The Rhetor and the Audience: Why Can't We Be Friends?

In Book Eight of Nicomechean Ethics, Aristotle talks about three kinds of friendships:

"There are therefore three kinds of friendship, equal in number to the things that are lovable; those who love each other for their utility do not love each other for themselves but in virtue of some good which they get from each other. So too with those who love for the sake of pleasure; it is not for their character that men love ready-witted people, but because they find them pleasant. Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good themselves."

As soon as I heard this I realized how these three types of friendships mesh with the problem of rhetorical ethics, particularly the question of whether the rhetoric is engaging the audience or manipulating the audience. As long as the friend relationship is understood by both parties, then the rhetorical moment is ethical. So, as long as the rhetor and the audience realize that their relationship is one of utility, say the relationship between a used car salesman and a customer, or a lawyer and his client, or . . . the relationship is ethical. Most political speeches would fall under this category. The politician has a use for the audience as voters, and the audience has a use for the politician as a leader. In relationships based on pleasure, the same holds true. For instance, Gorgias's "Encomium to Helen" was intended as entertainment. As long as his listeners realized that and didn't assume there was metaphysical significance to his speech, it was ethical. In like mind, virtue. Plato would probably argue that all of the Socratic Dialogues fall under this heading, even though many of Socrates's interlocutors didn't realize he was trying to make them virtuous.

That last example highlights the problem.When the audience and the rhetor do not agree on the relationship, when one assumes a different relationship is in play than the other does, then the rhetorical moment is in danger of being unethical. Let's go back to the used car salesman. To the extent he tries to act as though our relationship is one of virtue, to that extent he has, or has attempted to, manipulate me. This holds true with all those relationships. In the worst case scenario, the scenario Plato always saw for rhetoric, the rhetor is constantly using utility and pleasure as means to imitate virtue. No wonder he hated rhetoric.