Cicero’s Combination of Philosophy and Rhetoric and the Crisis of Political Mediation

ABSTRACT

Cicero’s perfect orator/statesman, combining rhetoric and philosophy, is a collection of paradoxes: at ease with both abstract theory and concrete particularity; committed to justice, yet realistic if not opportunistic at times; proficient in rhetoric, but fully aware of its limits. Though often met with skepticism, little attention has gone to the most productive element of this ideal: mediation. In a moment marked by a rejection of mediation across society, we must reconsider the prospects and challenges of mediation between philosophy and rhetoric, starting from its original context: politics. Modern democracy, founded on mediation and inspired by this Ciceronian ideal, is worryingly shifting toward immediacy—embracing techno-populist forms of antipolitics, reducing representation and deliberation to identity clashes, or promoting a narcissistic hyperpoliticization of the self and the decomposition of socially sanctioned languages and norms. The question thus arises of whether this ancient form of mediation might still prove fruitful today.