ABSTRACT
In The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953), Richard Weaver alludes to Plato's Phaedrus and defines noble rhetoric as consisting of "truth plus its artful presentation." Such truth is not "a truth of facts" but of ideas, and those who argue from facts or circumstance he considers the least philosophical of rhetoricians. As an example of unorthodox defense, Weaver employed both his analytical and his intuitive gifts to analyze the speeches of Edmund Burke and Abraham Lincoln, an apparent coupling of a conservative with a liberal. In the final chapter of The Ethics of Rhetoric, "Ultimate Terms in Contemporary Rhetoric," Weaver discusses the "god terms," "devil terms," and "charismatic terms" of the present age. In one chapter, "The Cultural Role of Rhetoric," Weaver postulates that the reason Socrates was condemned is because he "had excited the rhetoricians against him." Where Weaver is more original is in his meta-political theories and his dialectics of rhetoric.
