We Could Use Some Eloquence
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s geek
time…again! The word of the day is, "eloquence”, defined as “fluent or
persuasive speaking or writing.” No,
no, I’m not talking about me, but thank you! You’re an idiot! But as Election Day approaches, I’ve been listening (as little as possible) to
the various candidates give their standard speeches on the standard issues,
whether it be the two less than stellar candidates running for the highest
office in the land, or those running for the various offices underneath. And to
be more than fair, all of these speeches are boring, often incoherent, and/or
lacking in any eloquence whatsoever. I mean, these speeches may get the crowds
fired up, whether it be spontaneous or not, but the language is frighteningly
bad, or what the French would call langue de bois, which means wooden
language. That’s the extent of my three years of French, kids. You’re
welcome.
Now, there are different types of this wooden speech. Take the official state language of North Korea; the former dictator, Kim Jong Il, spoke like a native. It caused your IQ level to plummet because one is accustomed to thinking of speech as a vehicle for truth. There is another kind of speech the British call “bafflegab,” language designed not to be understood, kind of like an insurance policy, or pretentious bureaucratic language designed to conceal stupidity. The interesting thing is, this type of verbiage, as it were, can now be machine-generated to suit the needs of, for example, DEI bureaucracies, without passing through a human mind! Is that a good thing, Boss? I’m not sure, my eloquent little friend. The third type of speech, and one we are currently hearing every day, is the language most of our politicians speak, the manufacture of focus groups and polls, designed not for eloquence, but to hit hot buttons and bring voters to the polls. I’m referring, of course, to the minority of politicians who are capable of avoiding word salads and speaking in a disciplined way, which in America means speaking in complete sentences.
Contrast these forms of wooden language with genuine eloquence. For those of you who remember your high school or college history classes, you are most likely to think of Edmund Burke, Winston Churchill, or Martin Luther King rather than the great ancient orators Demosthenes and Cicero (although, in my insufficiently humble opinion, the eloquence of the classical orators has never been fully equaled in later Western history). In the contemporary world, great heights of eloquence have been scaled by very few. I remember Boris Johnson’s moving tribute in 2022 to the monarch he called Elizabeth the Great (and if your soul is not moved by this incredible speech, you are bereft of feeling). The British writer and columnist Douglas Murray in his Sunday column for The Free Press has made eloquence his theme for the year, providing many rich modern examples. He is, without a doubt, among the most eloquent men of our time. I don’t think it’s merely the partiality of one who studied history that sees in Allen Guelzo one of the few Americans who can equal the British in his capacity to mobilize the English language in the articulate defense of high ideals. And I hold a spot in my literary heart for the frighteningly immense talent of George F. Will. Whether the subject is baseball, politics, or family, his eloquence is unequaled in the public sphere.
In the humanistic educational tradition—which in the ancient world ran from Isocrates to the Romans Cicero and Quintilian and was revived in the humanist schools of the Renaissance—eloquence could be taught through formal study of the art of rhetoric. In the early American republic many of the finest orators, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, and Frederick Douglass, learned to speak in public by studying and memorizing gems from the anthology The Columbian Orator (1797 and many later editions). This was a collection of speeches ancient and modern, including texts of Socrates, Cato, and Cicero alongside more recent speeches by the Elder Pitt, Charles James Fox, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin.
Call me crazy, but I believe this is a great art that the new civics institutes, once the anti-intellectualism of the woke dies away, could restore to our republic. Rhetoric and public speaking used to be taught, even required, in American universities. Harvard had a requirement in rhetoric (public speaking) until 1955, and there was an endowed chair, the Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory, founded in 1804 to teach the subject. Its first holder was some guy named John Quincy Adams (not a bad start); in recent times it has typically been occupied by a poet. But the old art of learning to speak persuasively in public has been abandoned by the modern university. If there are required courses in public speaking at any American university, I’m unaware of them. Anyone who has overheard American undergraduates attempting to communicate with each other will be aware of this gap in their education (Because, like, um, well, they um, like, just don't, like, get it...like). Again, I do not think I need to add the examples currently running for President of the United States.
Improving the ability of students to express themselves in public is an ideal way for the new civics institutes to add value to a university education and to American civic life more generally. Everyone knows that American politicians (unlike British ones) are as a rule incompetent public speakers, unable to express their thoughts or persuade people to accept their policies. They have to rely on the dark arts of political consultants to move even the tiniest percentages of voters into their column. That is one reason why they are not effective leaders.
As the Western tradition understood eloquence—the word comes from the Latin, eloquentia or speaking out—speaking out meant speaking with courage and conviction. “Free speech” in the premodern tradition was not a right hedged about with legal protections, as it is for us, but the courage to speak truth to power or the integrity to reject bad counsel that might be in one’s personal interest. Free speech, in other words, was a form of moral courage. It was a skill vital to republican government. Without the eloquence to convince our fellow citizens of the right course of action, politicians have to rely on force or fraud to compel assent, as we see demonstrated daily in this election season. When republics cease to rely on rational persuasion, they cease to exist as true republics.
Complaints and laments are heard on all sides these days (including from yours truly) that our politicians lack courage. But as Cicero observed, a man is more likely to speak with courage when he knows how to speak and has confidence in his ability to persuade. In the eyes of humanist educators since the above mentioned Isocrates, the acquiring of eloquence was a moral discipline intended to persuade and forge consensus in states; the man who acquired eloquence had acquired an indispensable tool of political leadership. For traditional humanist educators, the ideal orator would, like Cicero, denounce tyranny and corruption and preserve the republic from its enemies. Moreover, being able to speak your mind with power and beauty makes you fully human and thus able to contribute more excellence (or virtue) to the human community.
As the greatest political philosopher of Renaissance humanism (at least in your humble correspondent’s opinion), Francesco Patrizi of Siena—himself a professor of rhetoric—wrote in his treatise on republican government, “Rightly considered, of all the disciplines, none is more appropriate to the state (respublica) than the oratorical discipline.” Now that is a worthy subject for an institute of civic thought and leadership to take under its wing. And something our future leaders would be wise to emulate.
Now, there are different types of this wooden speech. Take the official state language of North Korea; the former dictator, Kim Jong Il, spoke like a native. It caused your IQ level to plummet because one is accustomed to thinking of speech as a vehicle for truth. There is another kind of speech the British call “bafflegab,” language designed not to be understood, kind of like an insurance policy, or pretentious bureaucratic language designed to conceal stupidity. The interesting thing is, this type of verbiage, as it were, can now be machine-generated to suit the needs of, for example, DEI bureaucracies, without passing through a human mind! Is that a good thing, Boss? I’m not sure, my eloquent little friend. The third type of speech, and one we are currently hearing every day, is the language most of our politicians speak, the manufacture of focus groups and polls, designed not for eloquence, but to hit hot buttons and bring voters to the polls. I’m referring, of course, to the minority of politicians who are capable of avoiding word salads and speaking in a disciplined way, which in America means speaking in complete sentences.
Contrast these forms of wooden language with genuine eloquence. For those of you who remember your high school or college history classes, you are most likely to think of Edmund Burke, Winston Churchill, or Martin Luther King rather than the great ancient orators Demosthenes and Cicero (although, in my insufficiently humble opinion, the eloquence of the classical orators has never been fully equaled in later Western history). In the contemporary world, great heights of eloquence have been scaled by very few. I remember Boris Johnson’s moving tribute in 2022 to the monarch he called Elizabeth the Great (and if your soul is not moved by this incredible speech, you are bereft of feeling). The British writer and columnist Douglas Murray in his Sunday column for The Free Press has made eloquence his theme for the year, providing many rich modern examples. He is, without a doubt, among the most eloquent men of our time. I don’t think it’s merely the partiality of one who studied history that sees in Allen Guelzo one of the few Americans who can equal the British in his capacity to mobilize the English language in the articulate defense of high ideals. And I hold a spot in my literary heart for the frighteningly immense talent of George F. Will. Whether the subject is baseball, politics, or family, his eloquence is unequaled in the public sphere.
In the humanistic educational tradition—which in the ancient world ran from Isocrates to the Romans Cicero and Quintilian and was revived in the humanist schools of the Renaissance—eloquence could be taught through formal study of the art of rhetoric. In the early American republic many of the finest orators, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, and Frederick Douglass, learned to speak in public by studying and memorizing gems from the anthology The Columbian Orator (1797 and many later editions). This was a collection of speeches ancient and modern, including texts of Socrates, Cato, and Cicero alongside more recent speeches by the Elder Pitt, Charles James Fox, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin.
Call me crazy, but I believe this is a great art that the new civics institutes, once the anti-intellectualism of the woke dies away, could restore to our republic. Rhetoric and public speaking used to be taught, even required, in American universities. Harvard had a requirement in rhetoric (public speaking) until 1955, and there was an endowed chair, the Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory, founded in 1804 to teach the subject. Its first holder was some guy named John Quincy Adams (not a bad start); in recent times it has typically been occupied by a poet. But the old art of learning to speak persuasively in public has been abandoned by the modern university. If there are required courses in public speaking at any American university, I’m unaware of them. Anyone who has overheard American undergraduates attempting to communicate with each other will be aware of this gap in their education (Because, like, um, well, they um, like, just don't, like, get it...like). Again, I do not think I need to add the examples currently running for President of the United States.
Improving the ability of students to express themselves in public is an ideal way for the new civics institutes to add value to a university education and to American civic life more generally. Everyone knows that American politicians (unlike British ones) are as a rule incompetent public speakers, unable to express their thoughts or persuade people to accept their policies. They have to rely on the dark arts of political consultants to move even the tiniest percentages of voters into their column. That is one reason why they are not effective leaders.
As the Western tradition understood eloquence—the word comes from the Latin, eloquentia or speaking out—speaking out meant speaking with courage and conviction. “Free speech” in the premodern tradition was not a right hedged about with legal protections, as it is for us, but the courage to speak truth to power or the integrity to reject bad counsel that might be in one’s personal interest. Free speech, in other words, was a form of moral courage. It was a skill vital to republican government. Without the eloquence to convince our fellow citizens of the right course of action, politicians have to rely on force or fraud to compel assent, as we see demonstrated daily in this election season. When republics cease to rely on rational persuasion, they cease to exist as true republics.
Complaints and laments are heard on all sides these days (including from yours truly) that our politicians lack courage. But as Cicero observed, a man is more likely to speak with courage when he knows how to speak and has confidence in his ability to persuade. In the eyes of humanist educators since the above mentioned Isocrates, the acquiring of eloquence was a moral discipline intended to persuade and forge consensus in states; the man who acquired eloquence had acquired an indispensable tool of political leadership. For traditional humanist educators, the ideal orator would, like Cicero, denounce tyranny and corruption and preserve the republic from its enemies. Moreover, being able to speak your mind with power and beauty makes you fully human and thus able to contribute more excellence (or virtue) to the human community.
As the greatest political philosopher of Renaissance humanism (at least in your humble correspondent’s opinion), Francesco Patrizi of Siena—himself a professor of rhetoric—wrote in his treatise on republican government, “Rightly considered, of all the disciplines, none is more appropriate to the state (respublica) than the oratorical discipline.” Now that is a worthy subject for an institute of civic thought and leadership to take under its wing. And something our future leaders would be wise to emulate.
write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com
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