Leff and Scott

I’m not even going to pretend that I understood everything Leff addressed in his "Habitation of Rhetoric." However, there were some points he made that seemed clear enough to me. In starting out, he contrasts the two views of the neo-Aristotelians" and the "neo-sophists" regarding rhetoric. One considered rhetoric as a "process confined within some larger domain from which it draws its substance" while the other saw rhetoric as the "unbounded action of process itself" (53). While rhetoric has been widely used in the realms of politics, I would, however, agree with the neo-sophists who viewed rhetoric as not being contained in or bound to any particular field. In a broader sense (and in congruence with the neo-sophists), I believe rhetoric has the ability to cross all plains of human discourse and form itself to whatever subject it comes across. If there are reasons to persuade, rhetoric will serve as the means to reach that end. As Leff says, "[rhetoric] must retain the freedom to encounter subjects, occasions, and audiences" in order to meet the demands of each situation (62). Scott similarly understands the flexible nature of rhetoric. He defines truth as "not something fixed and final but as something to be created moment by moment in the circumstances in which [it is found]" (138). Rhetoric, too, from this perspective, is fixed like stars, "only in a relative sense." Though rhetoric may maintain certain similar characteristics throughout all mediums in its intention to persuade, the way in which and to what its strategies are applied can vastly vary.