Even if we avoid the abyss by keeping ourselves distanced from our students and their thinking, rhetoric, itself, suffers as a result of the marriage of rhetoric and open admissions policies. That which is good, for Nietzsche, is by necessity rare. Thus, to the degree that we rhetoricians fulfill our mandate and teach our skill, we equally devalue the very skill we promote. As more and more people become fluent in rhetoric, according to Nietzsche, the value of rhetoric decreases. Even now, however, when more Americans are enrolled in universities than ever before, rhetoric has not completely severed its ties to the powerful and the aristocratic among us.
Rhetoric is still the art of power.
More than one cultural critic has remarked that the forces of capital, for example, have far outstripped the left's ability to employ effective rhetoric. It is the rhetoric of Madison Avenue, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill Gates that prevails, even now, at the height of the left's power in the rhetorical arts. Perhaps, then, what Nietzsche allows us to see is that rhetoric, now as always, is most fittingly, effectively, and properly the domain of the aristocracy. Return to The Nietzsche Conversation.