DavidR has posted of number of interesting questions on his blog related to Quintilian. In one of his first questions, he asks us to consider if a good speaker = a good person. Later in his post, he specifically asks about false rhetoric. I have comments on both of these issues.
I don't believe that good speaking or eloquent speaking means it is being generated by a good person. I should first acknowledge that I haven't really defined 'good' (but who really can), so what I am referring to is perhaps the good intentions of the speaker. What are the motivations for delivering the message. Again, I feel a bit judgmental in pretending to know what someone's intent actually is, so let me give an example. Pseudoscience-a classic example of false rhetoric. In general, the message delivered by pseudoscientists is quite eloquent. Yet, it is not really 'scientific', so by virtue of the claims being labeled as scientific, the rhetoric of the message is falso. If the message is eloquent, is the messenger good? I prefer to think of this in the opposite way-if the message is poorly delivered, does that make the speaker bad? I think that the message and the speakers goodness can not be equated in such a way.
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