No one since Richard McKeon and Kenneth Burke has done more for rhetoric than Wayne Booth. Booth passed away several weeks ago. To mention his most important works:

The Rhetoric of Fiction, 1961, 1983
Now Don't Try to Reason With Me: Essays... 1970
A Rhetoric of Irony, 1974
Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent, 1974
The Company We Keep, 1988
The Vocation of a Teacher, 1988

I've learned most from his book,_Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent_. In that work he takes on the philosophical problem of facts vs. values. More specifically, the question raised is whether we can ever, in a practical sense, settle for statements of fact and not in some way imply certain unacknowledged values. However, I am not posting here today to celebrate his illustrious career, but to call your attention to a set of distinctions that most certainly help all readers of this blog with the point of discussing the art of rhetoric.

Witness our culture in the throes of crisis.

No one understands how the French Revolution gave rise to the Killing Fields, the Soviet Gulag, the Cold War, the rise of American hegemony, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, Mass Consumerism. We just wanted a just and equitable society; we wanted a world where anyone might feel at home.

What happened?

We can begin with how we are disposed to deal with the appearances. According to Thomas Farrell in his reading of Aristotle's logical works, there a many ways to understand the appearances. The first systematic form of inquiry is called the analytic method. The analytic approach seeks to connect subject and predicate, to show relationships of cause and effect, to answer the questions posed by four causes: formal, efficient, material, and final. The materials of this type of analysis are not subject to human choice and decision.

Background:

Noted UCLA professor, writer of books, historian of note, a writer preoccupied with oppression and the search for utopia in the land of dystopia Russell Jacoby offers his opinions about academic freedom: "We live in a choice-addled society"; "the jargon of choice undermines intellectual integrity and coherence"; "choice-second cousin to diversity and multiculturalism"; "'Choice' and 'diversity' are universal passwords that unlock all doors"(magically?); "Who can oppose (choice and diversity) without appearing authoritarian?".

Demystify the demagogues:

The terms 'choice', 'diversity', and 'multiculturalism' dazzle the academic and liberal left. But now they are becoming part of the stock in trade of the conservative right. We have now gotten to the point where no one--least of all the experts--is sure about the status of such works as _Huckleberry Finn_ and _Catcher in the Rye_. Doubt lends itself to a strategy called 'teach the conflict.' This notion was merely seductive. If there was doubt about a television soap opera like "Dallas" well, you know, teach the conflict. We have moved from media to scientific theories: "intelligent design"--well, teach the conflict. We need alternative viewpoints. The Kansas Board of Education, no champion of liberal views, now espouses 'diversity of viewpoints.'

Keywords: pop culture, character, event, television, fact, fiction, illusion, reality, authentic artifact.

David Ulin writes an interesting piece for the editorial page in the November 19th edition of the L.A. Times. The title of the piece is "Lost". Specifically it's about the television program that airs on ABC; the subtext is that we are all lost when it comes to distinguishing illusion from reality-or, at least, we are in danger of becoming lost, of losing the distinction itself between illusion and reality. I have never been a big fan of keeping the two in separate categories. It's problematic how we can maintain this distinction in any absolute sense.

Background:
Boston's Back Bay. In 1898. A large Georgian house at the corner of Arlington. A world remote from my own. Yet such a world provided a dramatic entry point for this somewhat eccentric rhetor: Harry Crosby. Born under the influence of Gemini, Castor and Pollux, known to the Egyptians as a pair of goats, known to the Arabs as peacocks.
His destiny was held hostage by the ambitions and judgments of his parents. They were unwilling to parole him from his genetic prison. When he broke out the carnage was awesome.

The overwhelming fact is the influence of the First World War on Harry's imagination: mutilation, vermin, cowardice, relentlessness, insanity, hysteria and cruelty played in the theatre of his imagination from the time of Verdun till the end of his life, and all of it prompted by the war. Of Verdun: "Death's hand is written over it all." (Wolff, page 59) Harry was learning to cherish the extreme situation. So ought we all.

In 1990, Bender and Wellbery published a book entitled _The Ends of Rhetoric_(Stanford).

The lead off essay should be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand where we now stand with respect to traditional rhetoric. I take it as well established that the ancient world and the medieval world practiced something we can recognize as 'rhetoric.' But that practice no longer makes sense for us because of two major events in Western history: the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Because of these two developments, what we recognized as rhetoric has become a 'strangely contracted form as a subject taught in universities.' The reason that we have a hard time understanding this practice is that we have forgotten that "the cultural hegemony of rhetoric as a practice of discourse, as a doctrine codifying that practice, and as a vehicle of cultural memory, is grounded in the social structures of the premodern world." Since we now live in the modern world, it is difficult for us to understand why rhetoric was so important to our ancestors. Those who practiced rhetoric in the premodern world/s now look to us as doing something rather exotic.

Background:

On October 31st of 2004 at All Saints Church in Pasadena, Ca. Rev. Dr. George Regas delivered a sermon. It is not unusual for reverends to deliver sermons. In fact it meets our expectations. However, this sermon caused some issue for the federal government. Regas' sermon was entitled, "If Jesus Debated Sen. Kerry and President Bush." Here the timing was significant. It was a mere five or so days before a national election. Regas was attempting to make his congregation reflect on the serious issues before them before they proceeded to the ballot box. Regas says he was not advocating, only trying to convey the gravity of the situation. Typically, Jesus is seen as an ancient rhetor who came into our ancient/classical/Judaic world to show us the way to the Father. On that way, we are to beat swords into ploughshares. Kerry is thought to be Catholic; Bush is a Methodist. Both are 'Christians.'

Background:

Why does a 92-year-old aerospace engineer with 69 years worth of experience in the industry become the subject of commentary at a site devoted to rhetoric? Well, for one, he was a founding father of one of the Cold War period's greatest corporations: TRW. He worked with such celebrities as Howard Hughes and James Woolsey. But, more importantly, he shows up here because of his contempt for the bureaucratic form of communication: the Meeting.

The Issue:

He claims to have attended about three to four meetings a day during his work years. He claims that the 40,000 meetings he has attended could more profitably been reduced to 10,000 meetings. He attended meetings that were about attending meetings; he missed meetings that were about missing meetings. He has destroyed trees and used printer's ink to publish another book, his fifteenth, entitled:

Background:

The school board of Dover, Pa. made a decision last year to include a four paragraph statement concerning the position of 'intelligent design'in the context of the teaching of 'scientific biology.'
This position statement does not imply deism, although many believe that an intelligent designer may rightly be referred to as God. All it states, in the simplest terms, is that scientific reductionism cannot explain certain biological phenomena; biological events are too complex to be reduced to ultimate simples; they are more than the sum of the parts. Eleven parents sued the school board over this decision.

When I was growing up I always associated magic with magic acts. It was the kind of thing you placed in the same category as freak shows, tarot, performance art, and the ventriloquist. Cheap entertainment is the genus. But I was terribly wrong about the meaning of this word, 'magic.'

Consider these definitions supplied by William Covino:

"Magic is the process of inducing belief and creating community, with reference to the dynamics of a rhetorical situation."

"Magic is a social act whose medium is persuasive discourse."

"Magic is a term through which we can address the ways in which words make real things happen."