"A Responsible Rhetoric."
Richard M. Weaver

"Life Without Prejuidice."
Richard M. Weaver

A Grammar of Motives
Kenneth Burke
"Introduction: The Five Key Terms of Dramatism."

A Grammar of Motives
Kenneth Burke
"Chapter One: Container and Things Contained."

"What is a Speech Act?"
JR Searle

"The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric."
Richard M. Weaver.
In this chapter (I assume it's a chapter from a larger book) Weaver explains the function of the three lovers within the Phaedrus and what these three figures mean to language, and moreover, rhetoric.
Weaver uses his interpretation of the Phaedrus as a way to explain the importance of the dialecitc and rhetoric within society, and by harkening back to a work from antiquity tries to establsih the ethos of rhetoric as a worthy field study.

The lovers in the Phaedrus are the non-lover, the evil lover, and the noble lover. Each uses language on his object of desire (I'm going to use the pronoun he since Weaver and Plato do, and I think it will make it easier to follow along) in different ways. The non-lover uses language that is exact but unmoving; his language evokes no passion but does seem appropriate and mature, and through his style and arrangement, invokes desire from his object of desire. Still, this language represented by the lover is arhetorical as it is petrified rhetoric, ie, rhetoric concerned only with arrangement and style. The non-lover's language

communicates abstract intelligence without impulsion. It is a simple instrumentality, showing no affection for the object of its symbolizing and incapable of inducing bias in the hearer...Since the characteristic of this language is absence of anything like affection,
it exhibits toward the thing being represented merely a sober fidelity, like that of the non-lover toward his companion. Instead of passion, it offers the serviceability of objectivity...In second place, this language is far more "available." Whereas rhetorical language, or language which would persuade, must always be particularized to suit the occasion, drawing its effectiveness from many small nuances,
a "utility" language is very general and one has no difficulty putting his meaning into it if he is satisfied with a paraphrase of that meaning... Finally, with reference to the third qualification of the non-lover, it is true that neuter language does not excite public opinion. (133, 134)

The evil lover is passionate, but the language used and represented by this lover is exploitative. The rhetoric imbreicated within this language is base rhetoric--effective rhetoric which only serves the rhetors immediate and individual needs. The language/rhetoric of the evil lover

wishes to make the object of his passion as pleasing to himself as possible; but to those possessed by this frenzy, only that which is subject to their will is pleasant. Accordingly, everything which is opposed, or is equal or better, the lover views with hostility. He naturally therefore tries to make the beloved inferior to himself in every respect. He is pleased if the beloved has intellectual limitations because they have the effect of making him manageable. For a similar reason he tries to keep him away from all influences which might "make a man of him," and of course the greatest of these is divine philosophy...The base rhetorician, we may say, is a man who has yielded to the wrong aspects of existence. He has allowed himself to succumb to the sights and shows, to the physical pleasures which conspire against noble life. He knows that the only way he can get a following in his pursuits (and a following seems necessary to maximum enjoyment of the pursuits) is to work against the true understanding of his followers. Consequently the things which would elevate he keeps out of sight, and the things with which he surrounds his "beloved" are those which minister immediately to desire. The beloved is thus emasculated in understanding in order that the lover may have his way...The techniques of the base lover, especially as exemplified in modern journalism, would make a long catalogue, but in general it is accurate to say that he seeks to keep the understanding in a passive state by never permitting an honest examination of alternatives. Nothing is more feared by him than a true dialectic, for this not only endangers his favored alternative, but also gives the "beloved"-how clearly here are these the "lambs" of Socrates' figure-some training in intellectual independence. (134-135)

The noble lover is, quite literally, the opposite of the evil lover. Weaver points out:

Here it becomes necessary to bring our concepts together and to think of
all speech having persuasive power as a kind of "love." Thus, rhetorical speech is madness to the extent that it departs from the line which mere sanity lays down. There is always in its statement a kind of excess or deficiency which is immediately discernible when the test of simple realism is applied. Simple realism operates on a principle of equation or correspondence; one thing must match another, or, representation must tally with thing represented, like items in a tradesman's account. Any excess or deficiency on the part of the representation invokes the existence of the world of symbolism, which simple realism must deny. This explains why there is an immortal feud between men of business and the users of metaphor and metonymy, the poets and the rhetoricians...But if the poet, as the chief transformer of our picture of the world, is the peculiar enemy of this mentality, the rhetorician
is also hostile when practicing the kind of love proper to him. The "passion" in his speech is revolutionary, and it has a practical end. (137)

At this point Weaver meanders away from the metaphors and lovers and begins a talk about the "proper" order of dialectic and rhetoric. "Dialectic is a method of investigation whose object is the establishment of truth about doubtful propositions" (138), but eventually the dialectic reaches its limit. Here Weaver explains:

There is, then, no true rhetoric without dialectic, for the dialectic provides
that basis of "high speculation about nature" without which rhetoric in the narrower sense has nothing to work upon. Yet, when the disputed terms have been established, we are at the limit of dialectic. How does the noble rhetorician proceed from this point on? That the clearest demonstration in terms of logical inclusion and exclusion often fails to win assent we hardly need state; therefore, to what does the rhetorician resort at this critical passage? It is the stage at which he passes from the logical to the analogical, or it is where figuration comes into rhetoric. (139)

This is where the concept of the lovers, language and love itself returns to the chapter. Dialectic without rhetoric is the non-lover, and rhetoric that enfolds the dialectic into its warrants and backings, one which works to persuade people towards the right, ethical, and just is eros embodied as language. The rhetor who uses language, dialectic, and rhetoric in this fashion, the rhetor who uses "rhetoric at its truest seeks to perfect men [sic] by showing them better versions of themselves, links in that chain extending up toward the ideal, which only the intellect can apprehend and only the soul have affection for" (143) becomes the noble lover of his people and his society.

"A Responsible Rhetoric."
Richard M. Weaver
Weaver explains there are four ways that students (people) can talk meaningfully about the world, that is, interpret experience: 1) being 2) cause 3) relationship 4) authority. He continues to explain that the first is based on definition, the second on cause and effect, the third on resemblance or comparison, and the fourth on the prestige of some authority (148). Weaver then moves on to claim that the propagandist confuse the everyday citizen to accept their base rhetoric because their arguments are based on these philosophical foundation, but the everyday citizen, not having been taught rhetoric, is a non-lover (to use his term from my last post) of language, thinks every other user of language is as well, and therefore, is duped by the propagandist into making bad choices since said citizen does not have practice in rhetoric.

Weaver gives good examples of arguments built on his prescribed four ways of making meaning on pages 148-150, and on pages 150-152 gives examples of bad (as in manipulative, coercive) uses. All examples deal with issues specific to the US of national or international importance. These demonstrations are all used in service of proving his claim: A free society is a pluralistic society, in a pluralistic society there are concentric circles of authority and several groups/individuals trying to convince these authority figures of the right course of action, and the only way to ensure propagandist don't rule the day is by teaching responsible rhetoric. In learning this, citizens of a free, pluralistic society can sift through the various claims in various guises coming out of various mediums and either persuade the elected representatives to adopt or reject a proposed course of action.

"Life Without Prejudice."
Richard M. Weaver
This chapter appears to be the amplification of the word "prejudice." Weaver explains the importance of the CP's amplification of the term/concept as it, to paraphrase Weaver, "tries to destabilize the world," and then goes into his own bit of amplification explaining how the term/concept is important in any open, democratic society.

As an exercise in reading another rhetoric, building on his past work and enacting a rhetorical analysis of a weighty topic, I get. I understand what Weaver is doing. Still, I find it ironic he couldn't understand how his talk on this subject could be received considering his own history as a social conservative and a Southern apologist.

A Grammar of Motives
Kenneth Burke
"Introduction: The Five Key Terms of Dramatism."

We shall use five terms as generating principle of our investigation. They are: Act, Scene, Agent, Agency, Purpose. In a rounded statement about motives, you must have some word that names the act (names what took place, in thought or deed), and another that names the scene (the background of the act, the situation in which it occurred); also, you must indicate what person or kind of person (agent) performed the act, what means or instruments he used (agency), and the purpose. Men may violently disagree about the purposes behind a given act, or about the character of the person who did it, or how he did it, or in what kind of situation he acted; or they may even insist upon totally different words to name the act itself. But be that as it may, any complete statement about motives will offer some kind of answers to these five questions: what was done (act), when or where it was done (scene), who did it (agent), how he did it (agency), and why (purpose). (xv)

After defining theses five key terms, Burke continues on throughout the rest of the chapter explaining the flexibility of dramatism.  He likens the pentad to fingers on a hand, how a user can make a move from one finger to the other without jumping from one finger to the next; the user need only follow a tendon down the finger and back up another to cross over into the next finger.  Also, Burke stresses the point of the pentad is not to avoid ambiguity, but to

clearly reveal the strategic spots at which ambiguities necessarily arise...Hence, instead of considering it our task to "dispose of' any ambiguity by merely disclosing the fact that it is an ambiguity, we rather consider it our task to study and clarify the resources of ambiguity. For in the course of this work, we shall deal with many kinds of transformation-and it is in the areas of ambiguity that transformations take place; in fact, without such areas, transformation would be impossible. (xviii, xix)

Beiong able to see this area of ambiguity allows the user to see the palces where words, thoughts, and events transform from one form to another and where new motivational theories (xxiii) (here I would suppose we could call motivational theory the will to act, or the eliciting of a response, or the ability to persaude) are created. In this way Burke and his collaborators hope "to make clear the ways in which dialectical and metaphysical issues necessarily figure in the subject of motivation" and close off such study to "empirical science" (xxiii).

Question: Does this presuppose we are working with a finite source of material, that only certain tropes and figures will ever be persuasive? The act of transformation seems to imply we're always working with the same material stuff, and that the transforming of said stuff allows for new persuasive methods as new events arise or as the milieu changes.

A Grammar of Motives
Kenneth Burke
"Chapter One: Container and Things Contained."

In this chapter Burke covers the scene-act and scene-agent ratios of the pentad. Through using the examples of various plays, Burke explains to the reader how actsconform to their scenes, or as he articualtes it:

Or, if you will, the stage-set contains the action ambiguously (as regards the norms of action)-and in the course of the play's development this ambiguity is converted into a corresponding articulacy. The proportion would be: scene is to act as implicit is to explicit. One could not deduce the details of the action from the details of the setting, but one could deduce the quality of the action from the quality of the setting. (7)

Later in the chapter Burke describes how agents correspond to their scenes by using various examples from poems, plays, and books. After recounting the sonnet by Wordsworth on page eight, about a heavanly scene and a child, Burke eventually articulates the relationship through analogy, explaining "And so, spontaneously, purely by being the kind of agent that is at one with this kind of scene, the child is "divine." The contents of a divine container will synecdochically share in its divinity" (8).

Burke continues on to explain, under the heading "Further Instances of these Ratios" the ability to invert the binary of each ratio, and under "Ubiquity of the Ratios" explains how these ratios present themselves not only in fiction, but also experiential reality. Under the caption "Range of all Ratios," Burke explains how each of these ratios--which describe a grammar of motives--can also be used as a resource for rhetoric (he uses a capital "R" on page 17). Burke explains:

one may deflect attention from scenic matters by situating the motives of an act in the agent (as were one to account for wars purely on the basis of a "warlike instinct" in people): or conversely, one may deflect attention from the criticism of personal motives by deriving an act or attitude not from traits of the agent but from the nature of the situation. (17)

Burke closes the chapter confiding to the reader that out of all the ratios, the scene-act and scene-agent ratios fit this topic the best as the other ratios tug at neat and tidy definitions.

Questions
Is this inability of the other ratios to fit within this defined space (the container and the things contained) a signal by Burke these are ratios which bridge theoretical and practical, and due to this, are difficult to place within the pedagogical space of this chapter? Do the ratios need a specific event and a specific analytical purpose to make sense?

"What is a Speech Act?"
JR Searle

Searle answers this question by positing almost any utterance is a speech act; if a sound is made, if langauge is produced, then a speech act has occurred. And here, Searle parses the act into a more finite unit--the illocutionary act--asserting that the production of such act and the token which represents it--the making of marks, the use of words--is the attempt to make meaning, to persuade, to move another to action, and therefore, the illocutionary act is "the minimal unit of linguistic communication" (39) within social interaction. Searle then explains the purpose of the chapter:

To perform illocutionary acts is to engage in a rule-governed form of behaviour. I shall argue that such things as asking questions or making statements are rule governed in ways quite similar to those in which getting a base hit in baseball or moving a knight in chess are rule-governed forms of acts. I intend therefore to explicate the notion of an illocutionary act by stating a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the performance of a particular kind of illocutionary act, and
extracting from it a set of semantical rules for the use of the expression (or syntactic device) which marks the utterance as an illocutionary act of that kind. (40)

Searle intention is show the rules that govern only one type of inlocutionary act (the promise in this case) and through this delineating of these rules provide "a pattern for analysing other kinds of acts
and consequently for explicating the notion in general" (40). Still, Searle believes to even approach the tracing out the rules of the promise as an inlocutionary act that he will have to discuss "three preliminary notions" (40):

1. Rules
2. Propositions
3. Meaning

Rules
There are two types of rules, regulative and constitutive. Regulative rules "regulate a pre-existing activity, an activity whose existence is logically independent of the existence of the rules," while constitutive rules "constitute (and also regulate) an activity the existence of which is logically
dependent on the rules" (41). For Searle, the importance seems to be on constitutive rules, as:

the semantics of a language can be regarded as a series of systems of constitutive rules and that illocutionary acts are acts performed in accordance with these sets of constitutive rules. One of the aims of this paper is to formulate a set of constitutive rules for a certain kind of speech act. And if what I have said concerning constitutive rules is correct, we should not be surprised if not all these rules take the form of imperative rules. Indeed we shall see that the rules fall
into several different categories, none of which is quite like the rules of etiquette. The effort to state the rules for an illocutionary act can also be regarded as a kind of test of the hypothesis that there are constitutive rules underlying speech acts. If we are unable to give any satisfactory rule formulations, our failure could be construed as partially disconfirming evidence against the hypothesis. (42)

Propositions
Searle explains "An assertion is an illocutionary act, but a proposition is not an act at all, although the act of expressing a proposition is a part of performing certain illocutionary acts" (43), and then continues to explain there is a difference between the illocutionary force and the propositon. The propositon seems to be more about what a speaker desires by poerforming a speech act, they are proposing a certain action is taken that they feel is important, while the illocutionary force is described as the function (a promise, an apology, a warning) a sentence performs within the interaction of two interlocutors. Searle describes it this way:

From a semantical point of view we can distinguish between the propositional indicator in the sentence and the indicator of illocutionary force. That is, for a large class of sentences used to perform illocutionary acts, we can say for the purpose of our analysis that the sentence has two (not necessarily separate) parts, the proposition-indicating element and the function-indicating device.4 The function-indicating device shows how the proposition is to be taken, or, to put it in another way, what illocutionary force the utterance is to have, that is, what illocutionary act the speaker is performing in the utterance of the sentence. Function-indicating devices in English include word order, stress, intonation contour, punctuation, the mood of the verb, and finally a set of so-called performative verbs: I may indicate the kind of illocutionary act I am performing by beginning the sentence with 'I apologize', 'I warn', 'I state''etc. Often in actual speech situations the context will make it clear what the illocutionary force of the utterance is, without its being necessary to invoke the appropriate function indicating device. (43-44)

Meaning
Meaning, according to Searle, is what makes a speech act worthwhile. Meaning, though, is embricated with the conventions of a society and meaning is deeply dependent on an interlocuator understanding the speech act of a speaker--hence the importance of convention. Here Searle explains:
In speaking a language I attempt to communicate things to my hearer by means of getting him
to recognize my intention to communicate just those things. For example, characteristically, when I make an assertion, I attempt to communicate to and convince my hearer of the truth of a certain proposition; and the means I employ to do this are to utter certain sounds, which utterance I intend to produce in him the desired effect by means of his recognition of my intention to produce just that effect.

Still, Searle feels it necessary to complicate this notion even more by throwing into the mix of meaning and convention the idea of intention. Intention, Searle asserts, dictates the conventions a speaker can use since the, again, convention dictates the meaning of an utterance and the speaker,m if she want to communicate her intention, must balance all three.

we must capture both the intentional and the conventional aspects and especially the relationship between them. In the performance of an illocutionary act the speaker intends to produce a certain effect by means of getting the hearer to recognize his intention to produce that effect, and furthermore, if he is using words literally, he intends this recognition to be achieved in virtue of the factn that the rules for using the expressions he utters associate the expressions with the production of that effect. It is this combination of elements which we shall need to express in our analysis of the illocutionary act. (46)

From here Searle goes into explaining the illocutionary act of making a promise. Searle seems go into the Toulmin defined Theory and enter into the formalism Perleman was trying to circumvent with the New Rhetoric. I find it difficult to follow since it appears an amalgamation of convoluted statements, but it could be I'm just exceptionally tired as I write this. Still, Searle (after doing some "quick-and-dirty research via Google) is a philosopher, so is this an example of what this week's and last week's reading were designed to counter within the larger scholarly conversation?

It would seem prudent, before this conversation goes too far, to distinguish between order and planning. It is truly fitting that "plan" is a four-letter word. Central Planning has become second nature to most people. Barack Obama and John McCain talk about their plans to make America better--as if it is they rather than the hard working citizens who make America what it is. Indeed, to many, "order" cannot exist without a central plan, without someone to boss around and steal from the various entities in a given society.

Order, however, need not--and in many ways cannot--come from above, but rather comes from within. As an analogy, I recall Charles Rosen's insight that the symmetrical form of Classical era music (Mozart and Haydn in particular) was not imposed from without, like a mold, but rather grew organically from within, as each little detail, each contingency, built upon the work. So it is with, for instance, the free market: the mutual exchange of goods and ideas contributes greatly to a harmonious order in society. What might seem chaotic on the microscopic level turns out to be well-crafted on the macroscopic level. The disorganization is only apparent.

There is more, however. Surely one must grant that a society without a grand discourse will fall into shambles. Grand discourses are not exactly in vogue in these the days of rampant horizontalism. Many, perceiving the ensuing chaos from this, call for more government, or even a theocratic monarchy (Those who don't know the mistakes of history are destined to repeat them), and few of them ever give serious thought to the idea that maybe the best form of government is none at all. Why, that would be chaos!

I find all this to be strange, not to mention self-contradictory. If government were able to prevent societal collapse, then the cities and towns of the 21st century would be in much better shape than they are. What is missing is the metaphysical. Please don't misunderstand me: I'm not in any way calling for some kind of Christianist State, such as Mike Huckabee might. I'm only saying that a society that is stuck in the sensible world is doomed. Really, the metaphysical is what is needed to maintain society, not governments. An appreciation for the metaphysical, however, comes from private initiative, not from legislative fiat.

F.A. Hayek in his book The Road to Serfdom remarked that the more intrusive a government becomes, the less virtuous the citizenry becomes. Similarly, Richard Weaver warned in Ideas Have Consequences of the encroachments of the State on men who have failed to exhibit virtue. If these two insights are synthesized, the remedy becomes apparent: men must become more virtuous, so that the futility (not to mention the evil) of the State becomes more obvious.

All of this, of course, is up to us. It has nothing to do with electing the right congressman or president, or with gaining a tenuous 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court. Rather, it has everything to do with how we view life (Do we even start from the ancient philosophical idea that life is to be loved and cherished?), how we live, and how we interact with each other.

Weaver is an interesting character.  Raised in rural North Carolina, he had the sagacity of an octogenarian, even at a relatively young age.  His writing style reminds me of a wonderful teacher I had in college who was raised not far from Weaver's hometown.  When I finished Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences, I felt as if my whole brain had been rearranged, and in a good way.  It's one of the most important books I've ever read.

The careless or biased reader of Weaver might try to pigeonhole him as a Tory, or, worse, a theocrat, but based on what I've read of him so far, I'd be very cautious about assigning exact labels to his political thinking.  He was too smart for that, for one thing.  The closest one might get is by calling him some kind of old school conservative--of the John T. Flynn or Albert Jay Nock variety rather than of the Buckley or Goldwater asylum.   For what it's worth, the final chapters of Ideas Have Consequences, written already in 1948, spell out possible cures to our ailing culture:  the protection of property rights (which at this point would be more like the recovery of property rights), the restoration of language, and piety and justice--which can probably be summed up as tradition, that is, respect for our fathers and our history.  Notice that only one of these cures--property rights--relates even remotely to the State, and that it involves the negative role rather than the positive.

Take some time to get to know the work of this Southern aristocrat.

A Oak Ridge, Tennessee, settantamila persone parteciparono ad un’impresa della cui natura conoscevano poco o nulla; infatti, la propaganda di guerra era stata così efficace che quelle persone si sentivano orgogliose e si vantavano di questa loro ignoranza come fosse un segno di onorevole cooperazione – a cosa? È possibile che alcuni di questi - e tendo a pensare che fossero veramente pochi-, sapendo che i loro sforzi erano finalizzati al massacro di un numero di civili mai contemplato fino a quel momento, oppure, per riprendere la definizione usata prima, al perfezionamento della brutalità, avrebbero rifiutato di dare la loro complicità. Forse conoscevano il concetto di guerra come istituzione che proibisce di uccidere senza scopo; oppure erano intimamente convinti che il mondo sia moralmente determinato, e che offese di questo tipo, affidate ad un qualunque auspicio, alla lunga ripaghino; ad ogni modo, è possibile che alcuni di questi infaticabili lavoratori anonimi un pensiero lo abbiano dedicato all'enorme responsabilità di cui si facevano carico. Si diceva che tra le élites del mondo ve ne fossero alcune che si rifiutarono di partecipare ad un’operazione così contraria alla civiltà. Immaginate lo stato moderno che indice un referendum di coscienza popolare! La bomba era un mezzo senza paragoni: non era sufficiente come spiegazione? È così che fanno le moderne organizzazioni politico-industriali, gerarchie irrazionali che rendono i cittadini degli eunuchi etici. Se Thoreau ai suoi tempi diceva che avere a che fare con il governo era disonorevole, cosa avrebbe detto di questo? Queste burocrazie corrotte sono sprezzanti degli stessi individui nel cui nome misericordiosamente dicono di parlare.