Rhetoric that Kills, Rhetoric that Heals

Abstract

The political context of a throng of courtiers engaged in keen competition to be heard by a lord whose power was not limited by any institutional mechanism, accounts for the highly risky and often deadly game of political persuasion in the pre-imperial period. In this article I examine how early Chinese speeches of persuasion hover between reason and treason, salvation and suicide. Without seeking to exhaust the wealth and ambiguities of each text drawn on, I aim to identify and evaluate contrasting attitudes, ranging from cognitive optimism to moral pessimism, regarding the capacity of language to convince and influence the listener or improve his behavior.After analyzing in the Han Feizi and in the Intrigues of the Warring States a type of deliberative rhetoric that disregards moral ends, I turn to situations where, for once, rhetoric does not serve the purpose of winning a case, obtaining something specific or defeating an opponent, but seeks to accomplish the highest task of the educated man (shi) : that of changing the ruler, reforming his mind, triggering a process of transformation that may have an impact on the political body at large.