Richard Whately and Moral Absolutism

The first thing you'll probably notice about Richard Whately is that he has an incurable man-crush on Aristotle. While Whately attributes most of his fascination for the early philosopher to Aristotle's nearly infallible grasp of reasoning, you will also quickly notice that Whately sees a lot of himself in the ancient theorist. While my knowledge of the history of rhetoric is cursory at best, the particular anthology I'm reading (The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, 2nd ed., Eds. Bizzel and Herzberg) offers a concise and well-written introduction that has helped me start connecting the dots, so to speak. As with the development of most theories, philosophies, etc., rhetoric follows a reactionary ebb and flow wherein one generation's proclivities are succeeded by the next generation's rejection of those same proclivities, creating schisms, splits, re-developments, and re-definitions along the way.

Though Whately was active in the early 19th century, he is very much a classicist. He adores and utilizes the texts of ancient Roman and Greek orators and philosophers. This, combined with Whately's own protestantism (he was a clergyman, in fact), makes much of his views on rhetoric and argumentation problematic. Most noticeable is Whately's dependence on moral absolutes (something the editors' introduction makes note of), and his further claims that a skilled rhetorician, as long as he speaks the truth, will win out in the end. This claim is even further complicated by Whately's repetitive emphasis on sound reasoning. Indeed, Whately asserts that where most rhetoricians fail is in their faulty grasp of logic. Yet, Whately's own source of logic is bound to the notion of absolute truth (I should point out that the footnotes indicate Whately pulled some of this view from Aristotle, whose own definition of "truth" is as platitudinous as the devotee's).

"Truth" for Whately depends largely on Christian morality, which perhaps in the context of this writing is not entirely problematic, but history easily shows that "Christian morality" has been used to propagate social immoralities as unethical as slavery (see: Edmund Ruffin's The Political Economy of Slavery) and sexism (see: Anything written by the apostle Paul). Furthermore, Whately's position assumes a universality that to a modern reader seems wholly faulty and, frankly, deviously presumptuous. Of course, I do not expect entirely ethical or inclusive writings from an 18th century pastor, but I do expect more sound reasoning from a rhetor who claims that reasoning is the basis for all successful rhetorical endeavors.

If there is one lesson I embrace from Whately's writing, it is his insistence that in order to be a successful orator/writer, one needs to be a language expert. Whately makes various comparisons to tools and labeling, but largely he reasons that language is how humans communicate and a sophisticated understanding of language will enable one to create a more effective message. Of course, Whately's definition of language depends on the aritsocracy's language and students' ability to emulate the forms of those who hold economic and social power. I'm guessing someone like Anzuldua would have a lot to say about Whately's assumptions, and none of them very nice, but I find myself oddly at ease with these claims, for it anticipates the modern composition rule "know your audience," and knowing one's audience is greatly concerned with understanding and utilizing that audience's language (be it MLA-laced academic prose or jargon-infused technical writing). So, if I were to translate Whately's insistence on linguistic expertise, I would say that a "good" writer would be able to wield multiple tools at once and know which tools were appropriate for particular circumstances.