RHETORICAL CRITICISMS OF DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY

A wide array of recent work in political theory has criticized neo-Kantian accounts of deliberative democracy for neglecting the role of emotions in political life. This criticism is in part due to appreciation of the mutually constitutive relationship between reason and affect and in part to the difficulty of “promoting deliberation in a context where face-to-face dialogue is the exception rather than the rule and where a small number of elites dominate political communication” (Chambers Reference Chambers2009, 324).Footnote ⁴ Many scholars (e.g., Allen Reference Allen2006; Fontana, Nederman, and Remer Reference Fontana, Nederman, Remer, Fontana, Nederman and Remer2004; Garsten Reference Garsten2006; Manin Reference Manin1987; Remer Reference Remer1999; Yack Reference Yack2006) have turned to classical sources such as Aristotle and, to a lesser extent, Cicero to argue that emotion and character are of particular importance to democratic theory. Abizadeh (Reference Abizadeh2002, 279), for example, draws on Aristotle's account of phronesis to argue that ethos, pathos, and logos are “necessary and individually insufficient guides that lead practical deliberation to its conclusions.” In a similar vein, Yack (Reference Yack2006, 417) contrasts deliberative democratic accounts of affectless public reason with an Aristotelian account that “lacks such constraints.” Aristotelian public reasoning involves the play of ethos and pathos and is a process in which “we members of a political community open ourselves up to the possibility of being persuaded by something said by the small subset of community members who compete to advise us” (427). Allen (Reference Allen2006, 143, 150) also sees the potentially beneficial role that ethos and pathos can play as devices for diminishing “the distrust that arises from the instability of political events” and “distrust of one's fellow citizens,” along with generating “goodwill” through the engagement with and transformation of negative emotions.

In these critiques, ethos has a primarily epistemic quality, enabling audiences to pick among competing proposals given by speakers depending on the properties of their arguments. This characterization is not surprising, given Aristotle's own account of ethos in Rhetoric I.2, where he emphasizes that a speaker is “worthy of credence” when he is “fair-minded” (Aristotle Reference Kennedy2007, 1356a4). For O’Neill (Reference O’Neill2002, 261), Aristotle's emphasis “on the role of character in the appraisal of knowledge-claims” suggests that we should look to speakers’ character to ascertain “the credibility and reliability of sources.” Others, such as Abizadeh and Yack, suggest that a key dimension of a persuasive ethos is the virtue of phronesis (practical wisdom) because of the uncertainty involved in rhetorical evaluations. Allen (Reference Allen2006, 146) too sees character as a means to deal with the uncertainty of a world in which speakers argue for different positions based on “exactly the same facts”—in effect, character tells us which of two speakers we should trust when different arguments are made on the basis of similar evidence. Distrust of other citizens, meanwhile, is mitigated through the speaker's display of “ethical commitments that guide his treatment of other people” through the use of principles that reveal how one would treat others (147). Although Yack recognizes the importance of judging the moral qualities of speakers in a way that clearly looks beyond particular speeches, Allen's account, despite grappling with the moral dimensions of ethos, focuses primarily on the speeches themselves.

These rhetorical revivalists have thus focused on the way character is revealed from the epistemic qualities of the speaker displayed in the speech, with less attention to the broader context in which ethos is developed. This neglect of context is due to a reliance on Aristotle. When discussing the character of the speaker, Aristotle views it primarily as a function of what is said and not of who the speaker happens to be or what we know of the speaker's character prior to his speech:

Two things are striking here. First, as we have already noted, Aristotle thinks of character as being primarily useful as a means for establishing trust or credibility in conditions of uncertainty. Second, he suggests, however, that the method by which we achieve a persuasive ethos is primarily through the argumentative form and content of the speech itself. Kennedy's translation of Aristotle nicely highlights the absence of extrinsic considerations in this account: “Aristotle does not include in rhetorical ethos the authority that the speaker may possess due to position in government or society, previous actions, reputation, or anything except what is actually said in the speech” (Aristotle Reference Kennedy2007, 39).

Cicero's rhetorical theory, by contrast, seems to elevate those features of the speaker that are extrinsic to the speech itself. For Cicero (Reference May and Wisse2001, 2.182), “the character, the customs, the deeds, and the life” of the advocate and the one being defended “make a very important contribution to winning a case.” Roman law involved advocacy, and the same speaker might speak many times before the courts, which provided insight for the Roman audience into most speakers’ characters and lives prior to their speeches. As Riggsby (Reference Riggsby, Powell and Patterson2004, 181) notes, “When advocate and party are separated, the notion of self-presentation that makes up Aristotle's ethos can reasonably be applied to either.. . . At the same time, the presentation of the advocate becomes less theoretically interesting as his influence (in the Roman context) depends more on external prestige.” For a Roman judicial audience, speaking in a pleasing and appropriate way would entail attention to what one says, how one says it, and how well it is suited to one's already established character, whether one is the advocate or the defendant (for a useful discussion of self-fashioning, see Riggsby Reference Riggsby1995). A Roman speaker was persuasive not just because of what he said but also because of who he was. Such an approach blurs “the Aristotelian distinction between persuasion through character and emotional appeal,” as we see shortly (Arena Reference Arena, Steel and van der Blom2013, 199). A Ciceronian (and ultimately Smithean) approach to ethos is especially useful in the context of a representative regime in which voters elect their leaders in part based on how they perceive their character independent of any particular speech.

This is not to suggest that Cicero rejects the Aristotelian account of ethos and pathos per se. Cicero seems to have known Aristotle's rhetorical theory and, on Fantham's view, the Rhetoric itself and was influenced by Aristotle (see Fantham Reference Fantham2004, 160–85, esp. 164, 168). Cicero's account of emotion is also, as Arena (Reference Arena, Steel and van der Blom2013, 203) notes, Peripatetic in character, sharing with Aristotle the feature that “emotions are not themselves entirely nonrational; they are composed in part of beliefs” (Garsten Reference Garsten2011, 173). Each emotion is rooted, in part, in a belief about the state of things: I am afraid if I believe that I am in danger (see Cicero Reference May and Wisse2001, 2.206–9).

Given his republican context, Cicero's account of the rhetorical “virtue” of decorum reflects a concern for maintaining a pleasing ethos in light of the constraining effects of the orator's audience (see Arena Reference Arena, Steel and van der Blom2013, 206). Doing what is appropriate, which Cicero considers the definition of decorum, is difficult in oratory, because “no single style is fitting for every case or every audience or every person involved or every occasion” (Cicero Reference May and Wisse2001, 3.210–12). One might, for example, deploy the grand style when there is a particular need to arouse an audience's emotions, whereas one might use the middle style when there is a need to soothe them.Footnote ⁵ This is not to say that Aristotle does not think about style (lexis); he does. But, in contrast to Cicero, he views considerations of delivery as a sign of “the corruption of the audience,” rather than as central features of rhetorical ethos (Aristotle Reference Kennedy2007, 1404a5).

In addition to the increased emotional salience of ethos in Cicero's thought, his translators May and Wisse point to another important contrast between Aristotle and him: “Aristotle's ‘ethos’ is ‘rational’: it has nothing to do with emotions, but concerns the audience's non-emotional evaluation of the reliability of the speaker, with the aim of evaluating the reliability of what she says” (Cicero Reference May and Wisse2001, 34–35). Though their claim is slightly exaggerated because Aristotle speaks of using some emotional criteria, including virtue and goodwill, for evaluating speeches in Book II, Chapter 1 of his Rhetoric, May and Wisse nevertheless note an important distinction between Cicero and Aristotle here. Cicero's view of ethos is more expansive than that of Aristotle: It includes the projection of a wide array of moral and nonrational qualities, such as “generosity, mildness, dutifulness, gratitude, and of not being desirous or greedy,” that extend beyond the primarily cognitive qualities provided by Aristotle (Cicero Reference May and Wisse2001, 2.182).

In a democracy where the social and political status of all participants is (nominally) equal, the force of the better argument should prevail. But in a stratified republic like Rome, the force of the better argument may be tempered by the qualities and standing of the speakers. Thus Cicero, a republican, treats those characteristics as more vital to rhetorical persuasion than his Greek predecessor. Yet, as we discuss in more detail in Section V, the democratic rhetorical ethos can also be shaped by standing and considerations extrinsic to a political speech when inequality predominates.

CICERONIAN DECORUM

This important divergence between Ciceronian and Aristotelian ethos emerges in part from Aristotle's focus on the epistemic and intrinsic elements of particular speeches at the expense of non-epistemic (and especially affective) and extrinsic rhetorical considerations. To consider how ethos might be shaped by emotions and context, we turn to Cicero's account of the virtue of decorum in two of his works on rhetoric, On the Ideal Orator and Orator, and in his moral work, On Duties. For Cicero, a person characterized by decorum behaves appropriately: His actions are in keeping with and attentive to the standards and demands of his observers, suitable to the wide array of contingent factors relevant to the particular situation he faces and in harmony with his own attributes. We argue that Cicero's account of decorum is therefore a useful starting point for understanding how audiences can constrain rhetorical appeals given the speaker's aim of persuasion.Footnote ⁶

For Cicero, decorum is the rhetorical virtue that enables ideal orators to determine the propriety or impropriety of various rhetorical tools in particular situations. Although much of Cicero's treatment of decorum and of our discussion of it here is derived from his treatment of judicial oratory, he makes it clear that his ideal orator possesses decorum regardless of the type of oratory in which he engages.Footnote ⁷ In the epigraph to this article, Cicero tells us that “in an oration, as in life, nothing is harder than to determine what is appropriate. The Greeks call it prepon; let us call it decorum or propriety” (Cicero Reference Hubbell1952, 70). This quote is drawn from his work Orator, wherein Cicero is describing an ideal type, the “man of eloquence whom we seek . . . who is able to speak in court or in deliberative bodies so as to prove, to please, and to sway or persuade” (69). Each of these three so-called tasks (officia) of the orator—“to prove, to please, and to sway or persuade”—is a key component of Cicero's rhetorical theory that he connects at some length in Orator to the three styles: “For these three functions of the orator there are three styles, the plain style for proof, the middle style for pleasure, the vigorous style for persuasion; and in this last is summed up the entire virtue of the orator” (ibid., 69).

Although Cicero certainly emphasizes that an orator will need “to resort to the force of eloquence, and more specifically to the grand style” (Arena Reference Arena, Steel and van der Blom2013, 202), the grand style is not always appropriate. According to Cicero, the trick is not simply to know how to use all three styles flawlessly but also to know when to use each of them. Such knowledge requires “rare judgment and great endowment,” and thus “the foundation of eloquence, as of everything else, is wisdom” (Cicero Reference Hubbell1952, 70).

Cicero identifies the virtue of propriety, which he considers very difficult to cultivate, as decorum. Not understanding propriety leads to errors “not only in life but very frequently in writing.” He remarks that “the same style and the same thoughts must not be used in portraying every condition in life, or every rank, position or age, and in fact a similar distinction must be made in respect of place, time and audience. The universal rule, in oratory as in life, is to consider propriety. This depends on the subject under discussion, and on the character of both the speaker and the audience” (Cicero Reference Hubbell1952, 71).

Thus, character, whether of the speaker or the audience, governs the choice of style and not the other way around. As a general rule, Cicero recommends the following: “[T]he question must be, ‘How far?’ For although the limits of propriety differ for each subject, yet in general too much is more offensive than too little” (Cicero Reference Hubbell1952, 73). Ethos is thus critical to developing an appropriate rhetorical style, but it requires skill on the part of speakers to understand how to use rhetoric to express their character.

One further point on Cicero's rhetorical theory is worth noting before turning to his moral work, On Duties: Cicero insists that effective oratory requires that the speaker at least seem to experience the emotions that he seeks to arouse in his audience. Cicero has Antonius state the following in Book II of On the Ideal Orator, in the context of his discussion of ethos and pathos:

Yet Antonius goes on to suggest that as an advocate, the emotion in his oratory was not just appearance; he was “thoroughly stirred” by the emotions he was trying to arouse in the jurors, and this fit between his emotional state and the desired state of the audience is necessary for persuasion: “[N]o mind is so susceptible to an orator's power, that it can be set on fire unless the orator who approaches it is burning and all ablaze himself” (Cicero Reference May and Wisse2001, 2.189, 190). For the audience to feel the emotion the orator wishes to inspire, the orator must actually feel and display it himself. Antonius's explanation for the performative sincerity of emotion, moreover, has to do with his awareness of his own standing and character: “[H]ow much easier it is when one's own honour and reputation and obligations to friends are at stake in a real issue” (Fantham Reference Fantham2004, 175).

The fit between character and speech, and its relationship to the sympathetic dimension of persuasion, evident in Cicero's rhetorical writing, extends even further in his ethical treatise, On Duties (a work Smith cites frequently in his Theory of Moral Sentiments [hereafter TMS]).Footnote ⁸ In On Duties, Cicero uses the same term used in Orator—decorum—as the Latin term for the Greek to prepon, or the virtue concerned with “a sense of shame and what one might call the ordered beauty of a life, restraint and modesty, a calming of all the agitations of the spirit, and due measure in all things” (Cicero Reference Griffin and Atkins1991, 1.94). But there he further distinguishes between a general sense of decorum and a “subordinate” one:

Decorum, according to Cicero, “arouses the approval [movet approbationem] of one's fellows, because of the order and constancy and moderation of every word and action” (Reference Griffin and Atkins1991, 1.98). Such order and constancy, we suggest, entail harmony between one's inner qualities and one's external behavior. Behaving virtuously in this domain entails, moreover, that we “exercise a respectfulness towards men,” because neglecting “what others think about oneself is the mark not only of arrogance, but also of utter laxity (On Duties, 1:99).” If justice tells us to do no harm, decorum tells us not to offend; the natural desire to obtain the approval of other people constrains our actions, just as it constrains our speech.

Obtaining this approval relies, in turn, on another key component of decorum in On Duties: sincerity. Cicero explains that seemliness requires that we balance four different roles, or personae: The first has to do with human rationality and our difference from other creatures, the second “is that assigned specifically to individuals,” the third is “imposed by some chance or circumstance,” and the fourth is chosen by the individual (Cicero Reference Griffin and Atkins1991 1.107, 1.115).Footnote ⁹ Cicero tells us that to achieve this balance “we must act in such a way that we attempt nothing contrary to universal nature,” while nonetheless following “our own nature.” And a harmony between our universal and individual natures is made manifest for Cicero in an “evenness both of one's whole life and of one's individual actions. You cannot preserve that if you copy someone else's nature and ignore your own.” There is, in effect, something unattractive—and insincere—about someone who does not behave in a way that is appropriate to his or her particular nature, a point illustrated earlier in Book I where Cicero remarks, “[W]e understand that what is true, simple and pure [verum, simplex sincerumque] is most fitted to the nature of man” (Reference Griffin and Atkins1991, I.13). Even non-expert audiences can pick up on the orator’s—and the moral actor’s—affectation. As Arena notes in discussing Cicero's advice on deploying rhythm in speaking, “If the orator is able to disguise his effort, the whole assembly. . .will be naturally inclined to follow favourably the line of argument presented by the orator. If, on the other hand, the search for rhythmic effects is too ostentatious, even the layman would recognize the nature of the trick” (Arena Reference Arena, Steel and Van Der Blom2013, 201). The result of this recognition, in Cicero's own words, “robs the audience of their natural sympathy [humanum sensum], and utterly destroys the impression of sincerity [veritatem et fidem]” (Cicero 1952, 209). Interestingly, Cicero turns to oratory to explain this ethical point: “[J]ust as we ought to use the language that is familiar to us so that we do not draw well justified ridicule upon ourselves (like some, who cram Greek words into their speech), so we ought not to introduce any discordancy into our actions and into the whole of our lives” (Cicero Reference Griffin and Atkins1991, 1.11011).

This introductory discussion of the need to harmonize the universal with the particular leads to three examples that illustrate Cicero's argument about ethical sincerity. First, Cicero discusses Marcus Cato, who committed suicide “rather than look upon the face of a tyrant.” This act was in keeping with Cato's character, and it would not have been appropriate for others with markedly different characters (such as Cicero himself). The example of Ulysses during his journey home differs greatly from Cato, but again is pleasing because it is sincere: He “was willing to be accommodating and pleasant to everyone in everything that he said.” By contrast, Ajax “would have preferred to seek death a thousand times than to endure such things.” Each of these is nonetheless an example of appropriate behavior, because each set of behaviors fits the particular character of each agent. In this regard, Cicero compares “a wise man” who acts decorously to those actors who are wise to choose parts “most suited to themselves,” and not necessarily the most outstanding dramas. The appeal to drama is striking and recalls Cicero's Orator, on which Fantham remarks that fitting words to character in dramatic poetry is important because poets who fail to do so “would either distort the audience's perception of the character. . .or fail to obtain belief because they conflicted with the known persona of the part” (Fantham Reference Fantham1984, 125). The decorous behavior of these individuals and the hypothetical actors, then, is a function of the pleasing fit between their character and its outward manifestation—the particular context in which they are acting—in much the same way that we next suggest is true for Smith (Cicero Reference Griffin and Atkins1991, 1.112–24).

FROM DECORUM TO PROPRIETY

In much the same way in which sincerity is central to Cicero's account of decorum, it is central to Smith's account of propriety. We have already noted that Cicero has Crassus argue in On the Ideal Orator (Reference May and Wisse2001, 2.189) that successful communication of emotion requires that the orator actually feel the emotions he is trying to arouse in others. As Remer (Reference Remer2013, 428) points out, this passage helps establish the importance of “the orator's authenticity” or sincerity. And as McKenna (Reference McKenna2006, 138) suggests, “[L]ike Cicero, Smith sees mankind as having a unique natural capacity for sensing the fitting and the decent” that is nonetheless shaped by the particular context in which rhetoric is employed. Rhetoric is not omnipotent, and an audience cannot be moved to experience particular emotions unless the orator really does experience them himself first. For an orator to succeed in being persuasive, he must be a “person whose internal self and external person is identical” (Remer Reference Remer2013, 429). If there is a perceptible gap between these persons—if there is noticeable insincerity—the orator will likely be unsuccessful in his endeavors.

Just such a gap is, we suggest, central to Smith's account of propriety. In Lecture 11 of Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres [hereafter LRBL], Smith discusses proper style, beginning with a summary of his prior discussion of the character and manners of various English writers:

Smith next imagines that a critic might say that his argument “is no more than common sense” and grants the point. But he then extends his claim about style further to “conversation and behaviour”:

Affectation and arbitrarity are the bane of an agreeable style: An agreeable style should be natural and easy, should seem effortless, and should fit the character of the speaker or actor.

Smith explicitly connects this analysis of character and behavior to style:

Good style, which successfully communicates the passions affecting an author to her readers, involves a proper fit between her language and character, just as good and agreeable character entails a fit between one's character and one's behavior.

Rhetoric for Smith and Cicero alike is thus fundamentally concerned with sincerity. For Smith, the “polite dignity” that Shaftesbury sought to project was in fact undermined by his “grand and pompous diction;” the outcome was a salient displeasing mismatch between his interior qualities and his external behavior. Because Shaftesbury focused on ornamenting his speech for ornament's sake, he often acted “in contradiction to precision and propriety.” To put it differently, Shaftesbury tried too hard: “In the same manner as Shaftesbury affects to be pompous, he often exceeds and applies a grand diction to subjects of a very different kind” (Smith Reference Smith and Bryce1983, i.144–48; emphasis added). But Smith is also suggesting a more serious problem with this rhetorical approach: The impropriety of his ornamented style given its disconnection with his character and material—rhetoric divorced from character—is inauthentic and therefore inappropriate on Smith's account.Footnote ¹⁰

To make this point, Smith highlights the damning effects of insincerity (and therefore impropriety) in rhetorical appeals. In a famous discussion of the mismatch between character and style, Smith argues that Shaftesbury exhibited “ignorance of true propriety of language,” resulting in language that was almost grotesquely (mis)figured (Smith Reference Smith and Bryce1983, i.137). Smith's key criticism of Shaftesbury is that he deployed “the ornament of language” to augment “what was deficient in matter.” His art is so evident and disconnected from his nature that it ceases to be effective: “In the same manner as Shaftesbury affects to be pompous, he often exceeds and applies a grand diction to subjects of a very different kind” (i.144–48). Note that Smith's objection to Shaftesbury derives less from his lack of perspicuity of language than its impropriety. The problem with Shaftesbury is that he seems “to have formed to himself an idea of beauty of Stile abstracted from his own character, by which he proposed to regulate his Stile” (i.138). Although “it was natural for him [Shaftesbury] to form some Model or Idea of perfection which he should always have in view,” his use of this rhetorical ideal type prevented him from employing language and style more appropriate to his actual character (i.142). Shaftesbury attempted to use “the ornament of language” to augment “what was deficient in matter,” but Smith insists, as Cicero does, that this is always ineffective (i.145; see also Den Uyl Reference Den Uyl2011, 210). Shaftesbury's style was “pompous, grand and ornate,” but his character and the substance of his works overall were not.

Both Cicero's account of decorum and Smith's account of propriety thus view appropriate action and speech as embodying a harmony between external and internal factors, creating the potential for great variation in the type of characters and styles that may be pleasing. In the next section, we demonstrate how Smith's account of propriety in the LRBL develops this affective Ciceronian account even further by highlighting the fit between language and action, on the one hand, and character, on the other, while explaining how a shift in political context might determine the appropriate character and style of a political speaker. Before doing so, we note and respond to two potential objections to anyone interested in linking the rhetorical theories of the famous Scot and Roman. First, although McKenna (Reference McKenna2006, 109–10) mentions that Smith's notion of propriety has classical influences, Smith's own writings seem to suggest that he departs in significant ways from Cicero's account of eloquence. The second objection comes from scholarship on Smith and Cicero, which suggests variance rather than consonance between Smithean propriety and Ciceronian decorum.

First, Smith is famously skeptical about the use of figures of speech, what Cicero terms ornamenta elocutionis, as an effective or appropriate rhetorical tool. In the LRBL, Smith insists that unnecessary ornamentation in language only serves to obfuscate meaning: “[W]hat are generally called ornaments or flowers in language, as allegoricall, metaphoricall and such like expressions are very apt to make ones stile dark and perplex’d” (Smith Reference Smith and Bryce1983, i.14). Even more problematically, Smith (i.v.53, ii.139) explicitly connects the approach that advocates the use of these tools—that claims “all the beauties of language” are to be found in ornament—with Quintilian and Cicero; for a discussion of this passage and of Smith's account of style in general, see Phillips (Reference Phillips and Haakonsen2006, 67–71).

Indeed, Cicero remarks in On the Ideal Orator that what makes a speech ornate is “its general character and its own particular complexion and vitality. . .it should be weighty charming and learned. . .well-bred, admirable, and accomplished, and. . .contain as much feeling and emotion as necessary” (Cicero Reference May and Wisse2001, 3.96). The greatest eloquence for Cicero involves the use of ornatus, and eloquence is most praiseworthy when it entails “amplifying something by imparting distinction to it” (3.104).

Smith's view of ornatus, however, seems to be in sharp contrast: “When the sentiment of the speaker is expressed in a neat, clear, plain and clever manner, and the passion or affection he is possessed of and intends, by sympathy, to communicate to his hearer, is plainly and cleverly hit off, then and then only the expression has all the force and beauty that language can give it” (Smith Reference Smith and Bryce1983, i.v.53). In contrast to the Ciceronian description of ornatus, Smith seems to suggest that unadorned rhetoric is much more likely to ensure that the audience sympathizes with a speaker and that rhetoric is aesthetically pleasing and persuasive. Smith thus seems to depart from Ciceronian rhetorical style on a critical point.

What is more, some scholars argue that Smithean propriety is ultimately inconsistent with Ciceronian decorum because of Cicero's status as a Stoic. On Vivenza's account, whereas Smith included among the Stoics ancient thinkers like Plato and Aristotle with whom his propriety bears affinity (see also McKenna Reference McKenna2006, 109–10), Smith nevertheless makes important distinctions between Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics. To the extent that we view Cicero as a Stoic, his account of decorum would seem to have little relation to the account of propriety Smith develops in TMS, which relies on a sympathetic, sentimental attachment to others. Vivenza (Reference Vivenza2001, 192) suggests that “Stoic propriety consists of living according to nature, and of totally conforming to the rational order of the universe”; Stoic virtue is “founded upon reason,” and hence sentimental concerns should not influence standards of propriety.Footnote ¹¹ Vivenza bases this claim on a passage found in the first five editions of TMS in which Smith is keen to distinguish his own ethical theory from that of the Stoics. In contrast to the account of ethical propriety he has just sketched, Smith claims that the Stoics “appear to have regarded every passion as improper, which made any demand upon the sympathy of the spectator, or required him to alter in any respect the natural and ordinary state of his mind” (Smith Reference Smith1982, VII.ii.I.17).

Vivenza's second argument hones in on the apparent gap between Ciceronian decorum and Smithean propriety: “Decorum means a perfect proportion, a correspondence between the exterior expression and the impulses of the soul. It is always connected with appearance, and it is something that is projected to the exterior” (Vivenza Reference Vivenza2001, 193). Smithean propriety is established through “a sympathetic reaction in others,” whereas Ciceronian decorum consists “of conformity to people and to situations, of behaviour which is appropriate to a given role or status” (194). Vivenza's Smith, then, is far from Ciceronian in his thinking about the aesthetic dimensions of propriety, precisely because of the weight Cicero grants to extrinsic features of political speeches, including status.

These are important potential objections, but the gap between Ciceronian and Smithean propriety begins to close quickly on further investigation. First and foremost, there are good reasons not to view Cicero (nor Smith) as a straightforward Stoic, not the least of which is his Cicero's own identification with the Academy (see Powell Reference Powell and Powell1995, 22, 23–26; on Cicero's practical embrace of Stoicism, see Brunt Reference Brunt, Miriam, Alison and Michael2013, 181–85). Cicero often aligns himself with Stoicism, but he is quite clear that he is an Academy. Smith's criticism of Stoicism notwithstanding, this intentional distancing on Smith's part may therefore not be in relation to Cicero.

Second and more broadly, the use of ornament does not substantially differentiate Smith and Cicero's rhetorical theories in practice. Put differently, Smithean propriety and Ciceronian decorum are in fact commensurable. Let us return to a passage already examined in brief, in which Smith casts doubt on the centrality of figures of speech to the beauty of language:

Before comparing this passage to Cicero's account of ornament, let us first note that Smith is here describing perspicuity, and not propriety. And because he characterizes perspicuity as the feature of writing “which makes the sense of the author flow naturally upon our mind” (Smith Reference Smith and Bryce1983, i.10), his objection to ornament has to do with clarity of communication, rather than its fitness as a rhetorical tool. For Smith, the use of figures of speech should be a function of the underlying meaning and sentiment that the author or speaker seeks to communicate. If the figures are useful and suitable to the purposes of the speaker, then they can—and should—be used.

Similarly, because perspicuity and propriety are distinct, Cicero's advice on the use of ornament does not differ from the Smithean account as expected. Although Cicero certainly thinks that ornament can make language beautiful and persuasive, he is quite clear that form should be subordinate to content: “For it is certainly from knowledge that a speech should blossom and acquire fullness: unless the orator has firmly grasped the underlying subject matter, his speech will remain an utterly empty, yes, almost childish verbal exercise” (Cicero Reference May and Wisse2001, 1.20; cf. 3.125). Cicero thinks that the beauty of rhetorical form is a function of the speaker's knowledge of the underlying substance of a speech. In other words, ornament without substance is ineffective for both thinkers.

What is more, Cicero warns as Smith does that ornatus is liable to abuse (on the abuse of ornate language, see Fjelstad Reference Fjelstad2003). A good Ciceronian orator will use ornament to give an audience pleasure (delectat), but he cannot satiate his listeners (sine satietate) if he wants to be persuasive. Hence the ideal orator's use of ornatus should be charming, but the “charm should be austere and firm, not sweet and overripe” (Cicero Reference May and Wisse2001, 3.103). The problem a speaker faces is that “the very things that most stir our sense with pleasure and rouse them most strongly are also the quickest to give us feeling of aversion and satiety, and thus to alienate us” (3.98). Although ornament thus profoundly affects and moves its audience, it is a delicate and limited tool. To be persuasive, for Cicero, as for Smith, speakers must use ornament with care and be sure to keep their end in mind.

SMITH ON PROPRIETY AND POLITICAL CONTEXT

Although the deep connections between Ciceronian decorum and Smithean propriety are critical to understanding the rhetorical theory of the latter, Smith goes further than Cicero to develop how propriety related to character shapes rhetoric in specific contexts, including various political environments (McKenna Reference McKenna2006, 109; see also Herzog Reference Herzog2013, 69; Kelly Reference Kelly2011, 122, 128). Smith importantly also notes the potential negative effects of certain forms of social inequality on rhetorical performances. He provides two important examples that illustrate how political context shapes rhetorical appeals in the LRBL: Cicero and Demosthenes. Smith extols both as historical speakers successful in cultivating a rhetoric appropriate to their character and circumstance. Although these examples more deeply demonstrate the Ciceronian character of Smith's rhetorical theory, they also further identify the innovations that render Smith's theory more relevant for democratic theory. By explaining the variation in style and content of the rhetorical approaches used by Demosthenes and Cicero, we demonstrate how Smith believes political context should affect politicians’ performances and audiences’ evaluations in democracies.

Although Smith is quite clear (as was Cicero) about the importance of a speaker's or politician's natural character in rhetorical propriety, he is also keen to emphasize that political context does and should shape a speaker's rhetoric and influence an audience's subsequent judgment of it. In Lecture 25 and Lecture 26 of the LRBL, Smith provides us with two paradigmatic examples of rhetorical propriety in a republic and democracy, respectively, in order to focus our attention on the political dimensions of propriety. These examples are critical for any rhetorical revivalist because they illustrate exactly how political institutions and practices can—and should—shape our perception of ethos (see Herzog Reference Herzog2013, 70; McKenna Reference McKenna2006, 109). But before evaluating rhetoric in various political contexts, Smith provides a general framework for evaluating rhetoric (political or otherwise) by isolating three key variables that affect its reception: interest, the practicability of the thing recommended, and the honorableness of the subject (Smith Reference Smith and Bryce1983, ii.135). These three factors represent the standards, along with the orator's natural character, that constitute an audience's judgment of propriety, and in the same vein as Smith's stadial theory of history in both the Lectures on Jurisprudence and the Wealth of Nations, each is shaped by the historical and political environment in which one lives.

With these three variables in mind, Smith provides two rhetorical examples from two distinct regimes: Demosthenes's Phillipics, given to democratic Athens, and Cicero's own On the Ideal Orator, written for noblemen in republican Rome. In each case, Smith provides us with a detailed history—and indeed political economy—of each state before he evaluates each speaker's rhetorical style. By doing so, Smith implies a comment with which he also explicitly prefaces his description of Athens: “[T]hat we may the better understand his [Demosthenes’s] manner and the Observations on it, it will be necessary to consider briefly the state Athenian affairs were in at the time these Orations were composed” (Smith Reference Smith and Bryce1983, ii.142). In other words, character or ethos is not simply a product of one's nature; instead Smith suggests that ethos must also be determined by the political context in which a speaker deploys and the audience evaluates rhetorical style. Of course, this is not to say that sincerity of character communicated through sympathy with others, which we highlighted in the previous section, loses relevance for Smith. Instead, in these lectures Smith begins to provide us with a picture of the variation in rhetorical propriety that will occur as a result of the variation in regime (or economy) type.

To take Smith's second example first, Cicero's ornate style was appropriate to both his character and the political context of republican Rome, which was marked by static socioeconomic inequality. Smith tells us that the absence of commerce led to the establishment of two very distinct political classes during Cicero's time: optimates, who were the “Richer and more powerfull of the Citizens” or “all those who would go under the Denomination of Gentleman,” and populares, who were the “most wretched and destitute set of men,” both because they “had not power nor riches to make them considerable” and because they had no “hopes of arriving at those offices” that indeed had allowed the optimates to acquire and maintain their wealth (Smith Reference Smith and Bryce1983, ii.156); on the distinction between optimates and populares, see Arena (2012). Because the people could not credibly present a threat to politicians who usurped too much power or proposed policies contrary to their interest, Smith tells us that the honorableness of each orator most strongly influenced audience evaluations of character, and thus rhetorical propriety. “Where the speaker is supposed to be of Superior Dignity and authority to his hearers,” he says, “Pomp and Splendour suit [him] well enough” (ii.165). Cicero's rhetorical style, which displays “the Dignity and authority of a superior,” avoids “Idiomaticall turns or other Vulgar expressions;” by doing so, he “makes it evident that [he] conceives himself to be of importance, and dignity.” In this regard, Cicero is right to use deploy “all those figures of speech which are thought to give dignity to language (ii. 164–65),” because rhetorical dignity—and hence political dignity, or differential standing endowed according to intersubjectively recognized merit—is a standard by which an audience can judge the worth of a political speech in a republican government. As McKenna (Reference McKenna2006, 109) puts it, “the new sociopolitical milieu was both conducive and responsive” to Cicero's ornate style. Here, then, we see another reason why Shaftesbury's rhetoric did not suit his ethos: Whereas high diction is suitable for highly unequal societies, liberal governments in which commerce provides for greater social and economic mobility, such as those in eighteenth-century Scotland and England, were less suited to such a style of discourse. Cicero, by contrast, always displays “the greatest propriety of expression and the strictest observance of grammaticall propriety.” Cicero's “exact and ornate stile shows that every word is premeditated,” and he even goes so far as to avoid figures of speech “which are peculiar to common conversation,” such as anakoloutha, in order to signal his authoritative place in the social and political hierarchy (Smith Reference Smith and Bryce1983, ii.164–65).

Whereas the example of Cicero is illustrative of the way in which ethos is shaped by honor in republican societies, Smith treats Demosthenes as a paragon of democratic character, in which rhetorical appeals should be most influenced by interest (see Frazer Reference Frazer2010, 93). In stark contrast to Cicero's Rome, Smith notes that Demosthenes's Athens was fully democratic and commercial, as evident by instituted wages for civic duties, such as jury and military service, and taxation that limited the advantages to be derived from commerce. Smith suggests here, as he does elsewhere, that although “the poorest Citizens might here by trade raise themselves fortunes equall to those of the most wealthy” in Athens, overall, the general wealth and welfare of citizens were much lower than in Rome because Athenian citizens came to rely on state support in a way that led them to become “altogether idle and unactive” (Smith Reference Smith and Bryce1983, ii.156, ii.146).Footnote ¹² Nonetheless, relative economic equality ensured that Athens had only “one rank of Citizens,” so that audiences evaluated speakers based on how successful they were at “coaxing them with new schemes of wealth” (ii.159, ii.148). Smith focuses on wealth here rather than other interests such as civic duty, which need not necessarily be excluded from democratic appeals to interest, precisely because Athenian commercial practices were already corrupted. Any politician who hoped to be an effective orator had to speak to the “private advantage” of all Athenians, because the equal status of all citizens rendered honorable, florid language inappropriate for the democratic ethos. One whose style projected a concern with dignity, as Cicero's did, would be displeasing and unpersuasive to a democratic audience. Demosthenes exemplifies the good democratic orator precisely because he recognizes the need to match his rhetoric to both his natural character (i.e., to be sincere) and the appropriate character for a democratic statesman. As Smith notes on Demosthenes's Phillipic orations,

Demosthenes's effectiveness and propriety as a democratic orator derive not only from his appeals to popular interest, rather than honor, but also from his ability to sincerely communicate his sentiments. He manages to mark his dignity while maintaining his status as a man of the people (in this case, one who sympathetically reproaches his fellows for not choosing the right path). He recognizes that, despite his authority, the language of democracy is the language of “freedom, ease and familiarity” with which one “talks to his equals” regardless of supposed authority (Smith Reference Smith and Bryce1983, ii.164).Footnote ¹³

Smith's exposition of the ideal democratic orator is useful not only for bringing political context to the fore in the formation of character but also for understanding how ethos might shape democratic leaders’ political appeals and provide standards by which democratic citizens can evaluate their leaders. Smith identifies what the content and form of effective democratic rhetorical appeals will be given the sociopolitical context of a democratic regime. In this regard, Smith builds on and extends Cicero's account of decorum in a striking way. Given the great desire for profit in commercial democracies, democratic leaders or legislators have to link their desired policies to the private interest of individual citizens, and they must treat their audience with equal respect. Of course, Smith believes that a good democratic legislator's aim will be not only to affect an egalitarian manner while speaking to his constituents (which would be highly ineffective on its own) but also to motivate popular contributions to public goods, including defense. As the ideal democratic orator, Demosthenes inspires a “vigorous conduct” in Athenians in the pursuit of a war that “they saw well enough that it was for the good of the State,” but for which they nonetheless failed to provide sufficient support (Smith Reference Smith and Bryce1983, ii.148). Thus Smith suggests that democratic leaders can and should use rhetorical appeals to inspire popular support for public goods by making politics personal, while demonstrating how democratic audiences should view authentic, egalitarian, and individualized rhetorical appeals as ideal, because they portray qualities that affirm each citizen's equal status and interest.