Research Article| January 01 2007 The Philosophical Basis of Rhetoric Henry W. Johnstone,, Jr. Henry W. Johnstone,, Jr. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Philosophy & Rhetoric (2007) 40 (1): 15–26. https://doi.org/10.2307/25655255 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Henry W. Johnstone,; The Philosophical Basis of Rhetoric. Philosophy & Rhetoric 1 January 2007; 40 (1): 15–26. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/25655255 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressPhilosophy & Rhetoric Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2007 The Pennsylvania State University2007The Pennsylvania State University Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

George Yoos was once kind enough to contribute paper to panel concerned partly with my use of the metaphor is wedge.1 Prior to that time, I had been using the metaphor only incidentally and in passing; most of the indexers of the books in which I had used it had missed it altogether. But the metaphor does encapsulate an aspect of rhetoric that I think is worth discussing in its own right. The speakers in the panel-not only Yoos, but also Carroll C. Arnold2-have already provided useful elaboration of this aspect. Here I shall discuss it further. Rhetoric, as I see it, is means-perhaps the only means-of evoking and maintaining consciousness. It accomplishes these ends by driving wedge between subject and object. For it is the instrument that objectifies stimuli or presuppositions not hitherto perceived as objects. An example of rhetoric at its most elementary level would be the question Isn't that your telephone ringing? addressed to person not hitherto conscious that his telephone was ringing. At more sophisticated level, if I have been unconsciously assuming that the death penalty is permissible punishment for some crimes, and you call that assumption into question, objectifying it as topic for discussion, you are engaging in rhetoric. In either case, you are evoking consciousness by introducing gap between subject and what can now objectively concern him. By a I simply mean whatever introduces such gap. Rhetoric has no place in transactions within systems in which there is no gap between the input of data and their acceptance. A good example is the continuity between the input of data to computer and its response to those data. The computer does not decide whether to accept the data. Of course software can be designed-and undoubtedly has been designed-providing message to the effect that certain data fed into the machine are inappropriate. But the mechanism that produces this result is merely an extension of the same mechanism through which the machine accepts other data. Consider the input ABXY. If this is acceptable, it is processed in certain way. If it is unacceptable, it is still received by the computer as input, and is processed in another way not different in principle from the first, although perhaps little more complex. The result of the second sort of processing is to produce the message ABXY is not acceptable. In neither situation, I would say, has there been use of rhetoric. For in neither case has the machine been made to stand over against its data-to take account of these data as objects. Even the machine's rejection of data fails to be an objectification of them. There was no wedge, and there is no gap. Rhetoric, as I conceive it, is the art of calling attention to situation for which objectivity is claimed. But I do not believe that any particular psychological

(1985). Aristotle, Hegel, and argumentum ad hominem. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 15, No. 3-4, pp. 131-144.