Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Reason as a Nexus of Natural Law and Rhetoric

  • Published:
Journal of Business Ethics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract.

Although the pages of Journal of Business Ethics have hosted an ongoing dialogue on the ethics of rhetoric and persuasion, the debates have been unable to account for the underlying morality of the human propensity to engage in rhetorical discourse as a part of living in society. In this paper, I offer natural-law ethical theory as a moral paradigm in which to examine rhetoric. In this context, I assert that rhetoric services reason, which in turn services our dispositions or inclinations that are one ideological foundation of natural-law theory. As rhetoric affects the apprehension of these dispositions it subsumes a related morality in which rhetorical endeavors can be seen as “natural”. So endowed, I believe that this conception of rhetoric offers a number of philosophical and practical implications, one of which is a new way to assess the morality of commercial manifestations of rhetoric such as spin and the use of puffery in advertising.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • T. Aquinas (1996) Treatise on Law (Summa Theologica Questions 90–97) Regnery Publishing Washington, DC

    Google Scholar 

  • R. Arrington (1982) ArticleTitle‘Advertising and Behavior Control’ Journal of Business Ethics 1 3–12

    Google Scholar 

  • B. Brummett (1976) ArticleTitle‘Some Implications of “Process” or “Intersubjectivity”: Postmodern Rhetoric’ Philosophy & Rhetoric 9 21–51

    Google Scholar 

  • B. Brummett (1981) ArticleTitle‘ A Defens e of Ethical relativism as Rhetorically as Grounded’ The Western Journal of Speech Communication 45 286–298

    Google Scholar 

  • B. Brummett (1982) ArticleTitle‘The Forum: On to Rhetorical Relativism’ Quarterly Journal of Speech 68 425–437

    Google Scholar 

  • B. Brummett (1990) ArticleTitle‘The Forum: The Reported Demise of Epistemic Rhetoric’ Quarterly Journal of Speech 9 69–72

    Google Scholar 

  • K. Burke (1950) A Rhetoric of Motives Prentice-Hall New York

    Google Scholar 

  • G. Campbell (1963) The Philosophy of Rhetoric Southern Illinois University press Carbondale

    Google Scholar 

  • R. Cherwitz (1995) ‘Rhetoric as “a Way of Knowing”: an Attenuation of the Epistemological Claims of the “ New Rhetoric ” W. Covina D. Jolliffe (Eds) Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries Allyn and Bacon Needham Heights

    Google Scholar 

  • R Crisp (1987) ArticleTitle‘Persuasive Advertising, Autonomy, and the Creation of Desire’ Journal of Business Ethics 6 413–418

    Google Scholar 

  • M. Crowe (1977) The Changing Profile of the Natural Law Martinus Nijhoff The Hague

    Google Scholar 

  • A. Cunningham (2003) ArticleTitle‘Autonomous Consumption: Buying Into the Ideology of Capitalism’ Journal of Business Ethics 48 229–236

    Google Scholar 

  • J. Finnis (1998) Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory Oxford University Press Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • L. Fuller (1969) The Morality of Law Yale University Press New Haven

    Google Scholar 

  • J. Golden E. Corbett (1968) The Rhetoric of Blair, Campbell, and Whately Holt, Rinehart and Winston New York

    Google Scholar 

  • W. Harpine (2004) ArticleTitle‘What Do You Mean, Rhetoric Is Epistemic?’ Philosophy & Rhetoric 37 335–352

    Google Scholar 

  • E. Hossein (1985) ArticleTitle‘The Informative and Persuasive Functions of Advertising: A Moral Appraisal – A Comment’ Journal of Business Ethics 4 1

    Google Scholar 

  • H. Kainz (2004) Natural Law: A Reexamination Open Court Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • J. Kastely (1997) Rethinking the Rhetorical Tradition: From Plato to Postmodernism Yale University Press New Haven

    Google Scholar 

  • L. Leslie (2004) Mass Communications Ethics Houghton Mifflin New York

    Google Scholar 

  • A. Lisska (1996) Aquinas’s Theory of Natural Law Clarendon Press Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • J. Maciejewski (2003) ArticleTitle‘Can Natural Law Defend Advertising?’ Journal of Mass Media Ethics 18 111–122

    Google Scholar 

  • Maciejewski J., Ozar D.: In Press, ‘How significant is the People’s Right to Know? Natural Law and the Right to Know in a Democracy’. Journal of Mass Media Ethics.

  • J. Maritain (1966) The Person and the Common Good University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame

    Google Scholar 

  • R. McKeon (1987) ‘The Uses of Rhetoric in a Technological Age: Architectonic Productive Arts’ M. Bachman (Eds) Rhetoric: Essays in Invention and Discovery. Oxbow Press Woodbridge

    Google Scholar 

  • C. Perelman L. Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969) The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame

    Google Scholar 

  • C. Ryan (1965) ‘The Traditional Concept of Natural Law: An Interpretation’ I. Evans (Eds) Light on the Natural Law Compass Books London

    Google Scholar 

  • R. Scott (1967) ArticleTitle‘On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic’ Central States Speech journal 18 9–16

    Google Scholar 

  • R. Scott (1973) ArticleTitle‘On Not Defining ‘Rhetoric” Philosophy & Rhetoric 6 IssueID(2 81–96

    Google Scholar 

  • R. Scott (2000) ArticleTitle‘The Forum: Between Silence and Certainty: A Codicil To ’Dialectical Tensions of Speaking and Silence’ Quarterly journal of Speech 86 108–110

    Google Scholar 

  • K. Wallace (1943) Francis Bacon on Communication and Rhetoric University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill

    Google Scholar 

  • K. Watson (1973) ArticleTitle‘A Rhetorical and Sociolinguistic Model for the Analysis of Narrative’ American.Anthropologist 75 243–264

    Google Scholar 

  • A. Walzer (1995) ArticleTitle‘Rhetoric and Gender in Jane Austen’s Persuasion’ College English 57 688–707

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Creighton University, Hitchcock 209B, 2500 California Plaza, 68178, Omaha, NE, U.S.A.

    Jeffrey J. Maciejewski

Authors
  1. Jeffrey J. Maciejewski
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeffrey J. Maciejewski.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Maciejewski, J.J. Reason as a Nexus of Natural Law and Rhetoric. J Bus Ethics 59, 247–257 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-005-3437-5

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-005-3437-5

Keywords

Search

Navigation