Whereas composition studies tends to use ethics and morality interchangeably, these terms may work better when explicitly distinguished, rearticulated as a topic, and kept in heuristic conflict. The more the tension between them is exploited, the closer our approach to a pedagogy not so much ethical as just.

In light of the genuine disagreement between the seemingly non-rhetorical political philosophy of John Rawls and the philosophical rhetoric of the new rhetoric project I propose a re-reading of Rawls that will help move that project in a needed direction. This re-reading will make the case that (1) Rawls’s conception of justice implies a commitment to the reasonable that is very like the new rhetoric projects, that (2) their differences regarding distance—in particular the distancing strategies of impartiality and objectivity—can be reconciled, that (3) the major difference between them—that is, the role of the rational—comes down to Rawls’s willingness to try universalizing the good, and that (4) such universalizing is a resource of rhetorical particularity that adds value to the construction of the universal audience.

AbstractWhereas the new rhetoric project associates the rational with the certainty of abstract objectivism, normative philosophy associates the rational with the ethical (the good), that is, the individual's pursuit of a life well lived. Normative philosophy distinguishes the ethical, then, not from the rational but from the moral (the reasonable), which represents the obligations we have toward others to ensure just relations among people. In philosophy, the rational and reasonable function as loci for arguments about values, but their rhetorical resourcefulness is dismissed rather than elaborated by the philosophy reviewed here, which gives the reasonable's abstract objectivity priority over the concrete preferences embodied by the rational. The concrete objectivism so important to the new rhetoric project could be more fully redeemed, I suggest, were the new rhetoric project to transform philosophy's rational-reasonable distinction into two uneasily coexisting, mutually reinforcing loci.

ABSTRACTJoining the New Rhetoric project's conversation about argumentation as justice, this article aims to add an expanded version of the psychological to the just resources of argumentation. After examining how Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's The New Rhetoric justifies attention to—yet ultimately swerves from—contingencies of psycho-physical sensation, I turn to Burke's highly elaborated concept of identification, which adds to the New Rhetoric project by articulating the relations of physiological sensation, attitude and emotion, and persuasion. Linking ethics and form, identification provides a means by which one may grow increasingly aware of the sensation-driven defensiveness that can undermine dialogic exchange. After making this case that Burke's rhetoric can help develop what is not in the New Rhetoric project but should be—the resource of constitutive, affective identification—I end with what should be in Burke but is not—a universality that a “we” of substantially different constitutions would agree on.

Abstract Of the sharp judgment of the South in Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, prior scholarship says it jars because it breaks with his inclusive, conciliatory strategy—a strategy that developed from his ongoing wrestling with God's purposes. This view of this much-studied speech, however, is that the first half of his address obliquely judges the South, a judgment that appeals to the North, reinforcing their affective identification with Lincoln. His suddenly direct judgment, which is then followed by a pivotal paralepsis, finally creates an inclusive moment. This strategic inclusiveness was designed to affect those who most threatened Reconstruction: the Radical Republicans. Notes 1Many thanks to Rhetoric Review's two reviewers, Andrew King and Jan Schuetz, whose careful critique helped improve the argument, and to Steve Dickey, whose example made me read Lincoln in the first place.

Let me take as a point of departure from this relative certainty Rose's concluding remark that from our students' can learn much of what we want to know about the ways cultural realities such as gender influence literacy practices-if we learn to read those stories (257). Let us grant that we want to know about these cultural realities, the traces of which our student texts bear, against their writers' intentions. Let us also grant the reason for wanting to know about these realities: the world we respond to is the world that our literacy practices represent to us, so that how we symbolize ourselves in the world with others can significantly affect our living in that world. Rose's conclusion still