The oratory proficiency and argumentation has been the goal of numerous people throughout history. Political, religious leaders, artists or merchants They realized, since classical antiquity, that the persuasiveness of their speeches was essential to reach your objectives.
Being able to dismantle your opponent’s arguments, capture the public’s attention and trust is not something that comes naturally. It requires practice and the acquisition of a series of techniques. The Greeks, pioneers in so many other things, also realized the need to educate future citizens in this regard.
At present we would not understand politics without electoral campaigns or debates. However, we have to take into account that our politicians, with cobblestone or constitution in hand, did not take their resources up their sleeves. The art of persuasion and public speaking has an extensive and interesting history, which we will review below. From the sophists in the Athenian forum to Chomsky and Faucault, there have been numerous debates that have marked a before and after in the history of humanity.
Greece: cradle of oratory
Greece was the cradle of oratory and saw the birth of debate as a competition of opposing arguments. We have several Greek characters who are considered the fathers of the art of persuading. But before getting to know them, we ask ourselves a key question: What exactly is persuasion?
Well then, to persuade can be defined as the conscious attempt of an individual to change the acts, thoughts, beliefs or attitudes of another, through the transmission of a message. This message therefore has a triple objective: to reduce possible psychological resistance of the recipients, to verify that the message is transmitted correctly, and to capture and retain the attention of the audience (1).
Protagoras of Abdera
protagoras has been considered father of debate. He was born in Abdera around 480 BC and earned his living as an itinerant teacher throughout Greece. It is said that his classes had very high fees. however, many students were willing to pay them. This was due to his great fame as a speakerwho attracted high-profile personalities to his lessons, hoping to master public speaking and improve their persuasive abilities.
In these classes, Protagoras proposed a series of topics on which his students had to make speeches, arguments and refutations. His fame when it came to reasoning and arguing became such that he himself Pericles commissioned him to draw up the laws of the Greek colony of Turios (two).
Corax of Syracuse
Corax, originally from Syracuse, lived in the 5th century BC. C and is considered one of the main fathers of oratory. This is because he created the first systematization of rules to apply when making a persuasive speech, which followed a fundamental principle:
“What seems true is better than what is true, since the truth that is not credible is hardly accepted” (3).
It influenced the speeches of later philosophers, such as Socrates and Plato. However, the purpose of producing him in the field of rhetoric had a very specific purpose. Under the Deinomenid tyranny in Syracuse (485–465) the property of many ordinary citizens was confiscated. They went to the courts to try to recover them, but as they were not literate people they had difficulties when it came to defending themselves in court (4).
Therefore, Corax did helpful work by structuring judicial speeches into a series of fixed parts: proema, narration, exposition of arguments, refutation of opposing arguments and summary. This structure will serve as a model for all subsequent rhetoric, and helped the people of Syracuse to recover their property in the tyrannical regime.
Aristotle and rhetoric
The famous disciple of Plato, Aristotle (384-322 BC) systematized the knowledge of antiquity, and developed logical thinking or syllogistic. It turns rhetoric into a discipline within logic, which serves to argue and persuade about probable things. The great Roman orators, as we will see below, will take the Aristotelian work as a reference (5).
Rome and oratory: proof that an empire is also based on the word
If we have to highlight a Roman author who contributed to the theory of rhetoric and argumentation, this must undoubtedly be Cicero (106-43 BC). He was inspired by Aristotle’s theory and his work “De oratoria” systematizes the speaker’s tasks when making a speech. This should be based on five points or items (6):
- Decide what you want to say (or the invented)
- Order the material (or the device)
- Choose the way to formulate it (or the elocutio)
- Memorize the speech (or the memory)
- Take care of the staging: intonation, silences, gesticulation… (or the actio)
He also ruled that for a speech to be effective when it comes to persuading it must have a exordium, An introduction that captures the audience’s attention. You must also have an explanation and an argument that confirms your own opinion and refutes the contrary. And finally, a summary and conclusion, which he calls peroratio (7).
In the Middle Ages, not everything was darkness and dogmatism… They also gave into oratory and debated
In medieval teaching, developed almost exclusively within the ecclesiastical, the study of rhetoric was of great importance. Both for those who were studying an ecclesiastical career and had to prepare to preach from the pulpit, as well as for jurists or public officials (8).
The rhetoric is currently considered the art of teaching to speak properly and ornately and it was taught in the classroom. The debate and rhetoric were also reflected in writing. Thus arise the literary debates, works where two characters (real or imaginary) face disputes and fight dialectically. On many occasions, a resolution is not reached, since what was really important was the discussion itself and the mechanisms used in it (9).
New discoveries mean new debates
When in 1493 Colon returns from his trip to America, there are many questions that he brings with him. New issues enter the legal and theological debate. Are “Indians” just as human as other Westerners? Should they have the same rights?
These questions confronted Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda in 1550 in a historic debate that took place in Valladolid. This debate supposes a unique fact, because for the first time (and it could be said that also last) an empire makes it possible to publicly question the morality and legitimacy of its expansionist strategies. Bartolomé de las Casas defended in his speech the idea that “all the people of the world are men” and therefore, the exploitation of the inhabitants of America should cease (10).
Oratory: arguing from the Modern Age to the present
The end of the Old Regime and the beginnings of the history of democracy are accompanied by great social and political debates. The reasoning as a tool to guide the trajectory of humanity. The citizen (which ceases to be a subject after the liberal revolutions of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) get voice and gradually vote.
The debate becomes like this one of the fundamental instruments in politics. Well, when in the 20th century there are already several properly established democracies, the leaders of the different parties must demonstrate in a well-argued way why they deserve the vote of the population.
In September 1960 took place on first debate between two candidates for the presidency of the United States broadcast on television. The participants were Richard Nixon and john fitzgerald kennedy, and had an audience of about 60 million viewers (11) . This debate, in addition to marking a before and after in the development of electoral campaigns, demonstrated the importance of actio of which Cicero spoke to us.
Kennedy was more confident, smiling and determined in his speech. Even his physical presence was decisive. Unlike Nixon, who refused to wear makeup, JFK had no qualms about applying cosmetics to disguise the exhaustion that comes with a long campaign for the presidency (12).
Philosophy under discussion
In the year 1971 another one is broadcast on television historical debatewhich this time faced two key figures in philosophy contemporary: Noam Chomsky and Foucault. On this occasion, the issues on which they disagreed were of an epistemological and political nature (13).
Both speakers presented their different versions in relation to human nature, language, knowledge and politics. His arguments are complex and we would need an entire article to analyze them. But we can draw a conclusion from this discussion between philosophers and that is that, on many occasions, a debate cannot be declared won or lost. In most cases, simply presenting and discussing ideas is enough for new ones to emerge, thus having the debate an intrinsic value.
In conclusion…
Mastering the use of the word in public discourse and knowing how to reason and critically refute an opponent’s arguments have been sought after skills from Antiquity to the present day. Although it is impossible to possess the absolute truth, great orators throughout history have sought ways to defend their truth over that of others.
Identifying persuasion strategies in political or propaganda speeches is very useful for making critical decisions. And perhaps, in your next oral presentation, job interview or bar discussion with your friends you can remember some Cicero or Protagoras strategy that is useful to you.
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