Rhetoric and lying

Abstract

The art of rhetoric has been present in the Western world at least for twenty-five hundred years and it has had its ups and downs in its extremely long history. Rhetoric was first theorized and practiced by the Greek civilization and has been considered useful and gratifying both for the individual and the community or, on the contrary, it has been considered a device to manipulate people and situations to the advantage of just one or few individuals. In our contemporary mediatic and globalised civilisation rhetoric seems to be a more familiar but also more shifting and subtle phenomenon. It is useless to deny that there is a negative commonplace idea of rhetoric as artificial, non-spontaneous and non-authentic. It is not rare to hear someone say “I say it without being rhetorical”, almost as if they intend to give more force and credibility to what they are affirming. Naturally, discourses and words can also be untruthful and persuasive. Therefore, rhetoric and lying seem to have something in common. Thus, is rhetoric deceit, simulation and lying? Are rhetoric and lying terms which have close affinities? In other words, what is the relationship between rhetoric and lying? This is what I will attempt to investigate starting with the most ancient Greek and Latin examples.