Weaver

=Weaver, Richard. //Ethics of Rhetoric//. = =(1955) =
 * Platonist - A Platonist Agrarianism—pro Old South Values—in love with hierarchies in language.
 * All instances of language are persuasive (language is sermonic), rhetorical, and imbued with ethical values. Human utterances reflect a set of values and aim to move others to accept the image of the world in which those values apply (like Burke identification)
 * He writes about dialectic as a discourse that leads to knowledge of nature – but shares tendency of Burke and Richards to include all forms of discourse in rhetoric
 * **Hierarchy of Argument ** - Definition is the noblest argument – noble is value-laden adjective – arguing at the level of pure ideas - 3 levels of knowledge (1. Brute facts, 2. Generalizations and theories, 3. Universals and first principles) 3rd level is source of value judgements—metaphysical.
 * Another hierarchy; highest (argument) mid (cause and effect) lowest (arguments of circumstance).
 * Takes Burke and applies ethics—Christian ethics.
 * Rhetoric is cognate with language” All language is rhetoric, hence language is not neutral.
 * “it is ridiculous that the utterances of men could be neutral—it is a positive act with consequences in the world”
 * Once you have that, you can proceed logically from that definition – the fight is with the definition of terms
 * How words are defined is a problem for Weaver because he realized that language changes over time, but he did not quite know how to deal with that
 * Circumstances are least noble because you are not writing from terms, only from self-interest (Fish says circumstances are the ONLY possible argument)
 * Is conservative but liberals admire him because he was critical of the corporate state and big business. At heart agrarian (was from landed family in South – Weaverville)
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">His mission was to transmit Western traditional values, set his fate against modern urban life, keeping agricultural ideal alive
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Often considered elitist and racist
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">For Weaver – truth is the master context of rhetoric
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Willing to say that meaning is socially constructed but believes in a fixed accumulated meaning – when meanings decay, society is in decay – **<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">there is an essence **
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Not unlike Vico’s “barbarism of reflection” when meaning decays to the point that meanings are in our own mind and far from the common sense
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">God terms **particular to certain age, vague movement towards progress and freedom. Devil terms—mirror image—Nazi, un-American, terrorist. Must guard against god terms being used as propaganda—and Devil terms too. Upn hearing a god or devil term, listener should “hold a dialectic with himself to consider the intention.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">An ethics of rhetoric requires that “ultimate terms be ultimate in some rational sense”
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Like Aristotle, distinguishes dialectic from rhetoric, defining dialectic as abstract reasoning about doubtful propositions with goal of establishing the truth—does not produce commitment, rhetoric does.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Need a “scheme of values” like whom? Quintilian? Good man speaking well? But there it’s “good rhetoric being used” from //<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Language as Sermonic //
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Rhetoric must be based on dialectically secured principles to be ethical. So he’s looking for A Truth.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Bemoans the fall of rhetoric from philosophical and important to being taught by “various fringe people” including TSs—now a remedial class. It is the fault of all that is “scientistic” mistrust of pathos (so, anti Ramus and Descartes)
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Weaver is a modern look at relationship between faith and reason—n an age that doesn’t know faith” (Toledano) **