Scott

Robert Scott’s writings entitled “On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic” brought up some very interesting points. Although I wasn’t extremely clear on the main point of the reading, his philosophical analysis of rhetoric made me look at it from an unusual perspective. The idea that “were all men able- as some men are- to reason soundly from true premises, then rhetoric would be superfluous” brought me to the realization that the purpose of rhetoric would be lost if all people could come to their own conclusions based on hard facts. The ethicality of rhetoric lies, then, in circumstances which establish a need for unified truth. As the reading mentions, in time of war it is beneficial (and arguably an essential element for success) to unite the ideas and beliefs of a people in order to create a strong and stable force. However, it is often difficult to ascertain a method for finding truth. Scott argues that while analytic speculation appears to definitively uncover the truth, it is not completely foolproof (as with the example of Jack’s sisters having red hair, and the need to base present claims on present experiences rather than past experiences). Scott also argues that “[truth is] in time; it can be the result of a process of interaction at a given moment. Thus, rhetoric may be viewed not as a matter of giving effectiveness to truth, but of creating truth.” This statement is interesting, as it acknowledges that truth is often ambiguous and that people’s views on what is true often comes from other peoples’ persuasive renditions of the truth as they see it in the moment. Truth is not constant and is revealed only through human experience. In the reading, this is illustrated in the statement “all I have is experiences, and my experiences, being finite, cannot reveal the infinite to me,” which was an idea derived from the Greek sophist Protagoras. I think it is best summed up at the end of the third chapter in the theory that “it is by action and in action that [man] is enabled to know.”