Kant’s account? How could it be part of his moralization of aesthetics, rendered as an instance or symbol of the sort of disinterested freedom he connects to the beautiful at section 59?
Our clue lies in an excursus Kant puts in his Critique of the Power of Judgment—an analysis of three “maxims of the common understanding” (5:294). Here, he indicates that taste and its “fundamental principles” are elucidated by these three maxims: “1. To think for oneself; 2. To think in the position of everyone else; 3. To always think in accord with oneself.” These are all connected to a certain “way of thinking [Denkungsart]” (5:294–95). Notice that these represent an orientation or way of thinking that attempts to do justice to one’s autonomy as an individual agent and as a socially instantiated agent. Kant’s notion of the sensus communis captures this sense of individual uses of reason reflecting social settings. Individuals must consistently think for themselves but must also recognize others as equally autonomous and independent beings. In Kant’s moral philosophy, this is the recognition enshrined in the main three formulations of the moral law in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785).35 As is explored in the next chapter, the Formula of Universal Law (FUL) and the Formula of Humanity as an End in Itself (FHE) capture the systemic consistency of a system of agents, and Kant’s notions of autonomy appearing around the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends (FKE) capture the notion of individual autonomy and worth.
If one wants to find a way that rhetoric or poetry can be nonmanipulative uses of conceptual and purposive language, one need only to look at this orientation or way of thinking available to individuals producing and consuming communicative artifacts. If the speaker or poet fails to respect others in line with FHE or maxim 2, “To think in the position of everyone else,” the moral value of the object in question will be impugned as manipulative. Even if it is well-intentioned, it still fails to respect the audience members as equal to the rhetor or poet. The agent’s orientation fails to place the requisite value on the perspectives of others, and hence the agent’s action is characterized as manipulative. Additionally, the orientation of the auditor makes a difference as to the artful nature of the speech or poem—if the object is seen as if it was concept and purpose free, then one can appreciate it in an aesthetic sense as Kant says we do with the flower or starry heavens. If agents are oriented toward a speech or poem in terms of how it may affect them, then they are not experiencing it in a disinterested fashion. Such a use of a created object by auditors is not necessarily morally questionable (as they did not create the object to manipulate themselves in this fashion), but such experience will clearly not be of the free sort Kant wants occupying the aesthetic portions of our lives. It also risks running afoul of the moral limits discussed in the next chapter concerning how agents ought to be valued.
Thus both poetry and rhetoric can be seen as either the manipulative or nonmanipulative uses of linguistic symbols, and the orientations behind the poets or rhetors can be either manipulative or nonmanipulative. Manipulative orientations would be ones that violate the moral strictures of how we ought to value others or that discourage one from thinking from all perspectives. They are defined by an extreme self-focus or valuation. Nonmanipulative uses of language would be ones that respect each point of view involved—the speaker’s and hearer’s perspectives. This sort of nonegoistic use of language is what happens in some poetry, but clearly not all poetry. Kant often worried that poetry was close to egoistic dreaming that others simply could not understand. Good poetry is original and understandable by others.36 This is analogous to the situation in moral experience where a sense of individual direction is limited by a respect for other people’s projects and pursuits. This is the sort of merging of freedom and coercion hinted at in Kant’s vague references to the “art of reciprocal communication” that occur at the end of the first half of his Critique of the Power of Judgment (5:350). This is the use of language that entails thinking through all perspectives and that minds all the consequences involved in the communicative act. All agents are equal on such a scheme. Rhetors cannot be morally effective if they think they are superior to their audience and can operate without full disclosure of important points. Freedom in moral experience and freedom in aesthetic experience, for Kant, have the crucial similarity of respecting both an agent’s response to some stimuli and an agent’s activity toward others. The art object is purposively created, but its creator should not overemphasize its effectiveness in achieving certain ends, nor should its hearer jump toward the ends it projects. In other words, a Kantian sense of nonmanipulative rhetoric would foreground orientations that create rhetoric without remote ends—a rhetoric that features an emphasis on the present communicative experience.
What would it mean to see rhetorical objects without teleological ends or purposes that one pursues? Isn’t this ignoring the purposive nature of rhetorical activity? Explaining this conundrum is the point of this present book. But it is not different in kind from the sort of ignoring that happens when Kant allows art objects created by humans into the pantheon of those things that spur on aesthetic experience. Nothing mysterious happens here in a human’s experience. If orientation can make the difference in relation to art objects (and conceptually loaded natural objects) being experienced with disinterest and a universal appreciation, then one can see the same sort of appreciation occurring with speeches experienced with the right way of thinking. Speeches use metaphors, artistic elements, and so on; art objects often include orations. All of this is so similar that the main difference must be in one’s way of thinking through or engaging these objects. One can appreciate a speech in real life the same way one appreciates a speech in literature—as if it was presented for its form and style. As I explore in chapter 6, there are ways to alter one’s orientation toward linguistic action such that most practical effects are bracketed—this would be a view of argument as free play, and not as a serious business of the understanding. Of course, this represents a disengagement of rhetoric from action to some extent, but Kant would approve of this type of move since it is such disinterest and distance that allows for those maxims of thought to operate. We shall see in future chapters the way this disengagement is effected in specific realms of moral activity. In general terms, one can think from the position of others only when one is distanced from their own affects, passions, and direct drives to action. If one follows this experiment out, Kant would seem to be advancing a certain stoicism of speech reception—appreciating the rhetorical object not for its effects outside the communicative experience, but for its form and performance in that experience.
The role of aesthetic ideas in speech still remains unclear. Poetry is wonderful because it richly incorporates aesthetic ideas as its content. The natural genius of the poet finds novel ways to place these aesthetic ideas in sensuous clothing. No rule could be taught for how to do this, of course. Would not the same sense of creativity apply for rhetorical activity? A great oration would not follow mechanistic rules of eloquence—each speech and speaker would be different in a variety of ways. Additionally, the purposiveness of rhetorical objects does not seem related to the content of aesthetic ideas. Great speeches could just as easily contain the prototypical aesthetic ideas as great poetry. What would genius contribute to rhetorical action? For Kant, it is clear that it would add spirit (Geist). He notes that “Spirit, in an aesthetic significance, means the animating principles in the mind. That, however, by which this principles animates the