Stefano Cazzato's essay "La Quasi Logica - practices of consent and dissent" (Giuliano Ladolfi Editore) has the merit, not insignificant, of highlighting precious reflections on the usefulness of argumentative discourse or on rhetoric, placing general attention what today might seem ancient or worse old but in reality is of urgent relevance.
It is appropriate to overlook the demolishing legacy of rhetoric especially by Plato, who defined it as the art of concealing and distorting the truth, with the sole aim of deceiving the interlocutors by leading them to make a decision that, without the "rhetorical manipulation ”, They would never take.
Certainly rhetoric can presuppose a deception, however the possible "manipulative" use of the word cannot, in the context of a democratic dialogic dynamic, exclude the value in itself of the word, especially in the context of a democratic regime where written and verbally expressed ideas form the foundation of the confrontation.
The usefulness of rhetoric is the essential element for a democratic theory as a deliberative paradigm of political discourse, unless democracy is understood as the art of selecting the ruling classes through the mediation between irreconcilable interests, therefore rethinking the role of functional rhetoric to political discourse it enriches the very meaning of deliberation.
Therefore it would be more useful to distinguish between a rhetoric of deliberation and a rhetoric of manipulation, where the former is classically attributable to one of the three Aristotelian rhetorical figures as a deliberation on events that will have to happen in order to decide what should or should not be done.
The dimension of the rhetoric of deliberation is therefore that of possibility, that is, a path to guide decisions in the context of political debate, according to an interpretation of reality aimed at the good of the political community.
Consequently, the ultimate goal is not the manipulation of opinions but to follow a rational path, the most likely, to put political decision makers in the best conditions to make the most relevant choices.
In the democratic dynamic, political discourse is based on words, on the exchange of opinions, on the interpretation of facts concerning the community, therefore deliberative rhetoric is fundamental.
If we accept the idea of human fallibility, we must necessarily recognize the political rule of the majority, that is, an unscientific interpretation of reality that the community can amend as erroneous.
This dimension of possibility and perfectibility makes deliberative rhetoric assume a fundamental role in the context of democratic political discourse, understood as a non-arbitrary use of judgment governed by shared rules and with public objectives for a specific community. In contrast, the manipulative and demagogic rhetoric prevents dialogue by demonizing the opponent, the resulting resentment excludes critical reasoning in the face of the pronouncement of irrefutable truths.
Given these premises, no one escapes the revolutionary significance of deliberative rhetoric insofar as it tends to subvert, through critical and argumentative thought, the reasons of the adversary: "a revolutionary act is not just a political and economic tear, of the structure, but a tear that takes place in the way of thinking on the basis of reasons considered better than those of the adversary "(La Quasi Logica pag.15), therefore the power of the word is actually the cause of great social changes.
Gianfrancesco Caputo
https://zonadidisagio.wordpress.com/2020/12/07/la-retorica-una-possibilita-per-il-pensiero/