Sometimes you're a victim of ennui.

You've read all about this and all about that. You've enjoyed the ravings of various radio madmen. You're debating with yourself the merits of hating Islamic jihadists. You've watched one too many crime procedurals on television starring men with carrot red hair that so cleverly out the criminal. Luckily there is some eye candy designed to satisfy the male gaze. You wonder whatever happened to the acoustic mirror, Lacanian analysis, Derrida's essay that worked as a forward to a book on the Wolf Man, why Wittgenstein was so eager to fight for the Austrians. You notice how the rain has ruined your neglected patio furniture. You wonder why you have a patio.

But then you remember what it's all about and a surge of energy passes through you, inspiring you to rise at 4am. You started young and now you merely want to catch up with yourself. You responded to the demands to work the word. A minute concentration was the order of the day. How you revered the word; you wrote; you rewrote; you know that your training far exceeded your conceptual level. You might spend the rest of your life trying to match verbal dexterity with conceptual profundity. For you, words were things. Words were looked at before they could be looked through. Behavior was identifed with performance. Everything became an act, a preparation for the role of a lifetime.

Originality mattered not at all. Originality was seen as a deficiency in attention. Those who cannot refine their skills are doomed to remain crude and spontaneous. You bowed before the wisdom of the ages. As you aged, it became more difficult to right yourself. Lower back pain set in. You remember that Tristam Shandy suffered from sciatica. That comforts you.

Drill, drill, drill. Develop an elaborate memory system. Keep your scheme in mind. Match words and performance to personality types. Notice the importance of social situations. Move between styles: low, medium, and high. Never, never commitment yourself to a position; that would betray your deepest desire to argue any case when the need arises. Stress the importance of improvisation, al-lib, coax chance to perform for you.

Train, train, train. Why? To persuade. Don't forget to rehearse. Have your practiced today? Practice so as to re-create history: Cassius, Hitler, Bush. The agonistic context is all. The aim is scoring. As Richard Lanham writes: "Fill public life, agora, forum, court, with men similarly trained." The aristocratic paideia: union-card to public life.
Training in the word becomes a badge, as well as a diversion, of the leisure class.

This is homo rhetoricus. Jaeger's book _Paideia_(1944) makes the distinction--two types of life, the rhetorical ideal of life and the serious life. The philosopher cares and that is his fault. He seeks insight into human nature and what is good for it; the rhetorical man is all about pleasure and approval.

Rhetorical man is an actor. The 'reality' of rhetorical man is the public, the dramatic. His very sense of who and what he is requires a daily "histrionic reenactment." Master the rules of the game and be a winner. He is committed to no single version of the world, only what the current game requires. "He makes an unlikely zealot."(p. 4)It's not "what I deeply believe in my heart" but "look how I can develop that argument to reenforce adherence."

I will conclude by acknowledging Lanham's formulation: "The rhetorical view of life begins with the centrality of language. It conceives reality as fundamentally dramatic, man as role player...we play for advantage, no doubt, but even more we play for pleasure...Rhetoric is always ritualizing, stylizing purpose in order to enjoy it more...if he relinquishes the luxury of a central self, a soul, he gains in tolerance, and usually in a sense of humor, that comes from knowing he- and the others-not only may think differently, but they may be differently. The price of course is foregoing the religious sublime and its breathtaking unity."

MGGreer