Rhetoric's Earthly Realm: Heidegger, Sophistry, and the Gorgian Kairos

Abstract

Bernard Alan Miller Winner of the Gary Olson JAC Award for Best Book in Rhetorical Theory and Cultural Studies (2012) Lauer Series in Rhetoric and Composition Edited by Thomas Rickert and Jennifer Bay Information and Pricing 978-1-60235-147-9 (paperback, $34.00); 978-1-60235-148-6 (hardcover, $65.00); 978-1-60235-149-3 (PDF, $19.99), ©2011 by Parlor Press. 197 pages, with notes and bibliography. Bookstores : Order by fax, mail, or phone. See our "Sales and Ordering Page" for details. About This Book Plato privileges the realm of absolute reality and truth above and beyond the world of language, discourse, and rhetoric.  For Plato, earth harbors the façade of mere appearances and the evils of the bewitching powers of language. In Rhetoric’s Earthly Realm: Heidegger, Sophistry, and the Gorgian Kairos , Bernard Alan Miller counters this intellectual legacy with an innovative and thoroughly conceived theory of rhetoric, one concerned with “earth” in its Heideggerian aspect, complex and multifaceted, at the root of a phenomenology placing the focus on earth as the power of Being itself, whereby it is manifest purely as language. Here, earth means “native soil,” a place of the “rootedness” of a people, where the forces of nature and culture are joined in language to constitute a community. In Miller’s view, language is not only an ontological process comprising the very dynamic of our being  but, more critical to Rhetoric’s Earthly Realm , it is a power whose rhetorical dimensions are most clearly apparent in the phenomenon of kairos . The concept of kairos —as espoused by the Sophist Gorgias—has an enigmatic dimension, being an instance of the “pre-Socratic mystery” and therefore bearing a much more mystical imprint than otherwise sanctioned in theories of rhetoric. It  designates a “spontaneity” in the generation of language that, from the Platonic perspective, has discomforting similarities to processes of psychic intervention and poetic frenzy. Given the perspective o