On Viewing Rhetoric As Epistemic: Ten Years Later.

RHETORIC AS EPISTEMIC 263
fan) epistemic self-portrait: the partia:Iar
picture of human beings as active intelli'
gences which govems his stance toward the
objects of human understanding." 17 My
daim is that any "epistemic self'portrait"
that approaches completenesi must include
rhetoric.
'\tr7hat sort of knowledge does rhetoric seek
to achieve? fie understanding of what it
means to be persuaded and to persuade.r8
Such an understanding is both general and
specific: general, ia that one's on'n grasp of
oneself as a social being with others in society
is essential to being human, and specific
in that one must continually face concrete
sihrations in which one will act to aftrm
son:e commitments. None of these statements
is n:eant to deny that one will continually
behave scarcely aware of the patterns that
behavior takes let alone with highly conscious
grasp of the reasons for those Patterns.
But the fact that much, probably nrost, of
our behavior is rvell fixed through complex
reinforceorents does not mean that s'e cannot
become focally al'are of these patterns and
their consequences. .tiThen we do become so
an'are, tben we can act critically, and usually
rhetorically, to reafirnr or modify tlrem, in
short, to b:come n:ore fully committed.
In an analysis much like the one here,
Thon,as Farrell pictures the Cartesian bequeatbed
attitude of detachment as descriptile
of modern science. Farrell would rnove
beyond that attitude in assessing the rhetorical
dimension of social knowledge as taking
a community of belief as necessary.le The
requisite attitude to balance detacbtnent in
tz lbid., p. 3.
18 Hcnry \7. Johnstone, Jr., has written that
"man is a petsuiding and'pirsuaded animat, and
. . . v.'henever he steps outside the forum in
which rhetoric loses swiy. he is in dangcr of losing
his human dignity." "The Relevancc of Rhetorjc
to Philosophy and of Philosophy to Rhetoric,"
Quarteill fournal of Speecb,52 (Feb. 1966),45.
:e"Knos'ledge, Consensus, and Rhetorical
Theory," Qaarterly Jounal ol Speecb, 62 (Feb.
1976), see esp., 6-7, altbough thc entire essay is
highly pertinent to grasping the idea of rhetoricas-eoistemic.
knowing would be attacbtneil in uoderstandin&
Although modern science is founded on
the firm belief that experience must be instructivg
Haas-Georg Gadaner argues that
the $'pical attitudes of science leave "experience"
incompletely understood; he undertakes
to rectify tbe situation. Among his
remarks, this ooe is particulatly trseful: "Experience
teaches us to recogoize reality. Ifhat
is properly gained from all elperiencg then,
is to know what is. But 's'hat is', here, is
not this or that thing but 'what cannot be
done away q'ith'. . ." 20 \Phat cannot be
dooe away with in a community is commitment
to the norms of that community. Commitn:ent
and rhetoric stand in a reciprocal
relationship: commitment generates rhetorig
and rhetoric generates commitment
Is Rgrronrc.'lr- REL.{Trvis}{ Vrcious?
No. One may, of course, eat gluttonously
or quote Shakespeare 6lled with vain pride
in the sound of one's own voice. Likenise
one may argue with s'anton disregard for the
fabric of social comn:itments or, pcrhaps, in
blithe ignorance of the possibilities of either
reaffirrnation or reform. But the grafuitous
abuse of rhetoric seen:s of tess concern to
thoughtful people than the sheer relatilism
of the point of view that takes rhetoric as
episternic. For tbese people, relativism seems
to make abuse not simply an occasional occurrence
but likely. At least sucJr objections
are t1'pical of tlre discussions I hate often
had n'ith colleagues and students since my
effort in L967.
The difficulty rests in the belief that rela.
tivjsm obviates the lery idea of knon'ledge.
From this point of view knowledge must be
a priori, that is, s'e must know in sorne general
or unitersal sense, before q'e can know
at all in any specifc sort of way. This point
of view seerns to be entailed in the traditional
way of putting the question, What is
knos'ing? The question itself suggests that
.sTtr:h
cnd .\ttthod, p. 120.
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