Political Rhetoric And Communicative Society In The Digital Era

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DOI: 10.15405/epsbs.2021.12.03.27
PERAET 2021
International Scientific Conference «PERISHABLE AND ETERNAL: Mythologies and Social
Technologies of Digital Civilization-2021»
POLITICAL RHETORIC AND COMMUNICATIVE SOCIETY IN
THE DIGITAL ERA
Nikolay A. Kashchey (a)*, Vsevolod O. Shipulin (b), Stanislava A. Bazikyan (c)
*Corresponding author
(a) Yaroslav-the-Wise Novgorod State University (NovSU), Veliky Novgorod, Russian Federation,
Nikolay.Kashchey@novsu.ru
(b) Yaroslav-the-Wise Novgorod State University (NovSU), Veliky Novgorod, Russian Federation,
Vsevolod.Shipulin@novsu.ru
(c)Yaroslav-the-Wise Novgorod State University (NovSU), Veliky Novgorod, Russian Federation,
Stanislava83@yandex.ru
Abstract
This article is devoted to political rhetoric as a mechanism of interaction and a tool for regulating
collective consent in modern communicative society in the context of its global digitalization. Using the
well-known Habermasian idea of political rhetoric as a necessary tool for finding political reason, which
is trying to turn the analysis of political actions in the process of identifying collective will (respectively,
decentralized in an open digital space) into a reasonable consensual resource, we strive not so much to
ascertain the possibilities of such rhetoric to guarantee the comprehension of universal expression of will,
but to determine the extent to which Habermas's communicative society can provide consensus in new
digital realities. In this theory of communicative society the term consensus itself is terminologically and
theoretically linked with the well-known ancient tradition (the Aristotelian theory of politics and
rhetoric), where the persuasive potential of arguments and free discussion are the basis for socio-political
interaction, which refers us to the equally rich neo-Aristotelian model of understanding consensus. Our
goal is not to reconstruct Habermas's theory of discourse in the light of Aristotelian principles; this does
not cause any doubts and can be called the development of political rhetoric in a procedural democracy.
We are talking about the search for an intelligible rhetorical methodology that meets the modern
requirements of digital society, can operate in a state of vast information with a constant stream of
ideologically motivated and often fake news, and is capable of providing the principles of open politics.
2357-1330 © 2021 Published by European Publisher.
Keywords: Communication society, consensus, digital society, persuasiveness, political rhetoric

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1. Introduction
Despite the information boom of recent decades, the research interest of modern humanitarian
knowledge in political rhetoric remains insignificant, although, if we recall the historical tradition of
Antiquity, political rhetoric, both genetically and systematically, played a special role in philosophy,
politics, and in the life of the citizens of the polis. The lack of this interest, according to some authors, is
primarily due to the difficulties of the interdisciplinary nature of the problems under study. Although
recently interesting works on modern political communication have appeared, related to “changing the
format of political practices, rejecting traditional ways of forming political ideas, visualizing and
virtualizing the theoretical and practical components of political activity” (Dorofeev & Semenova, 2020,
p. 687), it is also worth noting the rhetorical-political analysis of political debates (Shibata, 2020), and,
related to this, the analysis of the personalistic depths of the personality of the politician (Karabushenko
& Gainutdinova, 2020), its syncretism and "Doublethinking" (Zolyan, 2018), and the role of
persuasiveness in achieving the goals of political communication (Zolyan, 2015).
If we talk about the role of persuasiveness in achieving the goals of political communication, then
it is undoubtedly necessary to turn to Habermas's theory of communication and the role of political
rhetoric in it, especially since recently there have been attempts to adapt this theory, popular in the last
quarter of the last century, to the specific modern conditions of the power of digital dominance in all
spheres of society. This is not only about the fact that Habermas's theory of society, which, without
abandoning its critical ambitions, abandoned the certainty of the philosophy of history, cannot play any
other political role than drawing attention through a rather sensitive diagnosis of current events to the
essential ambivalences of our historical situation (Rochlitz, 2002, p. 161), rather it is worth mentioning
the extensive research devoted to the influence of Habermas on the nature of European integration
(Grewal, 2019), as well as the analysis of the problem of correlation in the era of the number of
discussion and consensus (Jezierska, 2019). A separate work is devoted to political rhetoric as a special
form of political proceduralism, which focuses on Jurgen Habermas's most complex, sophisticated and
ambitious attempt to confront the tension between reason and power (Allen, 2020). And finally, it is
worth pointing out the reading under the new conditions of the famous controversy between Habermas
and Rawls: “The Habermas-Rawls Debate” (Finlayson, 2019).
For our part, continuing the research related to political rhetoric in its various manifestations (see:
Kashchey et al., 2021) in this case, drawing attention to the relationship between politics and rhetoric in
the digital age, we want to emphasize the characteristic of these relations consensus problems. We are
interested in the belief in the power of arguments and, accordingly, the possibility of persuasiveness as a
means of information and its rational potential for public discussion, this will become the object of our
close attention.
2. Problem Statement
In the context of the indicated problem, the following issue arises in this work. It is necessary to
analyze how, in a modern digital society, the core of which, speaking in Habermas's language, is the
internal tension between factuality and reliability, between power and reason, i.e. in the conditions of the

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contradiction between factuality and reliability, which underlie the theory of communicative action, open
public policy is possible and is it possible at all.
3. Research Questions
This research problem finds a solution in the answer to the following question: is our rapidly
developing society able, and, on occasion, “how”, in modern conditions of “digital freedom” to solve the
problem of the cognitive imbalance between universalism and the private nature of interests? In other
words, is Habermas's communicative society and the political rhetoric it procedurally interpreted to be
relevant in today's digital society?
4. Purpose of the Study
The aim of the study is to update the Habermas theory of communicative society and the place in it
of procedural political rhetoric in the modern context of the formation of a new digital rhetorical culture,
and in general is associated with the increasing role and demand for digital space in a modern, networked,
multidimensional society with a heterarchical, instead of a hierarchical, structure that has become a
completely different open space not only for political struggle, but for "claims to justification"
(Montgomery, 2017, p. 619), which give rise to "constructions and distortions in representing political
facts" (Temmerman et al., 2019, p. 1).
5. Research Methods
The methodological basis of all our studies on political rhetoric, as well as the present, is
neorhetoric as a theory of persuasion and argumentation. Within the framework of this methodology, a
non-rhetorical study of a designated topic consists in following a methodological requirement: if non-
rhetoric acts as a standardized and representative way of persuading the use of language, then it is
possible in this language to reliably express the function of non-rhetoric in seeking a political reason and
ensuring collective agreement.
The effectiveness of this methodological requirement in relation to an attempt to conceptually
combine the theory of a communicative society and persuasive rhetoric is confirmed by the Aristotelian
tradition since Antiquity, where, in its well-known classification of sciences, practical philosophy saw the
main theoretical problem as the task of ideologically ensuring the living conditions of the citizens of the
polis and its construction on the principles of justice. and not, as it might seem, the strategic and tactical
issues of achieving and securing power. Any society and political, in particular, in its democratic
understanding, has a number of opportunities for joint discussion of collective problems and has the need
to achieve public consensus. Moreover, the ability to do this is not natural, but is the result of cultural
development. The loss of this artificially acquired ability and need is possible, if we ignore their rational
foundations, a political person cannot be without a Homo sapiens. With this loss, we are primarily
rhetoric, like the art of public consultation.
The requirements of this methodological principle are expressed in the fact that a public meeting
cannot, only by virtue of its argumentative nature and logically consistent and consistent procedure, reach

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an acceptable consensus outside the conditions, which led to the necessary convictions, and the strength
of the arguments is such that for the overwhelming majority of citizens all problems standing in the way
of achieving social harmony. There is always a larger set of arguments, social guarantees and political
promises introduced into the circulation of a public meeting than they can be brought in only by logic and
argumentation resource. This is not about Habermas's renewal of politics in the spirit of Aristotelianism
and the theoretical support of the well-known concept of deliberative (deliberative) democracy, because,
as Habermas emphasizes, this modernization is doomed, and because in them the system of rational
conditions from the very beginning links the “democratic process, as he is actually carried out in a
specific social-state formation with the need to present it as an instrumentalist distorted policy”
(Habermas, 1992, p. 337). This, of course, is a hairpin in the direction of a Rollsian just society, although
there are, of course, other addressees from the camp of the well-known and influential, first of all,
American non-Aristotelianism and its models of a communicative society, and is directed against the
belief in the inviolability of the substantial essence of morality.
6. Findings
The study of the relevance of Habermas's communicative society and the procedurally interpreted
political rhetoric by it in a modern digital society must begin with their theoretical origins, with an
analysis of the Aristotelian principles of thinking, which are accordingly used to substantiate the
consensual nature of the social structure and political expression. We have already pointed out a number
of obstacles associated with the definition of personal and collective morality in the conditions of the
Aristotelian understanding of the idea of the highest good, it is also worth pointing out the well-known
position on the integration of the family into the polis, which, under the pressure of habitual, common
opinions, is brought to an adequate meaning and set of these opinions protects them from serious
objections, finally, a reference in public discourse to the inviolability of the norms of the common good,
virtue and justice. It is clear that in the Habermasian understanding all this smells of mothballs, of
unnecessary European metaphysics, but without which, however, neither political neo-Aristotelianism nor
the resulting Kammunitarian philosophy of a just society is possible, therefore, a fundamental revision of
the old and modern European metaphysics is required, in fact, is undertaken in the theory of Habermas's
communicative society. Let us turn to the Aristotelian understanding of the social structure in order to
consider the indicated doubts about the need to literally combine the historical and modern models of
deliberative democracy in the light of modern digital realities.
The aforementioned customary, common opinions are the cornerstone in the model of deliberative
democracy, since they are the methodologically basis for ensuring public consensus. Stagirite, as you
know, called them "en-doxa", which can hardly serve as a basis for ensuring in practice public consent in
the process of making a significant collective decision, therefore, it is necessary to change the quality of
en-doxa, to expand it in relation to doxa: to en-doxa we should include opinions that, although not shared
by everyone, still enjoy wide public support. This is not a rhetorical question at all: what are these
opinions that are worthy of wide public recognition? A burning question not only for Antiquity, but also
for the modern information society, no less. So, in the Aristotelian understanding, the weight of value
concepts is directly related to who interprets the meaning of these concepts and what moral authority they

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have. A difference of opinion is a difference in the people who express it. Therefore, what is important is
what appears to the Greek noble husband as valuable and significant. Consequently, en-doxa does not
express the universal essence of the logos or absolute truth, but only the public position, as it is now
customary to call it, of the elite. The height of a position is directly related to the social status of its
protector and depends on social respectability.
Combining the importance of opinions with the respectability of the social counterparties
expressing them plunges the process of argumentation into social practice, the goals of which are poorly
combined by the rational requirements of the argumentation process, and which, as a rule, boil down to an
argument to authority. Since this kind of argumentation implements the function of legitimizing an
authoritative opinion, it is believed that in the current functionally diverse and multi-sectoral society, the
criteria of authority are functionally diverse and multi-sectoral, moreover, due to the prevalence of digital
culture, the argument to authority is increasingly being supplanted by the argument to fashion, especially
in areas of politics, where they are less and less subject to authority and more and more follow political
fashion. In modern conditions of the dominance of digital technologies, the dominance of opinion is
always temporary and contextual, therefore, in Habermas's communicative society, its ideal premises are
presented instead of dominant opinions.
These arguments should not be considered in the spirit that Habermas's attempt to substantiate the
project of deliberative democracy on an Aristotelian basis in order to rationalize modern politics looks
dubious. In addition to the common terminology with Aristotelianism, there is little that connects them;
political rhetoric in a communicative society is not the development of traditional rhetoric and a
philosophical return to the old ancient tradition. Habermas's political rhetoric tries in a new way in
modern conditions to solve the problem of cooperation, the need for which is urgently felt by modern
society and thus expresses the essence of any model of rhetoric, which is based on the rational
foundations of the human mind, interaction in modern society is possible only on the basis of consent, if it
looks convincing to the overwhelming majority of members of this society. It is not possible to provide
such an agreement only by theoretical means, because “practical problems are always solved or rejected,
and the latter depends on value criteria and norms of practice” (Habermas, 1992, p. 267), which do not
agree well not only with the requirements of the considered theory and scientific methodology as a whole,
but such agreement should not rest on any arbitrary decisions, the German philosopher insists on its
rational essence, prudence and persuasiveness. The introduction of rationality is an unconditional
requirement not only of the Habermas communication model, but also an urgent need for its
implementation in the context of total digitalization.
And a few more words about the relevance of political rhetoric in a communicative society and its
possible relevance in the context of the modern big-data cave (Mironov, 2019). Any achievement of
agreement, speaking in Copperschmidt's language, presupposes the simultaneous persuasion and
persuasion, therefore, it is required to distinguish between actual agreement and true, reasonable. As you
know, the classical rhetoric did not solve this problem, only moral prohibitions are known - not to use a
public word to the detriment of another. The essence of this disadvantage lies in the fact that the resource
of reliability of arguments and means of persuasion is drawn from the consensual foundations of
previously made decisions, the stability of which is ensured by the moral principles of society, and not by

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Corresponding Author: Nikolay A. Kashchey
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the norms of universalism. Traditional rhetoric compensated for their absence by interpreting meaning,
thereby distorting the structure of communication and its conditions, depriving the search for agreement
of the communicative premises, which in Habermas's communicative society are called the ideal speech
situation. The latter guarantees free communication and should contribute to the achievement of universal
agreement, it represents a certain regulatory principle that seeks to critically analyze the rationality of
legitimizing any consensus. It is clear that this principle is procedural in nature, it does not speak about
the truth and rationality of the content of communication, but the rationality of the processes and
procedures of communication, these are the formal conditions of practical rationality or, in Habermas's
language, the principles of intelligent speech.
7. Conclusion
Habermas's model of a communicative society and political rhetoric is an attempt at a complex
combination of the procedural nature of human rationality and the concept of consent, with the help of
which he reconstructs the concept of deliberative democracy in his discourse theory, this is an attempt to
use the above procedural principles in the field of modern politics in such a way that in institutions
democracy, in the procedures of collective expression of will and political decision-making, an ideal
speech situation can bring pragmatism into political action. The essence of such a procedural
understanding of political rhetoric is, apparently, to ensure the necessary rationality of political decisions
with its help only on the basis of “the internal rationality of the unfolding corresponding process of
making managerial decisions” (Habermas, 1992, p. 368). To what extent it is possible to fulfill these
conditions in the context of increasing digitalization is certainly an open question, but if we want to
preserve the value of rationalism, then this is possible, in accordance with the proclaimed theses, only in a
similar procedural form.
It becomes obvious to us that the functioning of a democratic society in modern digital conditions
of increasingly complex interaction must overcome internal contradictions through rationalization,
enriching the procedures of public administration. The combination of private and general interests can be
achieved only through an open dialogue, drawing intellectual sources in the education system and
spiritual development, in the activities of the intelligentsia, students, socially active individuals who
create associations based on their interests and lead a dynamic discussion in order to identify acute
problems, formulate and achieving socially significant goals. Society becomes an intellectual source from
which democracy draws not only functional mechanisms of management, but also actual ideas of social
development, adaptation and transformation in accordance with changes in the external social
environment.
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