Review

Reviewed Work(s): Adam Smith: The Rhetoric of Propriety by Stephen J. McKenna

Review by: John D. Schaeffer
Source: Style, Vol. 40, No. 4, General Issue (Winter 2006), pp. 368-374
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/style.40.4.368
Accessed: 12-09-2017 10:10 UTC

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368 Book Reviews

the finely tuned receptivity to Shakespeares work that some of the authors in this
collection demonstrate needs to be matched by equally fine-grained knowledge
of the cognitive science available. Only then can significant progress be made in
understanding the unique, both particular (culturally and historically embedded)
and universal (cross-cultural) appeal of this greatest of playwrights.
Other Works Cited
Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare.
New York: Norton, 2004.
Hogan, Patrick Colm. The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human
Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003.
LeDoux, Joseph. The Emotional Brain. London: Phoenix, 1999.

Yanna Popova
Case Western Reserve University

Stephen J. McKenna. Adam Smith: The Rhetoric of Propriety. Albany: State

University of New York Press, 2006. ix + 184 pp. $71.50 cloth; $22.95 paper.
Stephen McKennas book discusses the rhetorical theory of Adam Smith, the same
Adam Smith who wrote The Wealth of Nations. Between 1748 and 1751 Smith
lectured on rhetoric three different times at Edinburgh. Smiths copies of the lectures
were apparently burned on Smiths orders just before his death, but a set of student
notes on the lectures was discovered in 1958. These were published by Oxford
University Press in 1983 as Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres. In addition to
these lectures, McKenna considers Smiths Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), the
first book Smith ever published. McKenna focuses his analysis on Smiths idea of
propriety, and he claims that for Smith ethical propriety in conduct is analogous
to and derived from rhetorical propriety in discourse. To establish this analogy
and tease out its important implications, McKenna marshals an impressive range
of data and focuses it with impressive results.
McKennas book began life as his dissertation: chapter 1 states the problem,
Smith and the Problem of Propriety; chapter 2 presents the deep background,
Smith and Propriety in the Classical Tradition; chapter 3 presents the immediate
background, Rhetorical Propriety in Eighteenth-Century Theories of Discourse;
chapter 4 analyzes the earlier work, Propriety in Smiths Rhetoric Lectures;
chapter 5 analyzes the later text, Propriety in The Theory of Moral Sentiments,
and chapter 6, Conclusions, Provocations, draws out the implications of the
foregoing chapters.
In the first chapter McKenna summarizes in a few paragraphs the current
scholarly opinion about rhetorical propriety: (1) that propriety is purely intuitive or
(2) that it masks an ideology. McKenna cites Roland Barthes, Stanley Fish, Richard

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Book Reviews 369

Lanham, and others to show that the latter is by far the more popular view today
because the idea of propriety has been absorbed into postmodern Sophism (35).
To begin recovering the original meaning of propriety, McKenna briefly describes
the milieu of the Scottish Enlightenment with particular attention to esthetics and
ethics. The Act of Union (1707) had jeopardized Scottish culture, and the crushing
of the rebellions of 1715 and 1745 exacerbated the problem of Scottish cultural
identity. At the same time, however, Scotland enjoyed a period of religious toler-
ance and a rejuvenated educational system. The Scots rhetoricians Hugh Blair and
George Campbell tried to synthesize Aristotelian rhetoric with the emerging science
of psychology, and philosophers like Thomas Reid and Francis Hutcheson worked
at developing ethical theories that could compete with Descartes and Hobbes. Both
disciplines turned to concepts like taste, propriety, and common sense to forge their
alternative positions. Smith was born into this rich intellectual life, and McKenna
concludes his first chapter with a short biography of Smith, including a brief cata-
logue of the books in Smiths personal library. This catalogue testifies not only to
Smiths profound learning and command of ancient and modern languages but also
to his reading of modern works on rhetoric, including those by Campbell, Thomas
Sheridan, Du Marsais, and William Barron. This chapter thus shows Smith to have
been born into an intellectual environment preoccupied with questions of ethical
and rhetorical propriety, and it shows Smith to have been uniquely qualified to
address those questions.
In chapter 2, describing the role and meanings of propriety in classical rhetoric,
McKenna begins with the most remote etymology available: the Greek noun to
prepon, which means to appear conspicuously before the eyes (26). McKenna
points out that this original definition already implies clear sensory perception,
pleasurable aesthetic response, and a conspicuous social appearance for the agent
and that these conform to some cosmic or natural order (26). Throughout the book
McKenna will trace the history of propriety in terms of these visually based impli-
cations. He claims that the visual basis of the root metaphor for propriety leads to
a significant development in both rhetoric and ethics. He says that the Greek idea
of propriety, whether in rhetoric or ethics, requires a spectator; that is, both the
speaker and the ethical agent must consider how their words or deeds will appear
to some other, possibly disinterested person (3132). Beginning his analysis with
the Sophists, he points out that Protagoras would have denied that propriety could
be mastered as a technique; rather he would see it as a matter of instinct. On the
other hand, McKenna claims that Gorgiass skepticism would have required him
to be adaptive to an audience, the topic, the situation, and so on. To this extent,
says McKenna, Gorgiass position on propriety resembles Humes position on taste
(31). It is not a set of norms but a behavior (32). And it is a behavior that requires
the speaker to put himself in the position of the spectator in order to know what
would please him or her (32).
Next McKenna inspects the role of propriety in Plato and Aristotle. He ar-
gues that for Plato propriety is nearly a theoretical impossibility (32) but that it

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370 Book Reviews

can function in the very limited role that Plato, in the Phaedrus, allows rhetoric.
Propriety can mean suitability to a particular kind of soul, but Plato can allow that
only in one-on-one discourse. He describes no way for speech to be proper to a
diverse audience (36). McKenna then turns to Aristotle and spends more time on
him than on any other rhetorician. First, McKenna points out that when Aristotle
discusses propriety in Book 3 of the Rhetoric, he links it to clarity, that is, to clear,
correct diction that requires consideration of the audience and circumstances of the
discourse. McKenna adds that the interconnection of clarity and propriety played
a significant role in Smiths Lectures (37) but that Smith construes the relationship
differently. For Aristotle, McKenna says, propriety should characterize logos, since
to prepon involves conspicuous appearance occasioning a conscious rational and
aesthetic response from hearers (43). Smith, on the other hand, makes propriety
a function of psychology: Smith treats propriety as virtually excluding reason; he
emphasizes instead its functioning within the psychology of the emotions (43).
McKenna concludes his survey of classical rhetoric by considering Hellenistic
and Roman rhetoric. He gives the greatest attention to Cicero, who, McKenna says,
developed an idea of propriety quite different from Aristotles: Whereas Aristotle
had linked propriety and clarity, Cicero defines appropriateness (aptum) together
with the fitting (congruens) as the management of ornatus according to situation
[De oratore] (3.53) (48). In the De oratore Cicero makes propriety a quality of
ornament, but, McKenna points out, in the De officiis Cicero follows Stoic teaching
that says propriety is a prescription to obey culturally determined convention,
and to this extent, adds McKenna, propriety is not merely a cultural construct, for
it is an aspect of human nature knowable apart from the variation of cultural form
(49; emphasis his). McKenna argues that for Cicero rhetorical propriety and ethical
propriety are analogous, and McKenna distinguishes two kinds of ethical propriety
for Cicero: general propriety, which organizes those aspects of human nature that
make humans superior to animals, and subordinate propriety, which is cultivated
by training and education and which includes self-control, temperance, and civi-
lized behavior (50). The thrust of the analogy is that virtue is knowable . . . only
through an apprehension of propriety, which is the sensible correspondence between
character and deed, almost inevitably deeds spoken or accompanied by speech
(50). McKenna concludes that for Cicero, propriety prescribes actions consistent
with universal human nature, social nature, and individual nature, and so for Cicero
ethical propriety and rhetorical propriety are ultimately indistin-guishable (50).
McKennas survey of propriety in classical rhetoric is one of the books strongest
features, although one wishes that McKenna had said more about Isocrates, who
closely identified ethical propriety and rhetorical effectiveness. McKenna mentions
him as being one of the authors in Smiths library, and comments on him only in
two notes. Nevertheless the chapter provides enough background for McKennas
purposes, and he proceeds in the next chapter to contextualize Smiths idea of
propriety among his eighteenth-century con-temporaries.
McKenna introduces his treatment of eighteenth-century rhetoric by summariz-

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Book Reviews 371

ing the emergence of the plain style and its relation to science. In the plain style,
McKenna says, propriety is almost exclusively concerned with diction appropriate to
the subject matter and is no longer concerned with appropriateness to the audience
(55). McKenna discusses Smiths complex adaptation of Lockean epistemology
and its concomitant theory of language. He suggests that Smith held for a residual
trace of ethical appropriateness in Lockes notion of propriety (56). McKenna then
moves on to consider the issue of taste in eighteenth-century ethics and aesthetics.
He provides a very good, if brief, account of Shaftesburys philosophy of taste, as
well as an account of the philosophy of Hutcheson, a follower of Shaftesbury whose
thought has received serious scholarly attention in the last decade. McKenna also
shows how French critics like Dominique Bouhours influenced Hume and Smith.
McKennas survey of eighteenth-century thought on propriety is well-balanced and
perspicuous and is another of the books highlights.
McKenna continues to draw on his analogy between propriety and sight and
the need for a spectators perspective. He shows how Humes concept of taste
uses this model, and he credits Richard Addison and Joseph Steeles Spectator with
decisive influence on Smith by making the spectator model part of the common
vocabulary of the eighteenth century. While taste may not be subject to disputa-
tion, it is pre-eminently a subject for conversation and is cultivated by it. McKenna
concludes this chapter by arguing that propriety, like taste, implies shared social
circumstances and shared discourse.
After establishing the classical and proximate historical contexts for Smiths
thought, McKenna turns to the Lectures in Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres. He imme-
diately points out that Smith used some of the same material for both his lectures
on rhetoric and his course on moral philosophy. He also points out that Smith wrote
his Theory of Moral Sentiments while he was delivering the lectures on rhetoric
and belles lettres (7778). McKenna analyzes Smiths lectures in order. He begins
by distinguishing Smiths notion of propriety from Aristotles. For the latter a
relatively objective clarity is all that is needed for rhetorical appropriateness,
while for Smith clarity is abetted by proper deployment of affective connotations
(81). McKenna sums up the difference: For Aristotle, if you are clear, you will be
appropriate; for Smith, if you are appropriate, you will be clear (81). The issue
now becomes how affective connotations are to be deployed properly. McKenna
finds the answer to this question in Smiths sixth lecture. He cites a passage that
he calls Smiths central rhetorical tenet:
When the sentiment of the speaker is expressed in a neat, clear, plain and clever manner,
and the passion or affection he is possessed of and intends, by sympathy, to communicate
to his hearer, is plainly and cleverly hit off, then and then only the expression has all the
force and beauty language can give it (1.5.56). (87; emphasis his)

In the rest of the chapter McKenna teases out the implications of this statement.
He points out that sentiment cannot be merely emotion. Rather, as a mixture
of emotion and critical judgment, a sentiment is a passion that extends itself in
the form of approbation or disapprobation (90). Once this judgmental function is

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372 Book Reviews

attributed to sentiment, it is clear that pathos plays a larger role in Smiths rhetoric
than in classical rhetoric. McKenna says that for Smith pathos does a good portion
of the work that in classical rhetoric is more typically assigned to logos (92). To
accomplish this work, pathos must be controlled by the speaker, and this connects
propriety of speech to propriety of character; that is, evocation of passion in the
hearer requires that the speaker control, not just display, his own passions (9394).
McKenna turns his attention next to how Smith says passions are to be evoked,
and that leads him to invention. Immediately one sees a major difference between
Smiths rhetoric and that of the classical rhetoricians. For them invention was the
discovery of arguments, that is, it fell mainly under the rubric of logos. For Smith,
however, invention was concerned with pathos. Smith rejected the classical topics
and stasis theory and instead focused on description (95). Description, he said, was
the mode best suited to arousing the emotions, and he delineated two methods for
describing things. The first he called the direct method, and it is essentially an enu-
merative method, the standard and most familiar way of describing something. The
second method he called indirect, and McKenna says that this method is something
altogether original with Smith (95). The indirect method is a description in which
the writer or speaker describes the effects this quality [being described] has on
those who behold it (1.160) (96). In other words, Smith again introduces into the
discourse a spectator who can stimulate, mediate, and shape the affect produced
by the description. Thus the description creates sentiment, an affect controlled by
critical and/or ethical judgment of a fictional spectator. The sentiment is reinforced
by the spectators testimony; that is, he or she becomes a witness (albeit a fictional
one), someone who reconstitutes an appropriate spectator though whom to refract
a presentation of an object of discourse (97). The reader or hearer identifies with
this appropriate spectator and accepts his or her perspective and judgment.
McKenna neatly sums up the way Smith relates ethos and pathos to propriety:
The rhetor must first have an appropriate sentiment toward an object (which presumes
having a certain gentlemanly ethos cultivated and educated in civilized society), then the
rhetor must use the method of description suited to the object and the aim of the discourse.
The superior tactic is almost always the indirect method, which refracts the sentiment
through the sensibility of another spectator of the object. (101)

McKenna then adds that the same process is at work in Smiths Theory of Moral
Sentiments because the fictional spectator is also the foundation of moral propriety
in that work.
McKenna discusses how Smith involves rhetoric in his theory of ethical
propriety. He begins by pointing out that the concrete situation of rhetoric is the
originary site for moral thinking, by which he means that, like rhetoric, morality
is concerned with contingency, particularity, and epistemology (111). McKenna
claims that the idea of moral sentiments was Smiths response to Hobbes and
Mandevilles philosophy of self-interest (114). McKenna goes on to describe how
Smith develops a theory of transactive emotions, that is, emotions that are moral
sentiments because they motivate certain kinds of relationships and behaviors,
and these sentiments or transactive emotions constitute morality (11417). In

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Book Reviews 373

short, morality resides in the disposition or sentiment to behave morally, not in

the behavior itself. This moral sentiment can and should be aroused by rhetoric,
and the way Smith develops this theory leads McKenna to claim that Smith makes
an original contribution to the age-old question of whether rhetorical training and
practice can be ethically formative (119). McKenna claims that Smith sees a real,
if limited, role for rhetoric in ethical formation.
That role is the restraint of the passions for rhetorical purposes. Such restraint
results in a particular style; in fact McKenna defines Smiths idea of style as rhe-
torically modified passion (122). The foundation of this passion, and the ground
of Smiths disagreement with Hobbes, is sympathy. Sympathy, fellow-feeling for
others, is both the motive for persuasion and the goal of propriety. Yet it is aroused
and rhetorically modified by the rhetor who inspects and controls his own expres-
sions of emotion through a fictional spectator who encourages the audience to
identify with him or her. By seeking sympathy through propriety, [moral agents]
actively transcend self-interest (119).
McKenna then describes how precisely Smith articulates the nature of the
sympathetic identification that occurs between principal agents and spectators
of moral actions (128). The basis of the identification is the common standard of
morality and civility that the rhetoric invokes and the rhetor models. The standards
articulation posits the existence in the rhetor of a divided selfwhich is nothing
else than the internalization of the rhetorical situation (130). The rhetor sees his
or her own moral situation in the context of propriety (i.e., as a spectator) and if
necessary changes it to make it appropriateand effectiveand at the same time
the rhetor conforms to that standard internally.
McKenna concludes his argument by stating what Smiths idea of propriety
contributes to contemporary scholarship in rhetoric: (1) a firm commitment to the
particular situation, persons, context, and moment and a refusal to attempt to tran-
scend them; (2) a significant de-emphasis on the role of reason in moral thinking;
(3) a rhetorical model of moral thought that insists that morality be theorized as a
practice. He then adds how he thinks Smiths concept of propriety may contribute
to discussions of contemporary problems. In the conclusions final three pages he
briefly describes what propriety may contribute to the debates over abortion, aid to
the poor, and political correctness (14547). The inclusion of the three examples
at the very end of the argument highlights a potential aggravation: a reader may
have wished for earlier examples of rhetorical arguments from propriety, or ethical
actions motivated by propriety, or rhetoric that moves from passion to sympathy
to sentiment, and so on. McKenna, however, keeps his argument at a fairly high
level of abstraction. The book itself concludes with a very helpful Critical Note
on Sources and Scholarship (14956).
One must be grateful to McKenna for providing access to the rhetorical theory
of the eighteenth century by clarifying one of its broadest and most elusive concepts.
McKennas advocacy of this concept, however, is limited. Propriety cannot serve
as a bulwark against crass self-interest, imposture, hypocrisy, and malice. While

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374 Book Reviews

McKenna exfoliates the eighteenth centurys efforts to forge a link between rhetori-
cal education and virtue, those efforts rest upon a belief in natural sympathy that
many would say the history of the twentieth century conclusively refutes.
John D. Schaeffer
Northern Illinois University

Reuven Tsur. Kubla KhanPoetic Structure, Hypnotic Quality, and Cognitive

Style: A Study in Mental, Vocal, and Critical Performance. Human Cognitive
Processing 16. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2006. xii + 252 pp. $132.00 cloth.
Reuven Tsur is one of the major figures in cognitive poetics and has been for many
years. His work involves painstakingly detailed empirical study interpreted in the
context of cognitive and related theories. The present volume partially reprints earlier
work but expands and develops that work. It advances Tsurs research program in
illuminating ways. Anyone interested in cognitive poetics, particularly in cognitive
stylistics, would benefit from reading this book.
The book exhibits Tsurs usual virtuesclarity of thought, empirical exactitude,
and literary sensitivity. But, like all books, it has flaws as well. Primarily, I do not
feel that the book has been revised as thoroughly as it should have been. Several
problems result from this. Some are small but significant. For example, most of
the chapters treat Kubla Khan. But one crucial, empirical chapter does not. Other
problems are larger. For instance, there is not a clear theoretical statement of the
principles underlying Tsurs analysis. In the following pages, I will try to elucidate
the only partially explicit theoretical framework of the book. I will point toward
some problems with the implementation of this framework in the present study
and suggest some of its promise for future research.
Tsur begins with a simple division of important literary phenomena into those
based in the text and those based in the reader. This already suggests his orientation,
which is firmly within the traditions of response/reception. Tsur seems particularly
close to the German school, though he does not make explicit reference to such
figures as Wolfgang Iser, Hans Robert Jauss, or the phenomenologists who preceded
them. In any case, by focusing exclusively on the text and the reader, Tsur largely
leaves aside the author in his analyses. There is nothing wrong with this. But one
wishes that Tsur had simply acknowledged that other critics may be interested in
the author and that there is nothing wrong with that either. In the opening chapter,
Tsur rather harshly criticizes a number of critics treating Kubla Khan. For the
most part, these critics are concerned with the author and/or the context in which
the author produced his poem. Tsur rejects their analyses as extrinsic, as failing to
treat the poem itself. But these critics adopt a productive rather than a receptive
approach. From their point of view, the author and the text are bound up with one
another so that discussing the author is not extrinsic. Indeed, from the productive
point of view, discussing readers is extrinsic.

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