Kant and the Promise of Rhetoric. Scott R. Stroud
the mental powers into motion, i.e., into a play that is self-maintaining and even strengthens the powers to that end.” This principle is “nothing other than the faculty for the presentation of aesthetic ideas” (CJ 5:313). Genius in rhetorical activity would be the gift of being able to place aesthetic ideas into orations—regardless of the ends that a speaker or listener adds to or subtracts from such experience. The moral use of genius would be the employment in speech creation or the recognition in speech reception of such ideas with the right moralized orientation. The aesthetic ideas are in the content of the oration, as they would be in the poem. Its didactic purpose is something outside of that content determination. Thus, we see that orientation toward rhetoric as manipulation is a separate point from the ability of rhetorical objects—be it in poetry, drama, or real life—to contain aesthetic ideas such as “invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, the kingdom of hell, eternity, creation, etc.” (5:314). Kant’s frequent emphasis on rhetoric as purely manipulative in orientation does not seem to logically preclude certain types of content in orations. He clearly points out that “poetry and oratory also derive the spirit which animates their works solely from the aesthetic attributes of the objects, which go alongside the logical ones, and give the imagination an impetus to think more, although in an undeveloped way, than can be comprehended in a concept, and hence in determinate linguistic expression” (5:315).
Orientation and Experience
The starting point that this chapter has established is that orientation or disposition will be important terms not only in Kant’s moral thought but also in regard to the linguistic arts. The exact orientation constitutive of moralization is explicated in the following chapters, but here I have advanced the surely controversial point that all uses of language—rhetoric and poetry—can be beautiful arts, but only under certain conditions of disposition of the agents involved. Uses of language can be manipulative or nonmanipulative in how they are conceptualized. The choices between these two orientations occur in the speaker and the auditor. Additionally, these uses of language can be connected to the rich content of aesthetic ideas or bereft of the rich, imaginative use of language and aesthetic ideas. The latter sort of activity may be characterized in standard argumentative prose. The rich and evocative language of speeches (such as the religious sermons Kant often praises) are the sort of “lively presentation” that occurs when aesthetic ideas are instantiated in creative and new ways of using language. It is in these two new dimensions that rhetoric can be seen as equal to poetry and as a valuable part of aesthetic experience.
A crucial point to be made in the following chapters is the functioning of communicative experience in a fashion characterized by hypotyposis. Whereas one reading indicates that only the judgment of the beautiful can stand in as an experiential analogue to moral experience, this chapter has tried to confound such a one-dimensional account with its new experiment in categorizing the arts of language (poetry and rhetoric). Can certain orientations in speakers and listeners turn the communicative experiences of persuasion and rhetoric into experiential analogues of morally educative matters? If we take the right way of thinking about such activities, can they help us become more moral and virtuous? If so, Kant’s nonmanipulative rhetoric can be positively construed as an educative or morally cultivating communicative practice. The account of Kant’s educative rhetoric in the later chapters of this work argues that rhetorical experience can serve as an experiential reminder of vital moral points and in doing so can readily assist us in our cultivation of self and others. In other words, the experience of communicative activity is shown to be morally edifying on Kantian grounds. It both reflects and affects our orientations, and the intelligent use of communicative experience can shape the orientations of attentive others toward a fully moralized state.
To get to this endpoint, we must thoroughly flesh out the sort of nonmanipulative use of language, laden with aesthetic ideas, that is surely the sort of assertive yet respectful discourse that Kant postulated as the enigmatic “art of reciprocal communication.” All these dimensions of the moral employment of rhetorical means are addressed in the following chapters. But first we turn to the issue only anticipated in this present chapter—that a vital point of Kant’s moral philosophy concerns agents donning certain orientations toward self and others. The next chapter details Kant’s moral goal, as well as the fundamental problem of progressing toward sustainable uses of our power of choice, both in external actions and in our internal choice of ends to pursue and value. If I am right that a valuable way of seeing Kant’s moral theory is as an account of how to create agents who use their freedom of choice in certain ways, then the ways of reorienting rational agents assumes much prominence. This would create the space for rhetoric to be used in an attempt to persuasively and freely create such agents. It represents the type of rhetoric that can assume a vital role in Kantian moral cultivation by delineating manipulative and nonmanipulative means to change such agents and their dispositions.
__________________
FREEDOM, COERCION, AND THE SEARCH FOR THE IDEAL COMMUNITY
Rhetoric, conceptualized as the purposive use of eloquent communication, is one of the grandest tools available to humans. It can be animated and guided by a range of orientations in both speaker and audience member. In other words, various ways of valuing self and other lie behind a variety of its specific instantiations. Before we can identify a positive sense of rhetoric and communicative means in Kant’s architectonic thought, it is important to see the ends at which rhetoric might be aimed and the sort of orientation it ought to instantiate. As the previous chapter indicates, one of Kant’s reservations about rhetoric was a moral consideration—rhetors treated their audience members as machines or objects to be moved about, not like free rational agents. This objection is clearly in line with Kant’s primary value of freedom. Indeed, in his lectures on ethics (as recorded by Collins), given in the winter semester of 1784–85, Kant claims that since humans alone can motivate their actions from considerations separate from the realm of nature, “Freedom is thus the inner worth of the world” (LEC 27:344).1 Yet freedom is not a given in this ultimate and valuable sense. It easily can be rendered nonideal. If freedom is lawless and random by being tied to changeable and nonsustainable inclinations, Kant finds that “insofar as it [freedom] is not restrained under certain rules of conditioned employment, it is the most terrible thing there could ever be. . . . If freedom is not restricted by objective rules, the result is much savage disorder” (27:344). This notion of freedom and its related concept—autonomy—are vitally important for Kant’s moral system. If his moral philosophy amounts to anything of enduring value, it must be in positing an endpoint for our endeavors to become better individuals and better group members through freedom.
What is at stake for rhetoric in Kant’s political philosophy? One way to answer this question is by evoking a common distinction, that between coercion and persuasion. Persuasion is typically seen as the desirable member of this distinction, since coercion seems to rest on the use of one-sided force. One coerces me into a car at gun point, against my choice and wishes; alternatively, one might persuade me to follow them by using words with which I agree. This is a standard way of parsing the forces involved in each of these activities. Coercion seems problematic because it violates a sort of value we place on selves as agents. Persuasion is often connected to our rhetorical activities, since such practical discussion and argument move people in purposive ways without resorting to overt force. What Kant contributes to this distinction is complexity—Kant’s views on rhetoric move it closer to a coercion with words, and his views on political philosophy hold a rational role for the coercing of individuals through threats of force and punishment. Thus rests the complex fortunes of freedom and human agency in a world filled with subtle and explicit forces that often threaten action based on reason. Kant’s moral and political philosophy not only holds obstacles to seeing a vibrant role for rhetoric in the public sphere but also creates the challenge that I argue rhetoric can solve: how we can use persuasion, not force, to effectively create better agents and communities.
This chapter sets the stage for the reading of Kantian rhetoric as moral persuasion that I wish to give. Revising the role for rhetoric