Cicero on decorum and the morality of rhetoric
| Date | 01 January 2011 |
| Author | Daniel Kapust |
| Published date | 01 January 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885110386007 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
10(1) 92–112
!The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885110386007
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Article
Cicero on decorum and
the morality of rhetoric
Daniel Kapust
University of Georgia, USA
Abstract
This paper explores an important problem in political theory and a central issue in the
study of Cicero’s thought: the tension between philosophy and rhetoric. Through an
exploration of the virtue of decorum in Cicero’s rhetorical thought (chiefly On the Ideal
Orator and Orator) and in his moral philosophy (On Duties), I argue that the virtue of
decorum provides an external check on both speech and action rooted in humans’
rational nature. Given the roots of decorum in humans’ rational nature and the natural
law, the desire to meet our audience’s approval does not involve Cicero in a sophistic
approach to rhetoric. Rather, the desire to observe decorum provides the orator
and his audience with standards of judgement that transcend mere taste and reflect
underlying moral knowledge.
Keywords
Cicero, judgement, persuasion, rhetoric, Roman political thought
Introduction
The tension between philosophy and rhetoric is a common and deeply rooted
theme in political philosophy. Philosophy seeks truth, relies on reason and says
the same thing to different people; rhetoric seeks persuasion, relies on emotion and
says different things to different people. The battle lines were drawn in Plato’s
Gorgias, where we encounter the contrast between Callicles’ love of the Athenian
demos and his inconstancy in speech due to his desire to please his fickle audience,
and Socrates’ love of philosophy, which he suggests leads him to say the same
thing.
1
In the Apology, Socrates contrasts his own style of speech with the style
familiar to the Athenian jurors, emphasizing that he is not an ‘accomplished
speaker’, as his accusers suggest, unless by this they mean ‘the man who speaks
the truth’.
2
Corresoponding author:
Daniel Kapust, Department of Political Science, 104 Baldwin Hall, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA
30602 USA
Email: djkapust@uga.edu
Thomas Hobbes echoes Plato’s critique of rhetoric in On the Citizen, writing
that the eloquent do not proceed by true principles, but ‘from vulgar received
opinions, which for the most part are erroneous’; in doing so, they do not fit
their speech to their topics, per se, but ‘to the passions of their minds to whom
they speak’.
3
The orator seeks ‘not truth (except by chance), but victory’, and
desires ‘not to inform, but to allure’.
4
For Rousseau, eloquence was born of ‘ambi-
tion, hatred, flattery, lying’, and it flowered in Athens, not Sparta, ‘that Republic of
demi-Gods’.
5
It was the eloquent and wealthy who succeeded in tricking the unwise
and poor into forming illegitimate political association in the Discourse on the
Origins of Inequality; indeed, the legitimacy of political deliberation in On the
Social Contract is intimately related to the absence of eloquence.
6
Some modern political theorists, such as Madison, have looked to representa-
tion to remedy the dangers of rhetoric; others, such as Kant – who characterizes the
ars oratoria as ‘the art of deluding by means of a fair semblance’ – prioritize the
role of reason over affect in public deliberation.
7
Contemporary scholarship has
engaged this tension as well. Danielle Allen, for example, has described rhetoric
‘as the art of talking to strangers’, emphasizing its role in creating trust among
democratic citizens and in fostering agreement.
8
Bryan Garsten, in Saving
Persuasion, vindicates Aristotelian and Ciceronian rhetoric against Hobbes,
Rousseau and Kant, who sought to displace or to silence it. Garsten takes from
Aristotle what he terms the ‘concepts of situated judgment and deliberative partial-
ity’, which foster judgement and deliberation, and takes from Cicero ‘the impor-
tance of certain forms of firm moral conviction’ and ‘the importance of preserving
institutional spaces for controversy’.
9
Cicero is of particular interest in thinking about the tensions between rhetoric
and philosophy, and the role of rhetoric in politics. Indeed, one of the problems
that any interpreter of Cicero must face is the tension between Cicero the orator,
‘who seems to favor action over inquiry, success over truth’, and Cicero the phi-
losopher.
10
The problem is evident, for instance, in comparing two passages of
Cicero’s writings. In On the Ideal Orator, Crassus – typically held to speak for
Cicero – suggests that the choice of philosophical allegiance for the orator is not a
function of ‘which philosophy is the truest, but which has the most affinity with the
orator’.
11
By contrast, in Tusculan Disputations, Cicero writes of ‘philosophy, the
mother of all arts ...the discovery of the gods’, which he describes as ‘wholly
divine’.
12
The tensions, then, are between philosophy and rhetoric, the active and
the contemplative life, ratio and oratio.
13
One tactic in dealing with this tension, as well as the tension between Cicero’s
dual adherence to Stoicism and Academic scepticism, is to charge Cicero with
rhetoricizing philosophy, as does Finley, who suggests of Cicero’s political writings
that ‘there is only rhetoric’.
14
Nederman, by contrast, suggests that Cicero’s
thought involves two different poles. On the one hand, Cicero’s political thought
is based on the ‘discursive foundations of public life’, which links eloquent states-
men ‘to a clear notion of citizenship and civic intercourse’.
15
On the other hand, in
his Stoic-influenced political works Cicero ‘emphasizes the centrality of reason
Kapust 93
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