The Art of Rhetoric

The desire of rhetoric is always seated in attaining and preserving happiness. Corax of Syracuse (and/or Tisias) is regarded as the first theorist to devise an art of rhetoric as a means to help citizens regain their property seized under the rule of a despot. In this foremost case of Greco-Roman rhetoric, political happiness was sought by means of judicial speeches. The poly-discursive varieties of rhetorical happiness have theoretically expanded in depth and scope from the philosophical, metaphysical, ethical, religious, psychological, and aesthetic. If citizens in the 5th century BCE were happy, then there would have been no need for rhetoric; as a result, the foundational assumption of my special area exam is that happiness remains an ideological desire advancing rhetoric.

Classical philosophers and rhetoricians theorized whether eudemonia was a matter of luck (up to the daimons) or whether humans in fact had agency. They also defined happiness in relation to an ethical framework, often requiring virtue as a prerequisite. My exam area reads into these many incarnations of happiness as an idea(l) that Richard Weaver calls a “God-term” in its “inherent potency,” woven deep into the fabric of our constitution with ‘obvious’ discursive patterns and powerful institutionalized effects. Materialized through discourse, happiness is necessarily relational and socially persuasive, imbued with ethical assumptions, and embodied in knowledge and beliefs. At times this awareness is either lost or left implicit, but by bringing this critical perspective to the historical trajectory, I situate distinct rhetorics of happiness.

Content and Scope

Aristotle’s assumption that language can be expressed with “clarity, correctness, and appr...

... middle of paper ...

...nd sophistic incongruity as it relates to happiness.

Tisias’ rhetorical theory that emphasized persuasion in a world with no clear truth—and no clear way to express the truth—parallels the wide definitional variance found in the art of happiness. Neither desiring art is innocuous in their assertive construction plans to save the world in “the state of Babel after the fall” (Rhetoric, 23). However, rhetorical theory can make happiness appear less “obvious” by perceiving language as a non-neutral translation of self, other, and society. For the most part, the sources in my bibliography aim to strengthen (or counter) the sophistic view of happiness. The scope of my primary sources are thrown into relief by secondary sources that connect “the old rhetoric” of rhetorical eudemonism to contemporary rhetorical theory that can learn from the sophistic sense of happiness.