Abstract

The dissertation begins with a consideration of theories of speech in the contemporary context, Two features are brought out: contemporary theorists of democracy generally dismiss rhetoric, as a resource upon which citizens might draw; they also often insist that the proper aim of political speech is perfect or unanimous agreement. This leads to a historical question: Where does the insistence that the democratic people must be led to perfect agreement, to unity, originate? The answer is, I argue, Thomas Hobbes. In the 17th century, he effected a radical transformation in the meaning of "the people" so that thereafter its predominant association was no longer "wholeness" but "oneness." The aspiration of making the people "one" involves a hope that opinion within the citizenry can be homogenized and that all conflict of interest will disappear or, at least will no longer trouble political decision-making. The discovery of the centrality of the metaphor of "oneness" to Hobbesian and also post-Hobbesian democratic theory and even to contemporary theories of public speech leads to the question of whether it would be possible to devise a legitimate theory of public speech, in the contemporary context, that was oriented not toward the "oneness" of "the people," but to its "wholeness." Can one imagine a form of public speech that is legitimately democratic and that approaches the problem of creating democratic consensus by aiming to get as many citizens as possible to agree with communal decisions while also expecting that it will be necessary, in addition, to address the disappointment, loss, and resentment experienced by those citizens who do not agree? Here I turn to Ralph Ellison. Ellison's attempt to describe how public speech and coming-to-agreement work in contexts where the inevitability of loss and disappointment are acknowledged, and where the aim is therefore for wholeness and not oneness, leads to a redescription of democratic action. Democratic citizens must be involved not only in law-making and acts of representation but also in the regular and insistent cultivation of trust. Such cultivation of trust can be carried out only rhetorically. Finally, Aristotle's Rhetoric turns out to be an extremely valuable political text because it explicates one of the central arts of democratic practice: the cultivation of civic friendship