The Rhetoric of Meaning

Now, I know I've lost it - I finished my reading days ago, and I'm still wandering around debating with myself about the value of rhetoric (Is it an art or a con man's best friend?) Then I decided (somewhere in my sleep, I think) that it's just another way we search (academically, of course) for meaning.

Whether we think of it as necessary to a life of civic duty, or we believe it's nothing but a distraction on the way to finding greater Truth it is actually just another metaphor available to define values we hold as inexplicably linked with the reason for our precarious human existence. Why are we here? What does it all mean? Is it creation? Human relation? Discovering the soul's ultimate purpose?

I might even go so far as to argue (if I felt like arguing) that the theorist's style says much about those values. Maybe when we feel the need (like Cicero)to map each possible path an argument might take, we are actually trying to control outcomes, because our faith (in Ultimate Meaning) is held a little uneasily.

On the other hand, the iron-fisted approach of Luther and his rhetorical counter-part Peter Ramus could indicate an (subconscious?) awareness of the precarious hold they have (or at least that the masses had/have) on their own religious mythology (e.g. Invention had to be restricted because Scripture was the "final word," and scrutiny of Scripture reveals an undeniable fact: at the heart of Christianity lies faith -a quality intrinsically immune to rhetorical argument - you either have it or you don't).

Rhetoric, then, I have decided, is a scholar's way of defining personal meaning through academic discourse - and the beat goes on...