go political articles! woo!

It was not difficult for me to pick a text/speech/article to dissect. “The Day the Enlightenment Went Out” was one of my favorite political articles to come out during the election year. It was written by Gary Wills and was published on November 4, 2004 in the New York Times.

After reading Leff’s “Habitation,” I see that there is no end goal to this article except to educate. The neo-Aristotelians might even argue if it could be considered rhetoric, since it was not written in and of itself, as a contained piece of art. I prefer the neo-Sophists definition, myself. The reference in one of the web blogs that compared rhetoric to a car that needs to be driven to be useful was very appropriate, thanks Kevin. This would be the telos of the article…it is information to be used, a car to be driven, a bridge built to cross, etc. Whatever the metaphor, it is still an artful and educated appeal to reason and heart. As Wills says, in not so many words, not even the Dalai Llama wants to live in an un-enlightened world.

He uses logos and pathos and ethos, just like anyone. Perhaps he has a tone of bitterness in there as well, and I feel many who were not Bush supporters could relate to his tone. He starts with logos while telling the reader about how many states prefer the Virgin Birth to Evolution. He goes into more detail than I will here. Then, he moves on to a bit of forensics, describing a court case involving evolution that led us to where we are currently on the subject. He has his ethos when he writes of a conversation he has with the Dalai Llama (if that doesn’t build your credibility, I don’t know what will.)

It could be argued, but I feel that he uses a sort of pathos to appeal to our logic at one point. He is comparing America to her enemies, and he states:

‘Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage a secularity, a religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed.’

It is a weird sort of pathos. Normally, when one hears words such as “religious intolerance” and “fear and hatred,” one automatically feel sorry for those who must experience such terrible things. He uses it and turns it on us…logos immediately kicks in and by the end of his article, you feel as if you’re driving a new car toward a purpose and not just looking at a painting.

Thanks again for the car reference, that was nice! The article can be found at:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1104-25.htm

jillian