- The Orwell test: Was the article written in good, clear English?
- The scholarship test: Was its knowledge base sound and well grounded?
- The Alzheimer test: Could I remember its contents clearly several days after reading it?
- The durability test: Is it likely to be read some years later, or was it just good current comment?
- The originality test: Did it have something distinctly new to say?
Finlayson’s
article ‘Proving, Pleasing and Persuading? Rhetoric in Contemporary British
Politics’ (85, 4: 428-36) just had something special. From a highly classical
starting point – Cicero’s ideas on the use of rhetoric – and two speeches by
Conservative prime ministers – Balfour in 1903 and Cameron in 2013 – he
constructed an extraordinary critique of contemporary British public life. At
the heart of it was a discussion around the observation:
The greatest difference between contemporary British political
culture and the presuppositions of a rhetorical polity is the absence from the
former of a strong sense of the ‘common’ – of a people that could and should
meaningfully and purposefully govern and judge itself….. [This] is the outcome
of an intellectual and principled objection, on the part of our political
elite, on ethical as well as empirical grounds, to a politics based on the
common good. (page 434)
You can read the article free here
You can read the article free here
