Rhetoric & Reality
Monday Memo: August 17 AD2026
Rhetoric is often misunderstood.
I should not unfairly blame John Locke for this, but in this case his treatise, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Book Three, in chapter ten called “The Abuse of Words” is too useful for making my point. There is a lot that is good and beneficial in that chapter, but one framing jumps out at me, where he appears to make the error of confusing the negative example of a thing for the thing itself.
I think you can both see the point Locke wants to make and that he goes too far with it.
But yet if we would speak of things as they are, we must allow that all the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness; all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment; and so indeed are perfect cheats: and therefore, however laudable or allowable oratory may render them in harangues and popular addresses, they are certainly, in all discourses that pretend to inform or instruct, wholly to be avoided; and where truth and knowledge are concerned, cannot but be thought a great fault, either of the language or person that makes use of them. What and how various they are, will be superfluous here to take notice; the books of rhetoric which abound in the world, will instruct those who want to be informed: only I cannot but observe how little the preservation and improvement of truth and knowledge is the care and concern of mankind; since the arts of fallacy are endowed and preferred. —John Locke in Book III Of Words, Chapter X: Of the Abuse of Words; § 34 Seventhly, language is often abused by figurative speech
In common use “rhetoric” is used as a pejorative as Locke is sort of doing here. To many, rhetoric means: deceptive, manipulative, or insincere. And also: polished but lacking genuine substance or facts. However, in the past rhetoric was part of the core of elite education. It was included in the trivium alongside grammar and logic. Logic needs rhetoric to move people to do what they should be doing anyway and to warn against what they ought not to do at all.
An education in rhetoric should be a vaccine against sophistry.
Sophistry, defined as “subtly deceptive reasoning or argumentation” is what people mean when they are attacking “rhetoric.” Or at least that is what is meant because of Plato. And he may have been unfair to the sophists, however that ship has sailed and I’d rather we denigrate sophistry than lose rhetoric as a positive field of study.
After the Golden Age of Athens
If you ever find yourself transported back to Athens in the fourth century before Christ, find Plato and tell him Socrates was a sophist; then hike your chiton and run!
The line of the great classical Athenian philosophical trio goes Socrates → Plato → Aristotle. Socrates was Plato’s mentor, hero, and the star of most of his dialogues.
After the disaster of the Peloponnesian War (431 to 404 BC), which Athens lost to Sparta, Athens was taken over by tyrants installed by the victors. Long story short, the tyrants were eventually overthrown, the democracy restored, but the Athenians wanted someone to blame for the mess they had gotten themselves into. They picked the annoying know-it-all Socrates, who had both warned his city against the war and whose pupils were linked with the tyranny. The Athenian state executed Socrates in 399 BC, and Plato—who never forgave Athenian democracy for that judicial murder—was dedicated to defending the memory of his teacher. Some Athenians argued that Socrates was a sophist; however, Plato could not stand the sophists and would not tolerate Socrates being categorized as one. Whatever the sophists might have actually taught, much of what we know about them comes from Plato’s angry pen.
From what we can tell, Socrates was more ambivalent about the sophists of his day, willing to give credit where it was due, but to Plato they were verbal mercenaries uninterested in the truth, who sold their services to young ambitious men who only wanted to get ahead rather than to learn to serve the community. Sophistry was not a school of philosophy, but a label applied to many philosophers who used particular methods and tactics.
Protagoras, also known as Protagoras of Abdera (490–420 BC), is considered the leading sophist of the classical world, and he is the subject of a dialogue by Plato called, well, Protagoras. In this dialogue Plato uses Protagoras and Socrates as debate opponents, arguing whether virtue can or cannot be taught, but ends it with them reversing positions with Socrates finally concluding that virtue is a form of knowledge and thus can be taught. Now of course the reader is by design supposed to side with Socrates because that is who Plato wants to be the victor and Plato wrote the story. However, there is nuance in how Plato treats Protagoras and you can come away thinking he made some good points.
My point with this history lesson is not to dwell too much on ancient Greek intellectual grudges and score settling—I’ll do that later next week—but rather to argue that knowledge of rhetoric is actually necessary in the pursuit of truth. So important that many classical Greek philosophers argued over its methods for centuries. When we dismiss rhetoric I think we lose two things.
First, we lose the skill of communicating clearly with our listeners. Our words have intent and purpose, and they should be deployed to make our meaning clear and our desires plain.
But secondly, and more importantly, we lose our ability to hear. Rhetoric does not only teach how to present, but how to receive and interpret. The more sophisticated our rhetorical ability, the more sophisticated our ability to listen to others should become. Our comprehension and interpretive skills should increase as we learn to appreciate the nuances and subtleties of human communication and respect the words of others—to hear what is actually being said and to understand what is left unsaid.
Instead of deceiving us, rhetoric should anchor us in a vivid reality painted with words so that we perceive one another accurately. That means recognizing words that actually prove arguments versus those that never answered the question. That’s something we can all benefit from.
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