Page 73 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

Rhetoric 57

increasingly blurred as news channels try to spice up their programming
by giving voice to the most extreme positions, and by devoting much of
their airtime to tawdry stories that generate high ratings rather than to
serious, thoughtful political debate and analysis. At the same time, the Web
introduced millions of new rhetorics into public discourse, each with its
own claim to “ true ” knowledge. Given this cacophony of discordant world-
views, it has become almost impossible to distill fact from fi ction. More
than ever, it is widely accepted that truth is in the eye of the beholder, and
that rather than seeking to form some public consensus about truth, at best
we can take into account multiple interpretations of the same reality, and
decide for ourselves which one we choose to believe.
Most people are fairly certain that they can figure out what is true and

what is false, and they often become angry at others who disagree with their
calculations, accusing them of willfully distorting “ the facts ” through the
cynical use of rhetoric in order to deceive and manipulate. However,
because there is no final word on what counts as “ truth, ” it is very diffi cult

to satisfactorily settle these arguments. Consequently, rhetoric is often
considered to be synonymous with lying.
The debasement of rhetoric is nothing new; in fact, disputes about the
wisdom, ethics, and effectiveness of rhetoric have echoed throughout the
institutions of public life since classical times. Plato, in making his case
against the Sophists – teachers of rhetoric in fifth - century bc Athens who

promised to turn their students into persuasive and infl uential public
speakers … for a hefty price – famously denounced rhetoric as “ mere
cookery, ” suggesting that rhetoric is to the soul what delicious but unhealthy
foods are to the body: it gives the temporary illusion of well - being, but
ultimately corrupts the individual who falls prey to its temptations. Plato
argued that rhetoric misleads men from the path to true knowledge and
virtue. The Sophists, on the other hand, did not believe there was such a
thing as true knowledge and virtue. Instead, they held that, in the words
of the Sophist Protagoras, “ man is the measure of all things. ” In other
words, lacking a practically accessible supernatural judge of truth, justice,
and virtue, humans are left to determine the meanings of these ideas
amongst themselves, using persuasive arguments crafted in language and
addressed to the public. The processes by which humans seek to attain
truth or certainty – philosophical reasoning, prayer, and the scientifi c
method – are socially constructed rather than naturally given. According
to the Sophists, there is nothing irrational, immoral, or unnatural about
pointing out that we can make things happen using language, for our ideas