SOURCE: "Dewey, Ethics, and Rhetoric: Toward a Contemporary Conception of Practical Wisdom," in Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 16, No. 3, 1983, pp. 185-207.

[In the following essay, Johnstone finds similarities between the interrelation of ethics and rhetoric in the writings of Aristotle and Dewey.]

Rhetoric and wisdom are often linked in discussions of the practical functions of speech. For Plato, a genuine art of rhetoric is rooted in wisdom—in knowledge of the true Forms of things—and serves to communicate this knowledge to others.¹ Aristotle views rhetoric both as an exercise of practical intelligence and as generative of practical wisdom.² In the Ciceronian scheme, wisdom without the aid of eloquence is essentially useless, while eloquence without wisdom is deemed harmful.³ Recent inquiries have sought to illuminate further the relationship between these two ideas. Lloyd Bitzer writes that "rhetoric at its best sustains wisdom in the life of the public."⁴ Kneupper and Anderson argue that "wisdom would not exist without eloquence," and suggest that the unification of the two is the proper concern of rhetorical invention.⁵

The connections between wisdom and rhetoric, nonetheless, remain unclear, as does the nature of wisdom itself. Indeed, whereas for Plato, Aristotle, and the ancients the idea had roots in language and culture, and served as a significant social ideal, we have no contemporary vision of wisdom or of the means of its attainment. I will address this deficiency by examining both the components of a modern conception of practical wisdom, and the role of rhetoric in its creation.

If we are fully to understand the wisdom-generating powers of rhetoric, we must consider the role of the subject, the person, in the activities of knowing and acting. For knowing is rooted in and is shaped by the character of the knower.⁶ One thinker whose work provides rich insight into the connections among self, speech, and the growth of wisdom is John Dewey. "Perhaps no philosopher since Aristotle," Don Burks writes, "has more to offer the rhetorician than does John Dewey."⁷ Still, Dewey's work remains largely unexamined by contemporary theorists and philosophers of rhetoric.⁸ Particularly in his work on aesthetics, ethics, and the philosophy of knowledge, Dewey explores and clarifies the relationships among character, communication, and "practical intelligence."

My principal aim is to examine how an art of rhetoric can be employed to create wisdom. Dewey's writings illuminate three ideas in this. He examines the nature and functions of art, and concludes that all art serves finally to enhance the growth of the human personality: "it is the office of art in the individual person to compose differences, to do away with isolations and conflicts among the elements of our being, to utilize oppositions among them to build a richer personality."⁹ Rhetoric, if it is to function genuinely as an art, must fulfill this office. Of rhetoric itself Dewey has little to say; but of the instrumental uses of communication—which I shall take to be rhetorical—he says much. Indeed, he observes that "all communication is like art,"¹⁰ and thus maintains that human communication serves to stimulate and guide the development of individual mind and character, that is, of the self. Again, about "wisdom" per se Dewey writes little; but his elaboration of "creative intelligence" and "moral selfhood" yields significant insight into the nature of what Aristotle terms "practical wisdom" or phronesis. In what follows I shall summarize Dewey's discussions of these ideas and examine the implications of his discussions for the use of the rhetorical art, and for the direction of contemporary rhetorical theorizing.

I

"Practical wisdom," Aristotle tells us, "must be a reasoned and true state of capacity to act with regard to human goods."¹¹ It is, moreover, a capacity resting upon the exercise of logos, upon the soul's capability for intelligent direction of conduct. Aristotle grounds his conception of moral virtue, indeed, his entire ethical theory, upon the development and use of practical wisdom. The life lived according to the dictates of practical wisdom, after all, for Aristotle most fully reflects and realizes human nature.

Dewey's ethical theory is quite at home with Aristotle's emphasis on the practical, and with his concentration upon the formation of character in the pursuit of wisdom. One of Dewey's principal aims was to help individuals meet the problems of life, and his entire philosophy is at bottom an argument for the method of intelligence as the most promising tool in the quest for significant and satisfying experience. His ethical philosophy in particular identifies both the foundations and the features of this method, and in doing so illuminates a useful and distinctly post-Aristotelian conception of practical wisdom. Dewey's "method of intelligence" is essentially a complex of mental habits and attitudes that compose the individual self; and his moral theory recommends a conception of selfhood that will serve best as a ground for choosing good conduct. A brief review of his views will clarify the idea of wisdom to which Dewey's thought leads.

Dewey's moral theory is rooted finally in the life-process itself, and he derives from the facts of this process a view of value that centers upon the satisfaction of legitimate desire and upon the expansion and enrichment of the content of experience. Dewey emphasizes the significance of intelligent methods of deliberation and choice in determining conduct, and finds the foundation of moral value in the growth of the self, the author of judgment.

Goods and values, on Dewey's view, inhere in the very processes of life. Any attempt to understand human behavior, therefore, including the activities of valuing and choosing, must begin with an awareness of the human being as a living, experiencing creature that functions in and through relations with its environment. In its persistent ebb and flow of energies, the environment presents both the obstacles that impede the life-process and the materials and conditions that are used to restore harmony. Discord in the environment-organism relation is experienced as need, lack, or privation; and the restoration of harmony creates enjoyment or satisfaction.¹²

Such satisfactions are the foundation of values; for an object has worth to an individual when it satisfies need or desire. But not all enjoyments are to be pursued as values. In order for an experienced good to be considered valuable, it must be approved as such after critical inquiry into the conditions and consequences of its occurrence. Without the intervention of thought, Dewey observes, "enjoyments are not values but problematic goods, becoming values when they reissue in a changed form from intelligent behavior. . . . [We should] regard our direct and original experience of things liked and enjoyed as only possibilities of values to be achieved; . . . enjoyment becomes a value when we discover the relations upon which its presence depends."¹³

Since not all goods are of equal value, the "moral situation" requires that one judge the relative worth of competing possibilities. Dewey's theory concentrates on the methods by which and the grounds upon which such judgments are made. His aim is to provide insight into the ways of judging and choosing that promise most in generating truly valuable conduct. These methods are described by the idea of intelligence, which I identify with the idea of practical wisdom.¹⁴

Dewey's "method of intelligence" involves, first, a set of factors that are to guide practical deliberation; and second, a conception of the habits and attitudes to be cultivated in the individual in order to extend the capacity for intelligent judgment and conduct. It is in response to some problematic situation that one envisions as ends-in-view possible reconstructions of affairs that will satisfy existing lacks, and that one chooses from among competing alternatives a course of action intended to bring about the desired reconstruction. Prospective conduct is appraised first, accordingly, in terms of its efficacy as means to desired ends—and this idea, of course, is the one most often linked with the pragmatic method. Practical judgments are predictions or anticipations of consequences, based upon insight into the tendencies of actions to bring about certain results. Judgments are tested and confirmed, then, only by acting and comparing actual outcomes with those anticipated.

A second factor in valuation grows out of Dewey's recognition that actions have multiple consequences. In responding to the idea that "the end justifies the means," Dewey emphasizes the multiplicity of effects and the need to consider them impartially when deliberating about conduct. "Certainly," he says, "nothing can justify or condemn means except ends, results. But we have to include consequences impartially. . . . Not the end—in the singular—justifies the means; for there is no such thing as the single all-important end. . . . [We must] note the plural effects that flow from any act. .. . "¹⁵ Among the most important of these effects, we shall see, is the development of the selves touched by the act.

One of Dewey's most significant contributions to value-theory is the idea that there is no final distinction between ends and means. For all ends-in-view are also means to further ends; they are transitional points between two phases of experience. Just as one's proposed conduct is subject to appraisal as means, therefore, so are one's aims. We must evaluate the states of affairs to be brought into existence through our actions because these are themselves conditions of further accomplishment, and thus will affect subsequent valuations, conduct, and enjoyments. The ends toward which proposed conduct is aimed must be appraised in terms of how they will serve the "continuum of action."

This notion of "endless ends" has led some critics to wonder what, if anything, finally warrants value judgments.'¹⁶ If no end is ultimately and intrinsically good, what is the foundation of the specific values in terms of which particular choices are made? In his answer to this question lies what may be most provocative and compelling in Dewey's moral theory. The intelligent person chooses aims and conduct with a view both toward the satisfaction of immediate wants and toward the maintenance of conditions that will make future satisfactions the more likely and extensive. Why? asks the critic. What is the value of deeper, more significant satisfactions? It is in life itself—in how people actually do seek to live—that Dewey finds the final authority for value-judgments.¹⁷ We must Seek a life that is "fruitful and inherently significant" because "the only ultimate value which can be set up is just the process of living itself."¹⁸ Since "life is its own excuse for being," means and ends can be justified finally "only because they increase the experienced content of life itself."¹⁹ The ultimate ground of valuation, therefore, is a fact: as a matter of fact people who are committed to life seek to live in ways that reward them with experiences that are enjoyed, that satisfy, that are good. What makes a life significant and worthwhile is just that it brings one to more enduring, more deeply satisfying, more inclusive enjoyments.²⁰ And the capacity for living in such a way as this, I suggest, is precisely what practical wisdom consists in.

If the individual is to maintain conditions that will make valuations and choices meaningful and productive, then particular attention must be paid to the factors that most directly affect inquiry, judgment, and conduct; and these are the habits and tendencies comprising the self. Accordingly, while it is true for Dewey that "consequences fix the moral quality of an act," he stresses that "consequences include effects upon character, upon confirming and weakening habits, as well as tangibly obvious results."²¹

Conduct is a manifestation of the self; for the self is the "interpenetration of habits" through which impulses are filtered as they instigate activity. One must seek in one's responses to the problematic, therefore, to cultivate habits that make for broader, more sensitive, more inclusive, i.e., wiser, choices. The central factor in moral judgment, then, is the growth of the self: the cultivation of habits and dispositions that will sustain the capacity for intelligent choice. "The real moral question," writes Dewey, "is what kind of a. self is being furthered and formed. And this question arises with respect to both one's own self and the selves of others."²² The quest for growth becomes the moral imperative that should guide all practical deliberation and choice: "We set up this and that end to be reached, but the end is growth itself."²³

The self is formed, Dewey argues, by the choices it makes and by the experiences that flow from them. The very act of choosing forms character because, as a mode of conduct, it reinforces certain habits of mind at the expense of others. In deciding how to respond to the difficulties encountered in living, we reinforce in ourselves as habits and dispositions certain ways of inquiring, of reasoning, of choosing and acting. Choice also forms the self by determining the nature of the experience to which it will be led by its own acts. On this view, any choice can give formative impulse to the developing self, and thus can have moral import.²⁴ When we attempt to remake the world in ways that will institute our values, we remake ourselves.²⁵ Because growth is the "only moral end," the obligation attending any attempt to respond to the problematic in life is to look for methods of doing so that will respect the demand for growth.

Dewey's ethical theory culminates in the development of characteristics he identifies with the "moral self." And in his conception of moral selfhood we find the key elements of a contemporary vision of practical wisdom. For the moral self is defined by its capacity for sagacious judgment and by its attentiveness to opportunities for the continued growth of all who are affected by one's conduct. The dimensions of moral selfhood can be summarized by the ideas of creative intelligence, responsibility, freedom, and the expansion of mind.

While the wisdom of particular practical decisions is confirmed ultimately by the consequences that accrue to them, it is certified at the moment of choosing by the quality of the decision-making process itself. What makes a choice intelligent is that it is guided by openminded and impartial inquiry and deliberation, and that it is regarded as tentative, flexible, and capable of modification as experienced outcomes dictate.²⁶ We should note particularly that this conception emphasizes imagination and sensitivity. As a power to plan and to anticipate the outcomes of action, intelligence is also a power to conceive the unseen, to perceive and manipulate in the mind the potentialities that dwell in actual experience.²⁷ Moreover, underlying this power is a habit of sensitivity or heightened awareness, a habit of "being wide-awake, alert, attentive to the significance of events." As this habit is intensified, more intelligent direction of action is made possible, and so prudence is cultivated in the person.

Responsibility, responsiveness to the well-being and growth of others, is a second characteristic of the prudent person. Dewey's is not a hedonistic nor anegoistic perspective. Because the individual is deeply rooted in and dependent upon the community of which he or she is a functioning member, one has a fundamental stake in the welfare of those with whom one associates. "Selfhood is not something which exists apart from association and intercourse."²⁸ Moreover, "the kind of self which is formed through action which is faithful to relations with others will be a fuller and broader self than one which is cultivated in isolation from or opposition to the purposes and needs of others."²⁹ The moral self, then, is responsive to others' interests because they are bound up with one's own. The habit of responsibility—attentiveness in one's practical deliberations and choices to the implications of one's conduct for the growth of others—is to be cultivated because of the fundamental connections between individual and community.

A chief requirement of sound valuation is that judgments and choices be made and conduct performed with a view toward maintaining the widest possible range of opportunities for further action and enjoyment. One thing demanded by this requirement is that the individual aim at maintaining a maximum of personal freedom, an openness to the possibilities presented by experience for continued activity and development. What is essential is that choices reinforce the "habit of growth": the disposition to open oneself to what is new in experience, the attitude of exploration and the willingness to look for new avenues of development. Thus conceived, personal freedom, "A mental attitude rather than external unconstraint of movements", is fundamental to moral selfhood, and to the vision of wisdom suggested by Dewey's philosophy. As he concludes, "in the degree in which we become aware of the possibilities of development and actively concerned to keep the avenues of growth open, in the degree in which we fight against induration and fixity, and thereby realize the possibilities of recreation of our selves, we are actually free."³⁰

Finally, intelligent or sagacious judgment requires an understanding of the relations of events to one another, a grasping of the patterns or regularities in experience. It requires, that is, that actions and events be perceived in terms of their meanings. The cultivation of practical wisdom rests in part upon the enrichment and extension of the meanings given to experience. It is in part a growth in one's recognition or awareness of the recurring events in human experience and of the implications held by these events. Thus we find Dewey remarking that "morals means growth of conduct in meaning; at least it means that kind of expansion of meaning which is consequent upon observations of the conditions and outcome of conduct. It is all one with growing."³¹

Conduct and ends-in-view, consequently, must be appraised in terms of the degree to which they will clarify and extend the meanings given to events. Moral growth, in sum, must include the expansion of mind.³² This indicates not merely the addition of bits of information to memory, but a diversification, expansion, and integration of meanings, of "the sense things make," wherein actions and other events are understood not as isolated and simple occurrences, but in terms of their connections with one another. Growth of mind is growth in the integrity of experience so that what is apprehended constitutes a genuine universe, a unified system of events that "fit in" with one another. It is growth in awareness of the wholeness of experience.

What emerges from John Dewey's moral theory is a provocative, yet satisfying view of value and intelligence. We might summarize his thinking as follows: In attempting to respond to the problematic in experience, do in any situation that which, after careful inquiry, reflection, and deliberation, seems to hold the greatest promise for satisfying existing lacks, maintaining opportunities for fuller, more significant experience, and facilitating the growth of those affected by the act. On this view, practical wisdom is a disposition to choose conduct based upon an awareness of an attentiveness to its implications for the quality of subsequent experience and for the continued enhancement of this very disposition, in oneself and in others.

II

If a contemporary art of rhetoric is to contribute to the quest for wisdom, theorists must formulate artistic principles that will aid in the generation of discourse capable of fostering the growth of moral selves. These principles derive from an understanding of how communication in its pragmatic functions contributes to the growth of persons, and particular to the development of those features of selfhood that constitute practical intelligence. Dewey's discussion of communication and its moral functions provides for just such an understanding. Indeed, we are led by his views to conceive rhetoric as the primary agency of moral growth, and consequently as the principal means to the development of wisdom.

The implications for rhetoric of Dewey's ethical philosophy emerge from the role of communication in the growth of personality. Growth, he tells us, is a social process; it occurs in the context of one's associations with others. "Morality is social," he writes, because "the formation of habits of belief, desire, and judgment is going on at every instant under the influence of the conditions set by men's contact, intercourse, and associations with one another."³³ Communication is for Dewey the highest form of human activity; for it makes possible shared experience, "the greatest of human goods."³⁴

Several features of communication are particularly pertinent here. First, it is the basis of all personal development. Human beings, in Dewey's view, are not born as such: they emerge through participation in the thinking, purposes, and knowledge of other humans.³⁵ When he holds that the self "comes to itself only through interaction with others, Dewey observes that such characteristically human activities and capacities as thinking, inquiring, deliberating, and planning are stimulated and formed by sharing in the mental activities of others.

Beyond this, as the agency through which meanings are generated and refined, communication serves as the essential tool for creating and testing knowledge. In the first place, the act of self-expression completes the activity of thinking: "Ideas which are not communicated, shared, and reborn in expression are but soliloquy, and soliloquy is but broken and imperfect thought."³⁶ Second, in sharing the thoughts and conclusions to which one is led by one's own experience lies the path to genuine knowing; for knowledge is generated when individual perceptions and beliefs are examined and tested in dialogue and debate. "Record and communication are indispensible to knowledge," Dewey contends. "Knowledge cooped up in a private consciousness is a myth, and knowledge of social phenomena is peculiarly dependent upon dissemination, for only by distribution can such knowledge be either obtained or tested."³⁷

We must recognize also that communication has reflexive as well as objective force. Just as the experience encountering another's message affects one's ideas, outlooks, and habits, so does the experience of creating messages. "Communication," we are told, "is a process of sharing experience till it becomes a common possession. It modifies the disposition of both the parties who partake in it."³⁸ The reflexive potency of communication is particularly important, for it suggests that as we communicate with others we give impetus to our own self-modification. We act not only upon others when we speak; we act upon ourselves.

Finally, we note that Dewey's perspective on communication and growth applies most especially to the pragmatic functions of language, to the uses of speech to deal with the problematic, that is, to the rhetorical. "In a world like ours," writes Dewey, "where people are associated together, and where what one person does has important consequences for other persons, attempt to influence the action of other persons so that they will do certain things and not do other things is a constant function of life. On all sorts of grounds, we are constantly engaged in trying to influence the conduct of others."³⁹ Such attempts occur because, in our efforts to respond satisfactorily to the difficulties that experience brings us to, our interests and purposes are entwined with others'. Now the use of communication to affect the decision-making and conduct of people as one seeks to address problematic situations is the function to which we customarily apply the term "rhetorical."⁴⁰ Dewey's thought thus has significance for our conceptions of the functions and uses of rhetoric.

Dewey tells us two things about communication that illuminate the wisdom-generating functions of rhetoric. Communication is educative and it is artistic. To say that communication is educative is to say that it encourages growth; for "education is .. . a fostering, a nurturing, a cultivating process . . . [it] implies attention to the conditions of growth."⁴² This is to say that communication forms character, that it selects and integrates native tendencies and acquired habits so that they may better be employed in the direction of conduct and in the quest for more meaningful experience. At least, communication at its best does these things.

Dewey's discussion of art helps explain the way in which communicating can effect these results. Art is an activity through which one clarifies, intensifies, and vivifies experience for another and for oneself by "selecting those potencies in things by which an experience—any experience—has significance and value."⁴³ Art expresses a subjective perception of some subject matter in a form that serves to enhance another's experience of it. This heightened perception of the matter being expressed, culminating in what Dewey calls an "esthetic perception," occurs because the expression itself brings to a completion the recipient's experience of the subject matter. In doing so, the expression shapes one's consciousness of the matter, and thus modifies the perceptual field (i.e., the mind) of the beholder.

Expression gives form to subject matter.⁴⁴ The matter of communication, consequently, exists only as a potentiality unless and until it is given concrete, intelligible shape by being expressed as linguistic forms: as particular metaphors, names, lines of reasoning, narrative structures, etc. Form brings matter into being as a perceivable, graspable, knowable thing.

How does an auditor experience the matter thus formed? When one encounters discourse, one is led by the structured complex of forms to formulate in one's own mind a system of ideas or images that, for the moment, constitute one's awareness of the matter being expressed. Whatever antecedent ideas the auditor might have about the subject, interpreting a message compels one to construct meanings for the particular configurations one is experiencing. It is the form itself to which the auditor attaches meaning; and the meaning attached is constructed from previous experiences with the same or similar forms. The effect of assimilating discursive forms, then, is to guide the mind in remaking its meanings so as to account for the configurations appearing in a novel combination and context.⁴⁵

When the experienced forms are routine, the mind assimilates them routinely, unconsciously. But this is not communication-as-art. In order for one to experience a discourse consciously, there must be in the forms employed an element of the unfamiliar. When one encounters a discursive formulation that is not to be accounted for routinely, owing to originality of expression, to novelty of application, or to limited experience with the forms employed, the system of meanings in terms of which interpretation occurs is thrown into disorder. One struggles to make sense of the configuration, to determine how it fits in with what one already knows about things. One is puzzled, momentarily confused. This disorder occasions redirection of meanings in an effort to account for the event; and this is the essence of consciously experiencing a message. For "consciousness. . . is that phase of a system of meanings which at a given time is undergoing re-direction, transitive transformation. . . . Consciousness is the meaning of events in the course of remaking. . . . "⁴⁶

We experience another's ideas as the linguistic forms he or she uses to express them; and these forms direct and intensify our awareness of particular elements in each idea and of relationships among ideas. Through this heightened awareness of the subject matter, the system of meanings itself is reconstructed, and a new, more inclusive structure emerges from it. When the new structure serves to unify previously disparate elements of the self, when one's experience of the world is made more meaningful, communication has been artistic and growth-inducing, and so has contributed to the creation of wisdom in the participants.

Note again the reflexive effect of communicating. Not only is the auditor's consciousness shaped by the sharing of experience through language. Expression molds the speaker's awareness of the very matter to be communicated. In order to be shared, one's idea must be formed as a particular symbolic configuration; and in the process of forming, one's own awareness of the idea is given a particular set. Prior to its first utterance, an idea is an internal, unstable complex of feelings, impulses, and images, capable of any of a number of concrete embodiments. Once articulated, it exists as a particular form. Of the possible configurations it might have taken, one alone is realized; and in articulating the idea for another one realizes for oneself what the idea is. In the act of saying, one brings into being an objective formulation of thought or intelligence, of one's self. This form is created in the act. It is original, born in the moment of expression. Thus is one's mind re-created in the act of expression.

Communicating also directs and initiates the formation of habit, and thus influences the emergence of the self in yet another way. When we encounter discourse and are led by it to form ideas about its subject matter, we do more than have an idea. Because interpretation is an activity, we are led by a message through a process of coming to an idea or conclusion. We are guided in the activity of thinking. A message thus predisposes us to employ similar methods of thought on other occasions. It gives impetus to habits of attention, deliberation, inquiry, sensitivity, outlook, definition, formulation, and interpretation. The formal characteristics of discourse, then, shape the configuration of intellectual habits, predispositions, and tendencies that will henceforth guide us in understanding and responding to our experience.⁴⁷

Dewey's views imply finally that communication is the essential means to acquiring practical wisdom. More acutely than any other mode of conduct, the conscientious generation and interpretation of discourse function to promote the formation of those habits and meanings in which moral selfhood consists; and wisdom is identified with this form of selfhood. What is true of communication in general is especially true of the rhetorical mode; for this function of discourse is distinguished by its interest in influencing perceptions, beliefs, judgments, and choices. When one seeks to affect others' conduct, the ways one chooses to use language, to reason, explain, argue, describe, or exhort both form one's own character and recommend a way of being to another. It is the direction of development that is at stake in the rhetorical transaction.

The use of the rhetorical art, more than any other form of conduct, has a fundamental and inherent connection with the coming of wisdom. Those who employ and participate in it, accordingly, are subject to a significant obligation, both to themselves and to one another. Rhetoric must serve as the principal tool in the liberation and development of those who participate in it. This art is the energizing agency of our shared undertakings. As such, it ultimately creates the most promising opportunities for growth in wisdom. Primarily through our efforts to share our minds while trying to agree upon goals and methods in living together, we can enlighten and enrich one another and ourselves.

III

Dewey's views have implications for our conceptions of the nature of rhetoric, its aims, and the responsibilities attending its use. Viewed as an art, rhetoric involves the application of artistic principles to the generation of pragmatic discourse. The medium of the art is language, and the artifact it produces, at least immediately, is a message. This immediate product of the art, however, is productive of additional artifacts: a particular mode of experiencing some aspect of the world, and through this a mode of consciousness and a self. At its best, rhetoric functions to create forms of awareness that will resolve themselves through such a transformation and reintegration of meanings and activities of the self as will result in a fuller, richer, more liberated personality. As art, moreover, rhetoric serves to emphasize the aesthetic dimensions of the activities it stimulates, and thus to generate experience that will carry participants to fuller, more significant modes of awareness, thought, and action.

Art finds its excellence in what Dewey calls "eloquence."⁴⁸ Eloquence occurs when the act of expression creates for communicators an experience in which unresolved elements of previous efforts are unified and completed. This, for Dewey, is the essence of the aesthetic experience. The expression calls forth meanings from earlier undertakings, and it completes these in the present "undergoing," thus fulfilling a particular course of experience.⁴⁹

Eloquence is marked by the feeling of harmony, by the sense that the expressed matter is "in agreement with the ideal nature of the self."⁵⁰ The aesthetic completes, unifies, and harmonizes the self in one or more of its aspects by integrating impulses and perceptions that were previously inchoate or discordant. In doing so, it illuminates a vision of selfhood toward which development should be directed.

When viewed as art, rhetorical activity finds its excellence in precisely this idea of eloquence. Dewey writes of the activity of thinking, of having an idea, as being art when "it marks the conclusion of long continued endeavor; of patient and indefatigable search and test."⁵¹ Communicating creates an experience when it brings to fruition a previously embarked-upon endeavor. Encountering and assimilating a message, when it is wisdom-generating, is a bringing-to-consciousness of ideas that unify previously fragmented and incomplete feelings, images, and yearnings. It "satisfies" and completes the course of experience into which it injects itself because it integrates the disparate ideas about the subject matter it calls forth.

One important implication of Dewey's view is that, in order for rhetorical eloquence to occur, an auditor must be in a condition of uncertainty or unsettledness about the subject matter. The matter must be problematic, the mind fragmented in its apprehension. A message that doesn't deal with a matter about which an "unfinishedness" is felt cannot really speak to a person. It cannot create the sort of experience that unifies disparate elements, because no disparity exists. When a message functions to evoke the ambiguities and uncertainties that can be felt about a subject, and then to integrate these, it is eloquent in Dewey's sense.

Such integration occurs, I believe, when the message brings together ideas in a way that provides insight into an attitude to be taken toward the subject matter, into a way of seeing it. This attitude is an orientation taken toward the matter that allows one to perceive unifying connections among its disparate elements. It grows out of an act of imagination, combining these elements in a novel way, thus creating a more inclusive apprehension of the matter in terms of its connections with other ideas. Rhetorical discourse, to be eloquent, must cultivate such a sense of discovery that conclusions are experienced as fulfillments of a quest, not merely as repetitions of clichés or catch phrases. To do so, it must present the subject meaningfully, in terms of its antecedents and implications; and thus it must bring the auditor to a fuller perception of the unity of experience.

As it brings the mind to a new attitude toward the subject, discourse brings the self to new and richer patterns of action, both mental and overt. It liberates thought from habitual channels; it extends the power of imagination to unify disjointed ideas and thus to generate new meanings; it focuses attention on new lines of inquiry; it cultivates tendencies and dispositions that allow one to be open to such satisfactions and enjoyments as subsequent experience may bring. Indeed, it helps create the habits that make such enjoyments more likely. Dewey's is not primarily a rhetoric of persuasion, then, but one of growth; and the measure of quality is not practical effect only, but also eloquence.⁵²

Communicating involves a partnership between speaker and listener. Responsibility for the quality of the transaction, consequently, is shared. Eloquence is not an accomplishment of the speaker acting alone; it is an achievement of speaker and listener acting in concert. In order to contribute to eloquence, a speaker must approach the subject matter and the situation intelligently, sensitively, imaginatively, responsibly, freely. But if one would fulfill one's obligations as a rhetor, a person must also approach communication artistically, lovingly: "Craftsmanship to be artistic in the final sense," Dewey writes, "must be 'loving'; it must care deeply for the subject matter upon which skill is exercised." Moreover, "the artist embodies in himself the attitude of the perceiver while he works."⁵³ These are particularly important ideas; for they bring us to the heart of the creative act. In order to contribute to eloquence, a speaker's expression must grow out of a deep caring for and excitement about the subject, and from a sensitive understanding of the auditor.

And what of the listener's duties? Certainly, again, we must seek as listeners to be intelligent and sensitive in our interpretation of and response to another's expression. But most especially, we must be receptive to it. This does not mean that we must dispose ourselves to agree with what another proposes; rather, that we should allow the other to speak to us, to touch us, to affect us. To be intelligent in our interpretation, we must always be self-possessed, autonomous. But to experience communication fully, to perceive and exploit in it whatever potential it has for creating wisdom in us, we must be willing for a moment to surrender ourselves to it. The aesthetic experience requires a "yielding [of] the self."⁵⁴ To assist in the attainment of eloquence, a listener must truly listen. In interpreting another's message, one must seek genuinely to experience it, not merely to assimilate and translate it in a routinized, comfortable, customary way, but to ponder it, to delve into it, to examine one's own mind through it, to come to a new awareness of the matter formed by it, to become more conscious because of it. One must seek to be brought by it to a new level of understanding through communion with another human mind.

These are our obligations as communicators, the duties to which we implicitly commit ourselves when we agree to share with one another the insights, the conclusions, the inquiries, the uncertainties to which we have been led by our own experience. These, at any rate, are the conclusions concerning the nature and uses of rhetoric to which we are led by Dewey's thought. Indeed, Dewey's contributions to our thinking about rhetoric are multiple. His views serve to integrate the practical and the aesthetic dimensions of discourse, and to emphasize the artistic functions of rhetoric. They imply that the rhetorical is a dimension of all communication, and that the poetic functions of language can have rhetorical dimensions. More particularly, Dewey forces us to concentrate upon the participants in communication, upon their attitudes and mental activities as they prepare for and engage in pragmatic dialogue, rather than upon messages only. We are led to examine the conditions and resources out of which discourse emerges, hence to the preliminary phases of communication. The implications of this shift in emphasis for the teaching of rhetoric are worth exploring further.

Two and one-half millennia ago, Aristotle described practical wisdom as a capacity for prudent choice and conduct in the quest for a good life. He characterized this capacity, moreover, in terms of logos, the ability to perceive the grounds of legitimate choice. And this ability itself, we might conclude, rests upon the power of the mind to perceive the Logos, the patterns or order among things, the logic of experience. Dewey's view is a contemporary counterpart of this ancient and profound idea. It is grounded, not in a teleological and hierarchical conception of the universe, but in one that is scientific, phenomenological, and evolutionary. The vision of practical wisdom that emerges from his writings, nonetheless, shares with Aristotle's the recognition of logos or intellect as a capacity for recognizing the Logos, the patterns in the flow; and the commitment to the idea that this capacity, when applied to practical pursuits, is the best guide available to humans in seeking a life that is significant and satisfying. Dewey refines the idea of practical wisdom by elaborating the particular features of character that are most closely associated with the capacity for sagacious choice, and thus that are to be cultivated if one is to grow in wisdom. Dewey's parallels Aristotle's view further in the respect that both observe the centrality of the word, of human intercourse, especially in its pragmatic dimensions, in the creation and exercise of wisdom. Again, Dewey illuminates more fully than Aristotle the ways in which language can be used to generate wisdom, and thus provides more elaborate grounds for a theoretical link between rhetoric and wisdom.

If we embrace growth in wisdom as the highest aim of a humane life,⁵⁵ then the greatest task facing our discipline is to illuminate and clarify the ways in which the rhetorical art can fulfill its philosophical office. Dewey's thought provides a starting point in this undertaking.⁵⁶

NOTES

¹ See both the Gorgias and the Phaedrus for elaboration of Plato's views. See also such recent studies as Peter J. Schakel, "Plato's Phaedrus and Rhetoric," Southern Speech Journal, 32 (1966), 124-33; K. E. Wilkerson, "Interpreting Plato's Phaedrus," Quarterly Journal of Speech, 56 (1970), 310-13; and Steven Rendali, "Dialogue, Philosophy, and Rhetoric: The Example of Plato's Gorgias" Philosophy and Rhetoric, 10 (1977), 164-79.

² See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. X, Chs. 7-8. See also Christopher Lyle Johnstone, "An Aristotelian Trilogy: Ethics, Rhetoric, Politics, and the Search for Moral Truth," Philosophy and Rhetoric, 13 (1980), 1-24.

³ See De inventione, 1.1.

⁴ Lloyd F. Bitzer, "Rhetoric and Public Knowledge," in Don M. Burks, ed., Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Literature: An Exploration (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1978), p. 68.

⁵ Charles W. Kneupper and Floyd D. Anderson, "Uniting Wisdom and Eloquence: The Need for Rhetorical Invention," Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66 (1980), 321.

⁶ Michael Polanyi observes that "all knowledge is ultimately personal," Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1964), p. xi. Later (p. 71) he notes that "to affirm anything implies .. . an appraisal of our own art of knowing, and the establishment of truth becomes decisively dependent on a set of personal criteria of our own which cannot be formally defined."

Henry W. Johnstone, Jr. is another who has addressed this issue at length and insightfully. His views are developed and presented in several places, but are summarized cogently in his The Problem of the Self (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1970).

⁷ Don M. Burks, "John Dewey and Rhetorical Theory," Western Speech, 32 (1968), 126.

⁸ Dewey's views about communication in general and about rhetoric in particular have been examined on occasion, but there has been no systematic effort to integrate those views and to apply them to the issues outlined here. For a sampling of recent scholarship on Dewey, see Gerald L. Steibel, "John Dewey and the Belief in Communication," Antioch Review, 15 (1955), 286-99; James Carey, "A Cultural Approach to Communication," Communication, 11 (1975), 1-22; and Jerome Nathanson, John Dewey: The Reconstruction of the Democratic Life (New York: Scribner, 1951).

⁹ John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Capricorn Books, 1934), p. 248.

¹⁰ John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: The Free Press, 1944), p. 6.

¹¹ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W. D. Ross, 1140b 20-21.

¹² In Experience and Nature (New York: Dover, 1958), p. 253, Dewey clarifies the character of the "harmony" as it is experienced by the living organism: "By satisfaction is meant [the] recovery of equilibrium pattern, consequent upon the changes of environment due to interactions with the active demands of the organism."

¹³ John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty (New York: Capricorn Books, 1960), p. 259.

¹⁴ "A moral situation," Dewey writes, "is one in which judgment and choice are required antecedently to overt action. The practical meaning of the situation—that is to say the action needed to satisfy it—is not self-evident. It has to be searched for. There are conflicting desires and alternative apparent goods. What is needed is to find the right course of action, the right good. Hence, inquiry is exacted; observation of the detailed makeup of the situation; analysis into its diverse factors; clarification of what is obscure; discounting the more insistent and vivid traits; tracing the consequences of the various modes of action that suggest themselves; regarding the decision reached as hypothetical and tentative until the anticipated or supposed consequences which led to its adoption have been squared with actual consequences. This inquiry is intelligence." John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), pp. 163-64.

¹⁵ John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct (New York: The Modern Library, 1930), p. 212.

¹⁶ Henry Aiken, for one, has taken to task the instrumentalist approach to ethics. "To be sure," he writes, "consequentialists have sometimes claimed to justify particular moral rules in terms of their effects. But this merely transfers the burden of obligation to something else which is taken to be intrinsically desirable on its own account. When this point is reached, the consequentialist, whether he knows it or not, is at the end of his rope. His principle provides a justification of secondary moral rules or prima facie duties, and through them particular moral imperatives; but the rule itself has and can have no such justification. If the consequentialist supposes to the contrary, he is simply confused and fails to understand the logic of his own consequentialist arguments. All that he or anyone can do in the end is to reiterate the intrinsic desirability of the end which he believes to be the proper goal of moral action. And if someone should stubbornly ask, 'Why should I accept that as intrinsically desirable?' he has and can have no answer. For him the question must be simply tantamount to the question 'Why should I accept as intrinsically desireable what is really so?' which is tantamount to the tautology, 'Why should I do what I really ought to do?'" Henry David Aiken, Reason and Conduct (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), p. 83.

¹⁷ "Still," Dewey writes, "the question recurs: What authority have standards and ideas which have originated in this way? What claim have they upon us? In one sense the question is unanswerable. In the same sense, however, the question is unanswerable whatever origin and sanction is ascribed to moral obligations and loyalties. Why attend to metaphysical and transcendental ideal realities even if we concede they are the authors of moral standards? Why do this act if I feel like doing something else? Any moral question may reduce itself to this question if we so choose. But in an empirical sense the answer is simple. The authority is that of life. Why employ language, cultivate literature, acquire and develop science, sustain industry, and submit to the refinements of art? To ask these questions is equivalent to asking: Why live? And the only answer is that if one is going to live one must live a life of which these things form the substance. The only question having sense which can be asked is how we are going to use and be used by these things, not whether we are going to use them. . . . [One] cannot escape the problem of how to engage in life, since in any case he must engage in it in some way or other—or else quit and get out." Human Nature and Conduct, p. 75.

¹⁸Democracy and Education, p. 240.

¹⁹Ibid., p. 243.

²⁰ "The aim and end," he writes (The Quest for Certainty, p. 37), "is the securer, freer, and more widely shared embodiment of values in experience by means of that active control of objects which knowledge alone makes possible." What saves Dewey's theory from ethical egocentrism, as we shall see shortly, is that the quest for significant and satisfying experience is fundamentally social—a shared undertaking.

²¹Human Nature and Conduct, pp. 43 and 45. Elsewhere Dewey tells us that "whenever anything is undergone in consequence of a doing, the self is modified. The modification extends beyond acquisition of greater facility and skill. Attitudes and interests are built up which embody in themselves some deposit of the meaning of things done and undergone. These funded and retained meanings become a part of the self. They constitute the capital with which the self notes, cares for, attends, purposes. In this substantial sense, mind forms the background upon which every new contact with surroundings is projected. . . . Mind as background is formed out of modifications of the self that have occurred in the process of prior interactions with the environment." Art as Experience, p. 264.

²² John Dewey, Theory of the Moral Life (New York; Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1960), p. 159.

²³Ibid., p. 172. Again, "growth itself is the only moral 'end.'" Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 177.

²⁴ "Every choice," Dewey writes (Theory of the Moral Life, p. 149), "is at a forking of the roads, and the path chosen shuts off certain opportunities and opens others. In committing oneself to a particular course, a person gives a lasting set to his own being. Consequently, it is proper to say that in choosing this object rather than that, one is in reality choosing what kind of person or self one is going to be. Superficially, deliberation which terminates in choice is concerned with weighing the values of particular ends. Below the surface, it is a process of discovering what sort of being a person most wants to become." He writes in another place that "each act as it is performed has . . . its effect on personality. It organizes it in a certain direction. It gives it a specific set or bent." John Dewey, Psychology, in The Early Works of John Dewey, 1882-1898 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), II, 352.

²⁵ "All voluntary action is a remaking of the self, since it creates new desires, instigates to new modes of endeavor, brings to light new conditions which institute new ends. . . . In the strictest sense, it is impossible for the self to stand still; it is becoming, and becoming for the better or the worse. It is in the quality of becoming that virtue resides." Theory of the Moral Life, p. 172.

²⁶ "The moral," Dewey concludes (Human Nature and Conduct, p. 194), "is to develop conscientiousness, ability to judge the significance of what we are doing and to use the judgment in directing what we do, not by means of direct cultivation of something called conscience, or reason, or a faculty of moral knowledge, but by fostering those impulses and habits which experience has shown to make us sensitive, generous, imaginative, impartial in perceiving the tendency of our inchoate dawning activities. . . . Therefore, the important thing is the fostering of those habits and impulses which lead to a broad, just, sympathetic survey of situations."

²⁷ "The highest form of imagination," Dewey tells us, " . . . is precisely an organ of penetration into the hidden meanings of things—meanings not visible to perception or memory, nor reflectively attained by the processes of thinking. It may be defined as the direct perception of meanings. . . . " Psychology, p. 171.

^2STheory of the Moral Life, p. 163. Elsewhere he writes that "the individual comes to himself and to his own only in association with others." John Dewey, "Intelligence and Morals," in The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965), p. 55.

²⁹Theory of the Moral Life, p. 167. In another work he writes that "we wish the fullest life possible to ourselves and to others. And the fullest life means largely a complete and free development of capacities in knowledge and production—production of beauty and use. Our interest in others is not satisfied as long as their intelligence is cramped, their appreciation of truth feeble, their emotions hard and uncomprehensive, their powers of production compressed. To will their true good is to will the freeing of all such gifts to the highest degree." John Dewey, Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics, in The Early Works, III, 318.

³⁰Theory of the Moral Life, pp. 171-72. Elsewhere (Democracy and Education, p. 175), he says that "open-mindedness means retention of the child-like attitude. . . . "In another refinement of this idea, Dewey adds (Experience and Nature, pp. 245-46) that "surrender of what is possessed, disowning of what supports one in secure ease, is involved in all inquiry and discovery; the latter implicate an individual still to make, with all the risks implied therein. For to arrive at new truth and vision is to alter. The old self is put off and the new self is only forming, and the form it finally takes will depend upon the unforeseeable result of an adventure."

³¹Human Nature and Conduct, p. 259.

³² Mind, for Dewey, consists in the organized system of meanings in terms of which one interprets experience; for "meanings are rules for using and interpreting things; interpretation being always an imputation of potentiality for some consequence." Experience and Nature, p. 188.

³³Human Nature and Conduct, p. 295.

³⁴Experience and Nature, p. 202.

³⁵ "To learn to be human is to develop through the giveand-take of communication an effective sense of being an individually distinctive member of a community; one who understands and appreciates its beliefs, desires and methods, and who contributes to a further conversion of organic powers into human resources and values." John Dewey, The Public and Its Problem (Chicago: The Swallow Press, 1927), p. 154.

³⁶The Quest for Certainty, p. 151.

³⁷The Public and Its Problems, pp. 176-77. The sort of dialogue Dewey envisions is best carried on in direct conversation: "the winged words of conversation in immediate intercourse have a vital import lacking in the fixed and frozen words of written speech. Systematic and continuous inquiry into all the conditions which affect association and their dissemination in print is a precondition to the creation of a true public. But it and its results are but tools after all. Their final actuality is accomplished in face-to-face relationships by means of direct give and take. Logic in its fulfillment recurs to the primitive sense of the word: dialogue" (p. 218). An important implication of this view is that the wisdomgenerating functions of communication are realized most fully in dialogue. When this dialogical orientation is applied to rhetoric, it emphasizes the transactional nature of rhetorical activity. Such an emphasis is consistent with recent work on the epistemic dimensions of rhetoric. See, for example, Richard Cherwitz, "Rhetoric as a 'Way of Knowing': An Attenuation of the Epistemological Claims of the 'New Rhetoric,'" Southern Speech Communication Journal, 42 (1977), esp. p. 217.

³⁸Democracy and Education, p. 9. Italics added.

³⁹Theory of the Moral Life, p. 155.

⁴⁰ See Lloyd F. Bitzer, "The Rhetorical Situation," Philosophy and Rhetoric, 1 (1968), 6.

⁴¹ "All communication," we are told (Democracy and Education, pp. 5-6), "is educative. To be a recipient of a communication is to have an enlarged and changed experience. One shares in what another has thought and felt and in so far, meagerly or amply, has his own attitude modified. Nor is the one who communicated left unaffected. . . . All communication [furthermore] is like art. .. . It enlarges and enlightens experience; it stimulates and enriches imagination: it creates responsibility for accuracy and vividness of statement and thought."

⁴²Ibid., p. 10.

⁴³Art as Experience, p. 11. See also Bertram Morris, "Dewey's Theory of Art," in Jo Ann Boydston, ed., Guide to the Works of John Dewey (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970, pp. 156-80.

⁴⁴ 'This is what it is to have form," Dewey writes (Art as Experience, p. 109). "It marks a way of envisaging, of feeling, and of presenting experienced matter so that it most readily and effectively becomes material for the construction of adequate experience on the part of those less gifted than the original creator. Hence, there can be no distinction drawn, save in reflection, between form and substance. The work itself is matter formed into esthetic substance." Moreover, as he points at later (p. 137), "form is a character of every experience that is an experience. Form may thus be defined as the operation of forces that carry the experience of an event, object, sense, and situation to its own integral fulfillment. The connection of form with substance is thus inherent, not imposed from without."

⁴⁵ Polanyi notes that "every use of language to describe experience in a changing world applies language to a somewhat unprecedented instance of its subject matter, and thus somewhat modifies both the meaning of language and the structure of our conceptual framework." Personal Knowledge, pp. 104-05.

⁴⁶Experience and Nature, p. 308. Later (p. 312) he adds "the apex of consciousness . . . is the point of re-direction, of re-adaptation, of re-organization."

⁴⁷ Nor again is the one who creates a message left unaffected. Communicating, especially when one communicates with a view to influencing another's practical judgments, is a voluntary, deliberate form of activity. It is conduct, and as such it is chosen. Just as with other forms of conduct, the choices we make in communicating with others reinforce certain habits in ourselves. If we choose our words carelessly, semi-consciously, insensitively, ignorantly, or selfishly, we set ourselves on one developmental path. If we communicate conscientiously, responsibly, knowledgeably, imaginatively, caringly, we nurture the same habits or inquiry, judgment, and action that any morally sound conduct would cultivate. Indeed, because of the intimate connection between communication and habits of intelligent action, the nurturing effects of our discursive activities are even more pronounced than most other forms of conduct.

⁴⁸ "Whenever any material finds a medium that expresses its value in experience . . . it becomes the substance of a work of art. The abiding struggle of art is thus to convert materials that are stammering or dumb in ordinary experience into eloquent media." Art as Experience, p. 229. Kenneth Burke maintains a similar view, and applies it more explicitly to discourse, when he writes that "eloquence is formal excellence," and that it "is simply the end of art, and is thus its essence." Counter-Statement (New York, 1931), pp. 49ff.

⁴⁹ Dewey describes an experience as involving two phases: a doing or undertaking in which a movement is begun, and a suffering or undergoing in which the outcomes of the movement are perceived, and thus in which the movement itself is brought to a fulfillment. See Art as Experience, esp. Ch. 3.

⁵⁰Psychology, p. 273.

⁵¹Experience and Nature, p. 371. See alsoArt as Experience, pp. 38 and 172.

⁵² It should be emphasized that eloquence is not indifferent to effectiveness of expression. As a quality of pragmatic discourse, eloquence includes the objective of responding appropriately and adequately to the defects or exigencies of the situation to which discourse is addressed. Eloquence is the moral standard by which practically efficacious discourse is to be judged. See Don M. Burks, "John Dewey and Rhetorical Theory," p. 126.

⁵³Art as Experience, pp. 47-48. He also writes (p. 65) that "when excitement about subject matter goes deep, it stirs up a store of attitudes and meanings derived from prior experience."

⁵⁴Art as Experience, p. 53.

⁵⁵ For an elaboration of this idea, see my essay entitled "Ethics, Wisdom, and the Mission of Contemporary Rhetoric: The Realization of Human Being," Central States Speech Journal, 32 (1981), 177-88.

⁵⁶ I wish to express appreciation to the Center for Dewey Studies and the John Dewey Foundation at the Southern Illinois University, and to the Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies at the Pennsylvania State University for support provided during work on this project.