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Date:         Thu, 19 Nov 1992 11:52:18 -0500
From:         R_CONNORS@UNHH.UNH.EDU
Subject:      RE: still taking offense

This is a fascinating discussion.  Sharon, I can't help pointing out that
though you are quite right in saying that justice is not the same for all
persons in America, you *still* have to use that *term* to get us closer
to what you want us to understand.  There seems to be no other term.  Though
our god-terms may be exclusionary (and I have no doubt mer will chime in
here) we seem to have eveolved no other ways to try to talk to each other
about our visions of the Good.

These postings on reason have sent me back (of course) to an old favorite,
which may help us to see this reason/emotion/violence question in the light
of another duality (though it's not really a dichotomy:

)
"In sum, dialectic is epistemological and logical; it is concerned with
discriminating into categories and knowing definitions.  While this has
the indispensible function of promoting understanding in the realm of
thought, by its very nature it does not tell man what he must do.  It
tells him how the terms and propositions which he uses are related.  It
permits him to use the name of a species as a term without ever attending
to whether the species exists and therefore is a force in being.  That
would be sufficient if the whole destiny of man were to know.  But we
are reminded that the end of living is activity and not mere cognition.
Dialectic, though being rational and intellectual, simply does not heed the
imperatives of living, which help give direction to the thought of the man
of wisdom.  The individual who makes his approach to life through dialectic
alone does violence to life through his abstractive process.  At the same
time he makes himself antisocial because his discriminations are apart
from the organic feeling of the community for what goes on. . . .

The conclusion of this is that a society cannot live without rhetoric.
There are some things in which the group needs to believe which cannot
be demonstrated to everyone rationally.  Their acceptance is pressed
upon us by a kind of moral imperative arising from the group as a whole.
To put them to the test of dialectic alone is to destroy the basis of

belief in them and to weaken the cohesiveness of society.  Such beliefs
always come to us couched in rhetorical terms, which tell us what
attitudes to take.  The crucial defect of dialectic alone is that it
ends in what might be called social agnosticism. . . .

This brings us to the necessity of concluding that the upholders of mere
dialectic. . .are among the most subversive enemies of society and culture.
They are attacking an ultimate source of cohesion in the interest of a
doctrine which can issue only in nullity."

This quote, sportsfans, is from "The Cultural Role of Rhetoric" by Richard
Weaver.  (Please, no ad hominems here about his dreadful sexist language
use--the poor booger was writing in 1959, long before we arrived to put
him right.)

I suppose the interesting corollary to try to draw is whether contemporary
critical theory is the postmodern avatar of the general semantics theory
that was Weaver's bete noir in 1959.  Is postmodernism dialectic?  That
is, does it seek to tear down rhetoricallly constructed social cohesion in
the name of abstract ideas?  Your call, foax.

Bob C.
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