How Were Social Disagreements Best Resolved in Ancient Athens?
A Lesson from the past for today’s America
By Dr. Richard Leo Enos
Ancient Athens gave us many gifts and we are still reaping the benefits of their classical-age contributions today. Among the stunning contributions in the arts, sciences and humanities, there is one gift that needs to be not only remembered but refreshed: Rhetoric. Most of us think of Rhetoric as verbal trickery, of hoodwinking listeners to accept fallacies that masquerade as sound reasoning. Those characterizations—often seen as propaganda—are actually the abuse, rather than the use, of Rhetoric.
Rhetoric as a formal discipline was invented by the ancient Greeks as a way of resolving social and political disagreements through reasoned arguments that make sense to normal rational people. Athens is an excellent example how the use of Rhetoric can resolve social issues. That is, arguments were used to resolve social problems. To secure agreement and resolve problems, these arguments had to be convincing not just to the intellectuals of the day, nor just to those in power. The validity of arguments was determined by citizens, because Athenian citizens controlled the government. Athens was a democracy.
Of course, as language theorists have made clear, there are alternatives to resolving disagreements through discussion and argument. Force and coercion can compel us, even unwillingly, to do what those in power wish. Ambivalence is another alternative; we can, often out of frustration, abandon any desire or interest to do what we think is best and merely be apathetic over any and all choices. In short. ambivalence means we consider any course of action as good (or as bad) as any other; we simply no longer care. We often see ambivalence occurring in everyday disagreements. In fact, sometimes we can become so frustrated with another person that we throw up our arms and say, “Do whatever you want, I no longer care!” For Athenian democracy to function at its best, citizens had to be active, engaged participants!
Ancient Athenians saw Rhetoric as an alternative to coercion and ambivalence because Rhetoric valued reasoned argument. Ancient Athenians believed that if priorities were put in their proper order, in this case putting the interests the community ahead of personal preferences, then the best course of action should emerge and would be agreed upon by (at least) the majority of citizens. Some may think that mutual agreement means compromise, that you give up something to get some degree of what you want. While there is no doubt that such a condition may happen, compromise is better thought of as being open to a rival point of view, of being willing to allow a fair hearing from another person’s perspective and, most of all, being willing to yield if the opposing view is better for the community.
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