Rhetoric versus values

In ancient Greece, considerable thought was given as to how people should be governed and what should be required of those aspiring for public office. The issue was whether high moral standards on the part of rulers were more important than their ability at public speaking. In Athens, as a city state, the ability of rulers to speak persuasively before its citizens was a matter of admiration. Oratorical skill meant power and influence. Being clever at public speaking was a distinct advantage. The sophists were itinerant teachers of rhetoric. They charged a fee for their services and were least concerned about ultimate principles. In contrast to them, Socrates posed acute and ironic questions to groups of young men in order to elicit key moral values such as justice, piety, temperance and excellence. Behind such questions lay more basic issues of how we all ought to live our lives. Should we maximise our pleasures or should our main aim in life be to act virtuously.

Plato’s dialogue Gorgias articulates the gulf between the sophists’ teachings of rhetoric and Socrates’s endeavour to elicit the real purpose of human life in society, namely, to live righteously and to achieve happiness in the special Greek sense of eudaimonia. The sophists considered personal prestige, power and worldly success, resulting from the ability to speak well and to persuade citizens, as desirable goals. In contrast, Plato felt that the real politician must necessarily aim at the good of the citizens in his charge. To him, the goal of a good politician must be the improvement of the lives of citizens. As opposed to the orator’s pandering to common desires, Plato’s character of Socrates maintains that politics must depend on the ability to establish order and proportion — not only among citizens at large but also within the ruler himself. Plato’s theme of justice in society as well as within the individual soul was examined and elaborated in depth in his famous dialogue The Republic.

The opposition between rhetoric and a concern for fundamental values has been evident at all times historically. It has present-day relevance in the emergence of politicians like Donald Trump in the US and our ambitious ex-cricketer in Pakistan. The bluster, rudeness and arrogance in their public utterances gain them acolytes and adherents but they are clueless in the understanding of how a complex modern polity can be bettered. To be sure, not all populists fit into this mould. President Barack Obama, noted for his eloquence, has made substantial social and economic improvements in his country. Statesmen such as Pericles (c 495 — 429 BC), who was famous for his oratorical skills, played an important role in the Athenian democratic assembly.


The overriding consideration needs to be the impact the ruler makes on society at large and, consequently, upon the individual. The state is “the individual writ large” and the state’s health or sickness resembles the health or sickness of an individual. In modern times, where nations consist of millions and even billions of persons, representative government through regular electoral processes has become imperative. The crucial factor is the cultural one. I have been stressing the need for cultural, social and intellectual uplift in our country and the cleansing of malignant social practices in my articles written over recent years, now published as an e-book by Amazon.com KDP under the title, A Pattern of Thought and Aesthetic. Our country must move away from dogmatism and obscurantism and it must join the phalanx of humanity as a progressive, healthy and modern polity.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 18^th, 2016.