AKA: What is Rhetoric and Why does Modern Philosophy Hate it So Much?
Today’s Plan:
- Intro Activity
- Discuss Kant, Readings, Herrick, and Ong (6:00-7:15)
- Break (7:30-7:45)
- Syllabus (7:45-8:20) and readings discussion
- For Next Session: Lyotard (8:20 – fin)
Intro Activity
I have a question.
Review Readings
Sections of the Herrick Article:
Rhetoric and Persuasion (pg. 3-5). How does Herrick attempt to nudge our understanding of persuasion?
Rhetoric is Adapted to an Audience (pg. 8-10)
Rhetoric Reveals Human Motives and Rhetoric is Responsive (pg. 10-12)
Rhetoric Addresses Contingent Issues (pg. 15-16)
Rhetoric Tests Ideas (pg. 16-17)
Rhetoric Assists Advocacy (pg. 17-19)
Rhetoric Distributes Power (pg. 19-21)
Rhetoric Discovers Facts and Rhetoric Shapes Knowledge (pg. 21-22)
Rhetoric Builds Community (pg. 22-23)
I have a packet of supplemental materials to discuss the Readings chapters and the Kant.
I just published a thing about Ong.
Syllabus / Discuss Week 15 and Week 16 Readings
For Next Session:
There are three readings for next session:
- Read Lyotard, PoMo Condition, pp. 37-67 (from section 10 Legitimation to Conclusion).
- Read Bill Readings, University in Ruins, chapters 10, 11, and 12 (pp. 150-193).
- Read Richard Lanham, “The Q Question.” (pp. 155-194).
There is a discussion forum post that focuses on the Lyotard and Readings in Canvas.
Let’s prep some Lyotard.
- Jameson’s forward–the crisis of modern epistemology (based on objectivity of observation, sense of the senses), viii.
- An institutional switch: from epistemology to performativity (drenched in capitalism & efficiency)
- Lyotard’s opposition to consensus (echoes of Nietzsche), xviii-xix.
- Cool line rejecting modern autonomy and individuality, p. 15. Language as the medium of our social bond.
- Legitimation of Scientific Knowledge (is on shaky grounds), p. 25, 29
- What I haven’t copied is that the Legitimation of Culture is on equally shaky grounds (e.g., Hegel’s spirit/progress as a historical certainty). In both systems some entity, agent, idea, exists transcendental to the system that ensures its certainty, legitimates the system, but that entity, agent, idea–by being transcendent–is beyond legitimation itself.
Lanham:
One of my favorite essays, but the first few pages are kind of a mess. Lanham’s distinction between weak and strong notions of rhetoric doesn’t really emerge until later in the essay. Pre-work:
- Plato’s ontology and epistemology is very similar to Kant’s in that it projects a realm of though/truth that exists prior to human language and communication. Philosophers do not invent ideas, they discover them–gain access to them. Language, then, should ideally just be a neutral conveyor of information (which it never can be for reasons but it is too early to mess with Derrida and Kenneth Burke). At worst, Plato acknowledges that certified philosophers (certified only by Plato) might use rhetoric in order to convince the ignorant masses to not feed them hemlock. I hate Plato. He is a fascist. I do not mean this metaphorically. We do not have time to read his Republic.
I don’t think you need any more pre-work on the Bill Readings–by now it should be obvious that his book attempts to translate Lyotard into his experiences working in an English department in the late 1990s, after the “canon” wars and the rise of (pomo) theory and cultural studies. He’s also working in quite a bit of Levinas–and I will return back to him and highlight that when we read Levinas in week 4.
