Philosophy & Rhetoric Apr 2019

It Is All There: From Reason to Reasoning-in-the-World

Thomas Rickert Purdue University West Lafayette

Abstract

ABSTRACT The emergence of narratives concerning post-truth, alternative facts, fake news, and the like underpins a felt sense of crisis about the possibility of debate, insofar as argument depends on truth norms. This essay argues that the post-truth narrative is regressive. It depends on Enlightenment-derived standards of truth that were from the beginning impoverished. I argue that rather than appeal nostalgically to the past, we should look to arguments interior to rhetorical history that point to truth norms that include worldly experience, or thereness. Using examples from Protagoras, Johann Georg Hamann, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, I briefly expand on different ways of conceiving how to marry worldly involvements to our conceptions of knowledge. The world, inclusive of radical technological change, doesn't just shape but takes part in who we are and what we know, say, and do. In this sense, argument and debate are ambient phenomena.

Journal
Philosophy & Rhetoric
Published
2019-04-01
DOI
10.5325/philrhet.52.1.0093
CompPile
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
rhetorical criticism argument archival research
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (5)

  1. Jenkins (2024)
    Rhetoric Is Dead? The Fear of Stasis Behind Post-Truth Rhetoric
    Philosophy & Rhetoric
  2. Wagner (2024)
    The Phantom of Pure Ethos
    Rhetoric Review
  3. Carroll (2023)
    Being in Good Faith: African American Women in Defense of Anita Hill
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  4. Corp (2023)
    Lockean Natural History and the Revivification of Post-Truth Objects
    Philosophy & Rhetoric
  5. Wagner (2021)
    The Obscure Object of Rhetoric
    Philosophy & Rhetoric

References (16)

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Show all 16 →
  1. Hamann, Johann Georg. 1996b. “Metacritique on the Purism of Reason.” Trans. Kenneth Haynes. In What Is Enligh…
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CrossRef global citation count: 4 View in citation network → Build reading path →

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