Kenneth Burke’s Late Theory of History: The Personalistic and Instrumentalist Principles

Michael Feehan

KB Journal: The Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society Jan 2023 RSS Open Access

Kenneth Burke’s Late Theory of History: The Personalistic and Instrumentalist Principles

Michael Feehan

Abstract

Michael Feehan In his last published article, “In Haste,” Kenneth Burke outlined a new theory of history, a dialectical approach based on the two principles he had developed in the “Afterwords” to the third editions of Permanence and Change [ PC ] and Attitudes Toward History [ ATH ] : the personalistic principle and the instrumentalist principle. These two new principles were developed through the four loci of motives that Burke had created in the two “Afterwords” and which he sloganized as “Bodies That Learn Language.” The two principles differ from other similar principles dealing with intersecting developments between persons and technologies in that Burke’s principles arise through his theory of symbolic action, depending on his unique distinction between (non-symbolic)motion and (symbolic)action. Burke’s two principles are assisted by three laws: the law of accountancy, the law of the acceleration of history, and Burke’s specialized law of unintended by-products, a two-phase law, one personal, one instrumental. “In Haste” describes the source and design of the two principles and provides a series of examples for the operational program for the new theory of history, a theory Burke, sloganized as “The Two Roads to Rome,” announcing his admitted bias toward Western civilization. “I am asking them all [co-hagglers] to be asking themselves and one another just what does it all mean to be the kind of animal whose Western culture became polarized about the shifting relationship between the two roads to and from Rome, the Empire and the Holy See (ideally differentiated in these pages as instrumental power and personal vision, but confused like all else in this actually imperfect world of possibly accurate verbal distinctions)” (“In Haste,” 369). Burke’s theory of history developed through the writing of three essays: an “Afterword” for the third edition of his book, Permanence and Change (PC) , an “Afterword” for the third edition of his book, Attitudes Toward…

Journal: KB Journal: The Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society
Published: 2023-01-13
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Topics: modern rhetorical theory
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Kenneth Burke’s Late Theory of History: The Personalistic and Instrumentalist Principles

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