ABSTRACT Notwithstanding recent controversies involving echo chambers and social media, “post-truth” has always been central to philosophical investigations of what is knowable and good. The internal tension of the term offers a choice: to gasp in feigned astonishment at the hell-in-a-handbasket state of public discourse, or to reflect critically on what is beyond, after, or other than the truth. In this essay, we approach post-truth via elements of narrative, biography, and myth, portraying Friedrich Nietzsche's polytropic figure, Zarathustra, as he might have spoken to the contemporary moment. We demonstrate how Zarathustra affords access to the idea that truth (in all its deceptiveness) and life (or possibly, aliveness) are inextricable in the human condition. To temper this tension, we depict a character whose disposition toward post-truth spans from certainty and doubt to exuberance and despair. Our hope is to indicate how, for the humans of Motley Cow, post-truth is ubiquitous, institutional, and infrastructural.

Abstract In Aristotle's biological treatise, On the Parts of Animals, one finds a rare and unexpected burst of rhetorical eloquence. While justifying the study of “less valued animals,” he erupts into praise for the study of all natural phenomena and condemns the small-mindedness of those who trivialize its worth. Without equal in Aristotle's remaining works for its rhetorical quality, it reveals the otherwise coolheaded researcher as a passionate seeker of truth and an unabashed lover of natural beauty. For Aristotle, rhetoric not only discloses the truth (aletheia) of appearances by refuting counterarguments and defending one's claims within agonistic forums; rhetoric also defends and advances whole fields of study on the promise on wonder (thaumazein). By examining Aristotle's example in practice, this article seeks to elucidate a notion of the rhetoric for inquiry that calls lovers of wisdom to the empirical study of nature.

Preview this article: CCCC News, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/47/2/collegecompositionandcommunication8706-1.gif

Preview this article: Recent Books, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/47/2/collegecompositionandcommunication8705-1.gif

Preview this article: Announcements and Calls, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/47/2/collegecompositionandcommunication8707-1.gif

Power, Genre, and Technology Deborah H. Holdstein This Is Not an Essay Carolyn R. Miller Notes on Postmodern Double Agency and the Arts of Lurking James J. Sosnoski

This title provides an introduction to the rhetorical tradition of sophistical dialectics in antiquity.In Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece, John Poulakos offers a new conceptualization of sophistry, explaining its direction and shape as well as the reasons why Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle found it objectionable. Poulakos argues that a proper understanding of sophistical rhetoric requires a grasp of three cultural dynamics of the fifth century B.C.: the logic of circumstances, the ethic of competition, and the aesthetic of exhibition. Traced to such phenomena as everyday practices, athletic contests, and dramatic performances, these dynamics set the stage for the role of sophistical rhetoric in Hellenic culture and explain why sophistry has traditionally been understood as inconsistent, agonistic, and ostentatious.In his discussion of ancient responses to sophistical rhetoric, Poulakos observes that Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle found sophistry morally reprehensible, politically useless, and theoretically incoherent. At the same time, they produced their own version of rhetoric that advocated ethical integrity, political unification, and theoretical coherence. Poulakos explains that these responses and alternative versions were motivated by a search for solutions to such historical problems as moral uncertainty, political instability, and social disorder. Poulakos concludes that sophistical rhetoric was as necessary in its day as its Platonic, Isocratean, and Aristotelian counterparts were in theirs.

Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric Refigured by Susan C. Jarratt. Southern Illinois University Press, 1991; pp. xxvi + 154.

Sander L. Gilman, Carole Blair, and David J. Parent, eds. and trans. Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. xxvii + 273 pages. $35.00. Janice M. Lauer and William J. Asher, Composition Research: Empirical Designs. New York: Oxford University Press. 302 pages. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present. Edited by Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1990. xii + 1282 pages.