ABSTRACT
This paper examines Whately’s thesis that rhetoric and political economy are overlapping areas of study, mediated, according to the Archbishop, by directed action in the pursuit of a goal. We believe that in constructing this case, Whately borrows from Aristotelian aesthetics while modifying significantly this teleological view to meet a progressive sense of history and to address the paradoxes apprehended by modern sensibilities between individual purpose and collective outcome. In recovering the rhetorical tradition, Whately borrows Aristotle’s perspective as a social scientist who sees the uses of language as a neutral tool for overcoming excess and deficiencies in informed motivation. On the other hand, Whately transforms classical aesthetics from a principle of adjustment of subject to audience through proportionate representation to a progressive aesthetic of discovery and arrangement that transforms deficiency into surplus in the interest of accumulation of moral and material progress. Thus, modern rhetoric preserves a portion of the classical tradition, setting on its way conditions for its own effacement and the social scientific study of individual and collective persuasion.
