_The ETHICS of_ Rhetoric _The ETHICS of_ Rhetoric _By_ RICHARD M. WEAVER ὥστε συμβαίνει τὴν ρητορικὴν οἶον παραφυές τι τῆς διαλεκτικῆς εἶναι καὶ τῆς περὶ τὰ ἤθη πραγματείας Thus it happens that rhetoric is an offshoot of dialectic and also of ethical studies. —ARISTOTLE, _Rhetoric_ [Illustration] Chicago · HENRY REGNERY COMPANY · _1953_ Copyright 1953 by Henry Regnery Company. Copyright under International Copyright Union. Manufactured in the United States of America. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 53-8796. Second Printing, December, 1963 Table of Contents PAGE I. THE PHAEDRUS AND THE NATURE OF RHETORIC 3 II. DIALECTIC AND RHETORIC AT DAYTON, TENNESSEE 27 III. EDMUND BURKE AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CIRCUMSTANCE 55 IV. ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE ARGUMENT FROM DEFINITION 85 V. SOME RHETORICAL ASPECTS OF GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES 115 VI. MILTON’S HEROIC PROSE 143 VII. THE SPACIOUSNESS OF OLD RHETORIC 164 VIII. THE RHETORIC OF SOCIAL SCIENCE 186 IX. ULTIMATE TERMS IN CONTEMPORARY RHETORIC 211 INDEX 233 Acknowledgments Acknowledgments with thanks are due the following: Charles Scribner’s Sons for the passage from Allen Tate’s “The Subway,” from _Poems 1922-1947_; Karl Shapiro and Random House, Inc., for the passage from _Essay on Rime_; and the Viking Press, Inc., for the passage from Sherwood Anderson’s _A Story Teller’s Story_. _The ETHICS of_ Rhetoric Chapter I THE _PHAEDRUS_ AND THE NATURE OF RHETORIC Our subject begins with the threshold difficulty of defining the question which Plato’s _Phaedrus_ was meant to answer. Students of this justly celebrated dialogue have felt uncertain of its unity of theme, and the tendency has been to designate it broadly as a discussion of the ethical and the beautiful. The explicit topics of the dialogue are, in order: love, the soul, speechmaking, and the spoken and written word, or what is generally termed by us “composition.” The development looks random, and some of the most interesting passages appear _jeux d’esprit_. The richness of the literary art diverts attention from the substance of the argument.