What is rhetoric?

In one of our first class sessions this semester we were asked to define rhetoric. Right away everyone had their own take on the matter. It would seem that defining rhetoric is like defining art, there are a million different little definitions, and ultimately it is a personal decision. While working on my paper I needed to define rhetoric, and it was a little bit of a challenge. Part of the challenge was defining it in a way that helped my thesis of course, but also trying to define something as multi faceted as rhetoric is rather challenging. After some research and some thinking I think I've come up with something that works pretty well.

Rhetoric is the act of communicating in such a way as to persuade one's audience. This can

include speech, text, body language, or movement.

I think this definition works pretty well. Not only to define the type of classical Athenian rhetoric that we have talked so much about, but it even works to define the type of rhetoric that occurs in the animal kingdom.

Cicero's Book Burning

In the last section of last weeks reading, Cicero's dilemma was discussed. The poor guy was really stuck between a rock and a hard place. The new emperor, Antony, was not a fan of his to say the least. So he gave Cicero a choice, either burn the books that you have published, or be put to death. Now of course since this argument involved rhetoric many rhetoricians had to give their two cents on the subject. It seemed no one was really a fan of Cicero the man, only his books. They all said that it was better for him to die than to burn his work.

I do of course understand where they are coming from. I mean, Cicero was old for the time and probably couldn't really expect to live that much longer. Plus in a way his published works do immortalize the guy. But really, if any one of us was put in that position I really doubt we would choose death. You gotta think about it from a practical stand point. Cicero's published works were scattered far and wide. It is physically impossible to burn every single one of them. Why not burn some of the one's that are nearby, and escape with your life? If it was me, I would burn what ever I could get my hands on, a lot of which have duplicates I'm sure, then get the hell outta dodge.