I come before you as Cassandra.There is much in this morning's papers with which I agree and even more which I find of interest.But there is also a common theme which deeply alarms me.In different ways and to different degrees, all three papers celebrate a new liberation, intellectual and political, which is to follow on the proper appreciation of rhetoric's place in human life.I believe that that impulse to celebration rests on a profound misconception of the human condition, a misconception here manifest in an insufficient respect for the intrinsic authority of language.Reading these papers I have repeatedly been reminded of the occasions during the sixties when my more radical students said to me: Thank you, Professor Kuhn, for telling us about paradigms; now that we know what they are, we can get on without them.For all my sympathy with the reforms those students sought, I knew (and thought I had taught them) that in that direction there was, in principle, no help to be had.In twenty minutes I shall not persuade you of my position, but I can perhaps suggest to you what it is.For the purpose I am fortunate to be able to start from Professor Rorty's paper.With many of its most important theses my agreement is wholehearted and