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Towards a Rhetorical Ethos: Refractions of Classical Rhetoric in Literary, Cultural, and Political Theory COPYRIGHT AND USE OF THIS THESIS This thesis must be used in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. Reproduction of material protected by copyright may be an infringement of copyright and copyright owners may be entitled to take legal action against persons who infringe their copyright. Section 51 (2) of the Copyright Act permits an authorized officer of a university library or archives to provide a copy (by communication or otherwise) of an unpublished thesis kept in the library or archives, to a person who satisfies the authorized officer that he or she requires the reproduction for the purposes of research or study. The Copyright Act grants the creator of a work a number of moral rights, specifically the right of attribution, the right against false attribution and the right of integrity. You may infringe the author’s moral rights if you: - fail to acknowledge the author of this thesis if you quote sections from the work - attribute this thesis to another author - subject this thesis to derogatory treatment which may prejudice the author’s reputation For further information contact the University’s Director of Copyright Services sydney.edu.au/copyright Towards a Rhetorical Ethos: Refractions of Classical Rhetoric in Literary, Cultural, and Political Theory Edward John Curthoys A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of English, Art History, Film, and Media May 2002 The University of Sydney Abstract In this thesis I attempt to facilitate a fluid conversation between the ‘rhetorical turn’ in literary and critical theory, and the burgeoning historical interest in rhetoric in fields such as Classical and Renaissance intellectual history. I take issue with those empirical histories of rhetoric that tend to rehearse a canon of programmatic treatises from Aristotle to Cicero and Quintilian, identifying the historical significance of rhetorical practice with the explicit statements of its canonical authors. I argue, rather, that the historiography of rhetoric requires a genealogy from the perspective of its influence on the present and the complex sensibility and multiple orientations it has inspired in its adherents. Evoking critics, philosophers, and political theorists such as Jena Romantics, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Hannah Arendt as case studies, I argue that the public orientation of the rhetorical tradition has survived in the ambivalent conceptual persona of the orator or rhetor, inspiring a model of the intellectual as possessing a complex ethos and eclectic cultural competence. I argue that in the discourse of these theorists of modernity, the rhetor as communicator survives as a paradoxical possibility, an ethic of civic engagement and social intervention and a solitary, ‘untimely’ and transcendent figure beholden to no ideological standard or normative cultural code. I argue that the uncertain tonality of the modern figure of the rhetor reactivates the ambiguity of classical rhetoricians such as the Sophists who situate rhetoric somewhere between a mature and responsible social practice and a magical and subversive power of deception, the art of an arch-individualist. I conclude by suggesting that the recent formalist moment in literary theory and post-structuralism, with its advocacy of critical rhetoric, can be historically situated as revisiting the somewhat discontinuous ‘elements’ of rhetoric as a public-intellectual tradition. Acknowledgements I wish to thank many people for their support and assistance in the writing of this thesis. I would like to thank my supervisor, Kate Lilley, for her advice, encouragement, and detailed and constructive comments on my work. I am indebted to her for providing the intellectual environment in which I was able to develop an eclectic and interdisciplinary thesis. I thank Melissa Hardie, who was a helpful acting supervisor, and valuable discussant throughout, and Dr Margaret Rogerson and Dr Adrian Mitchell for their assistance. Meaghan Morris has given me tremendous support and sage advice over this period and I thank her also. I wish to thank my parents, John Docker and Ann Curthoys, for their tremendous intellectual and emotional support over a long period. I could not have done this thesis without them. I feel special gratitude to Sarah Irving for all her love and inspiration over the critical latter stages of this project. Jane Bennett and Bill Connolly provided stimulating and timely suggestions, and were generous hosts during my research on Hannah Arendt in the United States. I thank Desley Deacon for her friendship and her abiding interest in my ideas. Many people have played a role in bringing this thesis about, through their friendship, conversation, and feedback. I would like to thank Alex Wolfson for our long friendship, his good humour and support. I thank my good friend Zora Simic for reading and providing insightful commentary on sections of the thesis and Monique Rooney for her continuing assistance. Many thanks to Dirk Moses, who has consistently provided me with research materials and enthusiastic intellectual conversation, and to Marina Bollinger, who has been an enthusiastic participant in discussions about rhetoric, and has greatly contributed to my historical approach. Others who have contributed to this thesis in various ways include: Kate Heslop, Catherine Kevin, Gerard Goggin, Shino Konishiki, Stephanie Liau, Debjani Ganguly, Kate Fullagar, James Knapp, Jeffrey Pence, Gerhard Fischer, Christine Winter, and Iain McCalman. I thank them all. This thesis, although a conversation with other thinkers and their ideas, is my own contribution to the historiography and critical theory of rhetoric. Contents Page Abstract i Acknowledgments ii Chapters Introduction 1 One: The Myth to Logos Thesis 28 Two: The Historical Inflections of Logos 46 Three: The Rhetorical Personae of the Presocratics 66 Four: Rhetoric, Cultural Development and the Public Sphere 82 Five: The Sophists – Forever the Stranger 98 Six: Jena Romanticism: Rhetoric and Representation 117 Seven: The Frühromantik Philosophy of History 140 Eight: Jena Romanticism: Aesthetics, Philosophy, Politics 165 Nine: Nietzsche: Theorising a ‘Productive Culture’ 189 Ten: Nietzsche and the Traces of Sophistry 213 Eleven: Hannah Arendt and the Politics of Representation 238 Conclusion 271 Works Consulted 275 1 Introduction: Rhetoric as Ethos and Paideia Is rhetoric an intellectual faculty, a science of persuasion, an art of speaking well, or a means of literary composition? George Kennedy1 The historiography of rhetoric has reached a critical juncture, while the body of ‘theory’ that advocates rhetoric's philosophical and analytical importance is uneasy, hesitant. This thesis attempts to facilitate a more fluid conversation between historiographical and theoretical interest in classical and post-classical rhetoric. I argue that post-classical rhetoric has transmitted to modern critical thought a varied ethos that alternates between tonalities material and transcendental, prudent and dynamic, inclusive and elitist. My thesis examines the way in which the ambiguities of the rhetorical legacy appeal to iconoclastic thinkers and their conception of critical representation, intellectual conduct, and the vitality of the public sphere. I argue that rhetoric appeals to a strand of critical thinkers as a demand for the intellectual to communicate in complex ways, to exhibit not merely ideas but the resources of acculturation, to enact an affect-imbued ethos or persona as the exemplary power of a discursive model, rather than a doctrine or orthodoxy. My focus in this thesis is upon the discursive tendencies of rhetoric, the complex sensibility of rhetorically motivated thinkers. I suggest that in its origins and transmission, rhetorical modes of thinking evoke contradiction and paradox. I discuss how rhetorically exuberant texts are torn between a narrowly instructive mode and a far more generous exhibition of a paideia. By paideia, I refer to a continuing rhetorical fascination with the breadth of acculturation and depth of cultural knowledge that should inform the cultural 1 George A. Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient and Modern Times, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1980, 3. 2 competence of the orator or rhetor, those whose art is persuasion, eloquence, heightened communication. For rhetoric offers both intensive modes of critical analysis and extensive displays of cultural resources. By intensive I talk of rhetoric as a determinate sociability with defined pedagogical aims, and by extensive I talk of a rhetoric chaotically eclectic and confused by its own enthusiasm for linguistic possibilities. Rhetoric’s sensibility, as bodied forth in the texts I discuss, often shuttles between these intensive and extensive registers, between what Friedrich Schlegel calls ‘enthusiasm and irony’. By paideia, then, I refer to the way in which an intensive pedagogical aim can generate an extensive dissemination of orientations that surge forth in rhetorically cognizant texts, from Aristotle to Cicero and Erasmus. I suggest that in its polysemic evocation of the possibilities of critical communication, rhetoric has been a powerful source of ideas for thinkers in and of modernity, from Friedrich Schlegel to Nietzsche and Hannah Arendt. These thinkers desire a more pluralist and subtle critical imagination, an ethos capable of celebrating its own confusions and contradictions. Rhetoric, I argue, offers
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