Rhetoric and Public Morality

This week’s readings from Contemporary Rhetorical Theory brought up interesting points about rhetoric’s role in building/affecting public morality. The editors emphasize that “the problem of constituting an effective deliberative democracy for the twenty-first century, particularly in an increasingly multicultural society, will require sustained attention to the range of ways in which rhetoric constitutes and is implicated in the process of public decision making” (Condit and Lucaites 249). An important aspect that they point out is the issue of multicultural societies. It is also evident that the context that is studied is the continental United States, and features notions from white scholars in academia. Therefore, there seems to be discrepancy in how the multiple cultures that live in this democratic society are considered in decision making processes.

Nevertheless, the authors do attempt to emphasize how previous conceptions of rhetoric’s role in determining specific public moral codes have given more power to certain groups. For example, Goodnight believes that “the public sphere is being steadily eroded by the elevation of the personal and technical groundings of argument” (258). He critiques the valuing of technical spheres to determine moral codes that would affect the public in general, which reinforces the assumption that only those with ‘expertise’ can make decisions that would affect everyone else (i.e. voting for the next president). Fisher also considers how accepting the rational paradigm may render  “the public unreasonable; with the idea of rationality being a matter of argumentative competence in specialized fields, leaving the public and its discourse irrational … so that one class of citizens can always be superior to another” (Fisher 279). The overlapping idea here is that we need to start questioning how regular citizens are included, or not, in constructing a set of moral codes with which we can live in peaceful harmony, be it by focusing on argumentative or narrative discourses.

Condit argues that “public rhetoric can therefore be viewed as a process in which basic human desires are transformed into shared moral codes” (311). She criticizes Fretz’s conception of this process as an individual endeavor, posing that it is only through ‘collective will’ that such transformations are possible. While I agree with the necessity of a collective will in order to establish a somewhat universal view of what it means to be moral,  these ideas usually begin in the private level. Describing his Dinner with Andre example of a rhetorical conversation, Fretz ascertains that “an individual life and a moral tradition are the goods internal to rhetorical conversations as practices and achievable only through enacting such conversations in accordance with the virtues of justice… courage (to risk one’s self for the other), and honesty (to be truthful beyond all else)” (300). This process would be more clearly conceived as a constantly evolving process, with no specific emphasis on either public of private processes, as they are constantly overlapping.

At this point I am inclined to point out that, while Condit uses the example of the Civil Rights and how African Americans became to be perceived as “equals,” there are a number of other populations that were not even mentioned. Perhaps it was their intention to leave the category of “public” open, but in doing so, there is a lack of grounding in relation to historical events that have influenced the decision making abilities that particular groups have had. Although Puerto Ricans are considered citizens of the United States, there are numerous political aspects, which are also influenced by moral ideals, in which we cannot participate in. One of the major examples is the fact that we are not included in the Presidential election, which in turn affects whatever decision is made in any particular time period. This example can be examined further as a complication to the way that a “public” moral code is established.