Persuasion and Passion

Walzer tells us that Campbell's position is that "The dispositions are formed states of character in virtue of which we are well or ill disposed in respect of the emotions; for instance, we have a bad disposition in regard to anger if we are disposed to get angry too violently or not violently enough, a good disposition if we habitually feel a moderate amount of anger..." (77). Another example of disposition might be the the character whose innate cautiousness restrains them from immediate happiness at good news and keeps them in check in a situation where fear might take over, as they apply reason to control their fears, not willing to give into unreasoned emotion. This same character might otherwise be considered to have a good position because they might not be as prone to develop quickly into anger. Another might consider this disposition to be dour and pessimistic, therefore not a particularly good disposition. When it comes to persuasion,Waltzer describes Campbell's belief that disposition is very important as it "...represent[s] the values that constitute character"(77). So a cautious character might well value careful investigation, thinking things through, not making assumptions without additional evidence. As Walzer says of Campbell's ideas these dispositions represent "motives to action, being equally capable with the passions of giving impulse to the will" (77). In rhetoric then a speech displaying dramatic emotion might be received coldly by such a character, in the absence of facts and convincing argument founded in reason. The speaker must find a way to engage the imagination, as well as reason in order to persuade an audience. As Walzer points out of Campbell, he is "describ[ing] the process as 'an artful mixture' of appeals to reason and passion, in which the argumentative and pathetic are 'incorporated together'(4), as distinguished from a sequence". So the cautious character upon hearing that a disabled vet was evicted from their residence for failure to pay the rent because the federal government failed to send the disability check that month might find the will to complain to their wife about the failure of government. If also shown pictures of a number of other disabled vets being evicted because they did not get their checks, along with pictures of their courage in the field, the cautious character might at that point write an email of complaint to their senator because the evidence presented, while not factual proof of the government having failed in sending out checks to disabled vets, has a probability and plausibility of being true, given the number of other vets allegedly experiencing the same alleged problem. It is the "probability and plausibility" that can arouse passion according to Campbell (82). The speaker who is able to speak about the sacrifice in the field, the injuries suffered and the diminished economic opportunities one has with such injuries further engages the audience, including the cautious character, especially when the opportunities awaiting non-injured vets in the current job market is presented with information on the unemployment statistics in the city. Campbell embraces the "mimetic and imaginistic powers of language," as a "psychology" of persuasion; rather than a reasoning process based on purely logic (84). The imagination of the cautious character is engaged, as the speaker describes the hardships endured through injury and the bravery under fire to save others, including perhaps the cautious character from facing the enemy at home. The memetic idea that a nuclear bomb might have fallen on the home of the cautious character, if not for the disabled vet is further brought into the speech, an inflamatory statement that evokes guilt and anger, although there is little evidence of this being a factual reality merges with the other information to become a plausible event, moving the normally cautious character to consider donating some money to the local vet who has been evicted, as the cautious character's own safety and existence of everything they value seems owed to the ve.

Fish and this week's presentations

The presentations that we had this week were very impressive everyone! Great graphics, audience engagement activities and handouts. See my previous blog last week on Hume, Vico and Locke, which I wrote by error instead of focusing on Enos and Moss. I did the right one on Monday. Incidentally it was on p. 100 of the article by Kaneavey in Moss's work that he states grammar was the study of literature, as distinguished from logic and dialectic, although all three he felt were distinguished from rhetoric. If anyone ha any ideas about what this means I would love to hear it? I had to agree with Fish that a writing course that does not focus on anything else has a certain appeal, but then so does cros-curricular knowledge building (4). Still,I would think one ight well go before the other one go before the other. He says that such a course must be devoted to "grammar, style, clarity, and argument" (2). The reality of the matter is that middle schools feel that the teaching of grammar belongs in elementary school. If it is being pushed off at that level, it is being pushed off in most high schools, and many colleges as well. It is a skills that needs review, drill, discussion and critical feedback throughout the educational life of a student on an elementary and secondary level,for an adequate foundation to have been laid. Even so, reviewing in a college level course may well be more fruitful than previous reviews, as the student should have the maturity and hopefully the motivation within to absorb the information that they may have lacked previously.

Enos and Moss

I agree with Enos's citation of the elements Barnett Baskerville"s essay, which appeared in the April 1977 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Speech, "Must We All Be 'Rhetorical Critics"' (12). Baskerville complained that the fashionable critical work was taking students away from the laborious but valuable need for historical scholarship, which Baskerville defended this quote of Donald C. Bryant that "rhetorical criticism must depend almost entirely upon historical knowledge for its effectiveness" (12). Enos goes onto discuss non-literary sources and actively produce research, going beyond the speculative to viewing works"...not as isolated and autonomous events but as intertextual,..." as he maintains that even discrete texts are part of a diachronic chain of being. Enos practices what he preaches in his article on Rome, as he examines the architecture of classrooms, public rhetorical events, drama, libraries, the use of scribes in creating books, etc., to document the rise and fall of sophistry in Rome, paralleling the historical lessening of importance of Greece, as well as the wars lost and economic deterioration of Rome. I loved his description of locating a once published speech, as well as a tape of the speech and the original written speech with handwritten notes, as a way to create original research (19. I know that I personally respond much more to works that trace historical ethnographic developments, geographical, economic, sociological and anthropological developments, in critical analysis of literature, as well as within the literature itself.

Moss is the editor of Rhetoric and Praxis: The Conteribution of Classical Rhetoric to Practical Reasoning. It includes chapters by Edward P. J. Corbett (43-57), which examines Topoi; Maxine C. Hairston's chapter on Aristotle's Enthymeme in the classroom (59-77); and James L. Kinneavy's chapter on the importance of Kairos in classical rhetoric (79-105). I thought that the quote of Grimaldi saying that "the special topics yield subject matter or content for arguments and that the common topics represent patterns of forms of inference" (46) was helpful, as I believe that the process of writing tends to involve examining patterns and universals, more often than specific subject matter. Kenneth Pikes tagamemic method of invention which Corbett dscusses, along with the neo-classical invention, Kenneth Burke's dramatistic method, D. Gordon Rohman's pre-writing method all suggest patterns, whether journalistic self-actualization, problem solving, the marshaling of computer resources, examining Aristotle's non artisitc proofs, brainstorming,or using linguistic concepts of contrast, range of variation and distribution in conjunction with particle, wave and field perspectives to retrieve, organize and analyze, as well as discover ordering principles, which include"to help one discover features of the audience which facilitate communication. I particularly relate to the tagamemic method, as I have used it in several lesson plans around character development in creative writing made understandable through the visual and oral rhetoric of film, using Dramatica tool and Inspiration software to brainstorm, create, structure and organize ideas about universal themes and archetypes. It includes a square broken down into a number of squares within it in a three dimensional model using principles of physics, psychology, contrast, range of variation and distribution, often pairing characters in roles that support or oppose one another. For more information go to my website information at http://freewebs.lindadaly.com.

Hairston's chapter in Moss's book on Aristotle's Enthymeme centers on persuasion, not creating absolutes, centering on human affairs with the goal to establish probability (68). Here we are taking a particular subject (Dramatica theory for example) [even though it is based on many universally accepted concepts] to which we are convincing a particular, rather than a universal audience about character development in Star Wars, Jaws, Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea and To Kill a Mocking Bird. That audience is particular because they either buy the Dramatica software, views my You Tube and/or the lesson plans on my website, as well as reading and viewing the involved novels and films. The argument would otherwise be meaningless to those unfamiliar with the Dramatica tool, as well as the Inspiration tool, which I used to lay out Dramatica principals in a graph format utilizing graphics, as well as signifying words and names. So I really agree with Hairston's citation of Perelman's description of using Aristotle's Enthymeme's utilizing a "practical intellect," which focuses "..on the realm of human activity, the world of the contingent, the uncertain, and the changeable" 967). For example, using the Dramatica tool, there are various possibilities and outcomes using human archetypes and action to develop and change one's interpretation, as well as in the creative writing process. I also deeply respect "Aristotle's quest for human happiness and justice" being associated with the usage of the Enthymeme (68). Kenneavys charge that to view Aristotle's Enthymeme, only as a simplistic, or invalid syllogism as a "deeply antihumanistic view" certainly warrants the sincere attention of the composition community. While I have always tended to favor the expressionist approach to writing, now that I am considering other points of views, Faigley's social view of composing warms me, as he sees "..the writer at the center of a discourse community and holds that the composing process is largely determined by the demands of that community" (72). Certainly that would be more in keeping with Perelman and Moss feels Aristotle would "be more comfortable with this school of composing"(72). As I see writing as a persuasive process, whether a creative, legalistic or non-fiction narrative, audience does play a huge role, as they are persuaded by the ethics, emotions and logic demonstrated by the writer.

I also thought Hairston's idea to have teacher's "...point out how differently students would have to structure the argument if they postulate a different audience and purpose" was brilliant and really underlines the importance of audience and topoi, if not enthymeme. The Rogerian or nonthreatening argument,in which "...a writer can make good use of the enthymeme to discover what premises he or she shares with the audience and what common ground exists that can form the basis for communication and change," is certainly supported by communication and psychotherapy change theories, while the Toulmin logic in a legal atmosphere may hold sway in that arena (76). Both speak of the audience, and fitting your persuasive argument to a particular audience, and likely a particular topoi as well.


Kinneavys chapter on Kairos was also compelling, as the audience to me is part of a context. For example, consider Kinneavy's statement's as follows: "Justice was defined as giving to each according to merit, that is, generously to those who had worked hard and parsimoniously to those who had shirked. Justice, therefore, was determined by circumstances: justice was kairos"(87). Certainly one could not write a compelling argument about circumstances, without considering the audience. Are they members of the elite, the poor, the working class or the unemployed and how would that affect their understanding,logical, ethical, as well as emotional? It is my opinion that the art of composition, utilizes principles underlying argument and persuasion, as well as justice and that those principles include the use of topoi, enthymeme and kairos, all of which involve consideration of the audience. Kairos is not only concerned with justice or truth, but beauty, virtues, and knowledge. In Greece, even the word Kairos was associated with not only justice, but virtue, education and the concept of humanity, as Kinneavy tells us that the importance of the city or polis was tied to the idea of humaity (92). He illustrates this when he says that "Since freedom and the ability to persuade and be persuaded are the essence of the polis, it is not surprising to see the education to the life of the polis grounded in persuasion and to see this closely related to the notion of kairos. The audience not only of the writer but the educator is pointed out by Kinneavy as having centrality to kairos, as we are urged to have a composition program "based on the current life situation of the writer," once again showing that the audience is central to the context.

As an aside I was interested in Kaneavey's concept of grammar as the study of literature, as distinguished from logic and dialectic, although all three are distinguished from rhetoric ("persuasion in this narrower sense") (100). Rhetoric is said by Kinneavy to link humanities to the common citizen more than literature or the grammar and logic of the tradition" arts (100). In my opinion, Kinneavy's idea that "a liberal education should teach "expository to sharpen scientific thinking, "persuasive prose" to sharpen rhetorical thinking and "literary analysis" to sharpen aesthetic thinking and that "all three thinking skills were essential to a kairos program as a liberal arts program in the historic sense of the term" is certainly a pedagogical statement regarding the role of composition in education, which should be included in some way in all composition teacher's pedagogical beliefs (104-105). This is because thinking skills, or critical inquiry is at the most basic goal of education as a part of the acquisition of knowledge, not based on rote memory, but problem solving, ingenuity and ideas founded on reason.

Locke , Hume & Vico

John Locke's position to from persuasive dicourse alone to expository and didactic discourse seems to make him in many ways one of the founding fathers of composition theory, as he established that knowledge is built upon experiences of "operations of the mind on images already perceived through the senses" (426). His focus on rhetorical proofs based largely on inductive reasoning embraces a logical, clear form of writing and argumentation devoid of imaginative and figurative language elements, which involve appeals to the emotions in making a persuasive argument. His writing approach fits the writing required in legal, political, business and scientific rhealms.

Like Hume's effort to "separate myth from fact" in his use of proofs, both authors write of questions of fact. His arguments focus more in the government questions of commerce, taxation and politics. He also discusses the reliability of sources and a reexamination of historical truths through critical thinking about factual events that "provided decisive evidence for the claim that modern civilization was superior to ancient" (288). His work could be said to have set the ground for the New Historian approach to critiquing narrative works and seemed very very persuasive. I loved his assessment of historians as "the true friends of virtue," and his concern that history was central to contemporary culture (282). We may or may not learn from history but history does influence culture and archetypal human drama that underlies our collective psyche as well.

Vico's concern with both the mind and the soul being involved in the acquisition of knowledge through virtue and wisdom, takes a somewhat different path. In the development of knowledge he seemed to see it as a process, as Maiulari points out that the student "must rediscover his soul himself, and must seek the connection between human nature and the Divine" (1). His was an interdisciplinary approach that embraced not only history but anthropology, in his concern for culture as a "human community" (2). Even more than Hume, his work examined history, culture and mankind. His concern was with goodness and honesty leading one to knowledge and particularly "knowledge of oneself"(4). I have to admire his thoughts on knowledge of the self and the process of acquisition of all knowledge, as an evolving process. As much as Locke may be a founding father of composition theories, Vico is apparently a founding father of education, in his concern with human sciences, the understanding of a person mattering as much as knowledge of natural sciences. His concern not just for knowledge through the scientific processes of critical analysis, mathematics and technology usage, but with wisdom and it is awe inspiring. The study of composition afterall is at the base of this as an aspect in the search for knowledge and betterment of the human community

Perelman

I wholeheartedly agree with Perelman's premise that "the development of argumentation is a function of the audience to which it is addressed and to which the speaker must adapt himself" and that this has vastly more applicability to social theory than demonstrations founded in formal logic. It is this interaction between the speaker and the audience that produces an understanding of the limits and edges of acceptable mores, as one strives to persuade people to a particular point of view. If one is a member of the group or not a member of the group changes how one is accepted and one's approach to the audience, or group, to gain acceptance. We can socially condition an audience within the framework of the argument to accept certain preconditions or ideas. A demonstration based in logic suggests passivity while an affirmation supported by history in society, or a precedent,brings out the strength in culture by affirming traditions and the rule of justice. As Perelman says "These precedent, just like the models by which a society is inspired make part of its cultural tradition,which can be reconstructed on the basis of the argumentations in which they have been employed"(254). Perelman states that when form and style are the main goal society is less apt to be concerned with diversity and opposition, while a search for the truth and an emphasis on the importance of argumentation in rhetoric seem to be accompanied by periods in history focused on the development of democracy and knowledge, such as the Renaissance. Thus being aware of one's audience includes being aware of the times, place and history of the audience.

Bibliography

Perelman,Chaim. "The Social Contexts of Argumentation." Miller, Susan. The Norton book of Composition Studies. NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2009.