McKeon on Rhetoric and Technology: The Challenge of 0 (Zero)

Philosophy & Rhetoric Oct 2025

McKeon on Rhetoric and Technology: The Challenge of 0 (Zero)

Reingard Nethersole University of the Witwatersrand

Abstract

ABSTRACT On closely reading the Aristotelian-Ciceronian-Kantian-inflected essay “The Uses of Rhetoric in a Technological Age: Architectonic Productive Arts,” Richard McKeon’s 1970 Wingspread Conference address presciently sketches a new rhetoric that is no longer about the approval of an already formed opinion, the steering of public beliefs, or political influence, but rather about dealing with new problems. Showing the “art of discovery, invention and creativity” in action, his inimitable combination of ethos (trust), pathos (emotion), and logos (structure) opens the way to the perception of new facts and previously unnoticed structures and processes, particularly when read in conjunction with the vicissitudes of the relation between words and numbers, the verbal and the numeral across a historically changing trajectory that culminated in the constituted and constitutive force of all pervasive AI digitality. Considering its “inhuman” expansion, the article’s focus on the logos of techne opens a path toward a historical assessment of humankind’s digitally framed existence.

Journal: Philosophy & Rhetoric
Published: 2025-10-01
DOI: 10.5325/philrhet.58.2.0173
Open Access: Closed
Topics: rhetorical theory argument

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Cites in this index (3)

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Rhetoric Society Quarterly
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On the Term “Dunamis” in Aristotle's Definition of Rhetoric

Philosophy & Rhetoric

Also cites 1 work outside this index ↓

(2003)

“Kant’s Conception of Architectonic in Its Historical Context.”

Journal of the History of Philosophy ↗

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