Rhetorics Earthly Realm
Cód:
491_9781602351479
Plato privileges the realm of absolute reality and truth above and beyond the world of language, discourse, and rhetoric. For Plato, earth harbors the façade of mere appearances and the evils of the bewitching powers of language. In RHETORICS EARTHLY REALM: HEIDEGGER, SOPHISTRY, AND THE GORGIAN KAIROS, Bernard Alan Miller counters this intellectual legacy with an innovative and thoroughly conceived theory of rhetoric, one concerned with earth in its Heideggerian aspect, complex and multifaceted, at the root of a phenomenology placing the focus on earth as the power of Being itself, whereby it is manifest purely as language. Here, earth means native soil, a place of the rootedness of a people, where the forces of nature and culture are joined in language to constitute a community. In Millers view, language is not only an ontological process comprising the very dynamic of our being but, more critical to RHETORICS EARTHLY REALM, it is a power whose rhetorical dimensions are most clearly apparent in the phenomenon of kairos. The concept of kairos-as espoused by the Sophist Gorgias-has an enigmatic dimension, being an instance of the pre-Socratic mystery and therefore bearing a much more mystical imprint than otherwise sanctioned in theories of rhetoric. It designates a spontaneity in the generation of language that, from the Platonic perspective, has discomforting similarities to processes of psychic intervention and poetic frenzy. Given the perspective of an earthly realm, Miller attempts to retrieve a kairos true to the spirit of Gorgias, one where the pre-Socratic world view remains intact, allowing a more congenial ambiance for reimagining and appreciating Sophistic rhetoric. In RHETORICS EARTHLY REALM, the essential ingredients of Sophistic rhetoric are reconfigured or rendered anew, including concepts like doxa, apate, and techne. BERNARD ALAN MILLER teaches courses in writing, American Indian literature, and freshman composition at East
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