On viewing rhetoric as epistemic

Abstract

The common justification of rhetoric as “making the truth effective” courts an attitude which has nearly always viewed rhetoric as the harlot of the arts. “Truth,” of course, can be taken in several senses. If one takes it as prior and immutable, then one has no use for rhetoric except to address inferiors. If one takes it as contingent, then perhaps one ought avoid the term altogether or at least re‐examine the familiar justification, since it implies truth as somehow existing prior to persuasion.