Expanding and Limiting the Boundaries of Rhetoric: Kent’s “Paralogic Hermeneutics and the Possibilities of Rhetoric”
Out of all of the essays that we read this week, the one that I found the most intriguing (and problematic) was Thomas Kent’s “Paralogic Hermeneutics and the Possibilities of Rhetoric.” In his essay, Kent claims that rhetoric has its roots in Sophism, not in the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition; that discourse production cannot be reduced to a systematic process and taught in a codified manner, and that communication is essentially the attempt between writer and audience to adapt to each other’s hermeneutic strategies.
Kent asserts that there is a “need to rethink our rhetorical tradition, especially the genealogy of rhetoric as a discipline” (33). And Kent certainly does just that: rather than presenting rhetorical theory as a relatively stable discipline throughout history, he presents rhetoric as having undergone dramatic reversals from the time of the Sophists to the present. Kent argues that rhetorical theory was conceived by the Sophists, and that Plato subsequently altered its meaning:
“Plato constructed his philosophy in opposition to Sophistic thinking, and he turned away from the Sophistic emphasis on language and hermeneutics. By renouncing the phenomenal world and by turning away from language and hermeneutics . . . Plato established a tradition of thought, a tradition of categories, kinds, and systems, that continues to dominate the discipline of rhetoric.” (34)
This claim – the claim that the very meaning of rhetoric underwent reversals throughout history – brings up several questions. For example, what similarities existed between Sophist and Platonic thought that allowed both to be classified as “rhetorical theory”? If the meaning of rhetoric has undergone such dramatic changes in history, how stable are our current definitions of rhetoric?
Ultimately, Kent’s essay pushes the boundaries of what rhetoric is, expanding it to include the paralogic, hermeneutic thinking of the Sophists, and simultaneously limits it, by suggesting that it cannot provide an exact link between writer and reader. In this way, Kent is similar to the Sophists that he describes in his essay; like the Sophists, Kent understands “that we are prisoners of language in that we interpret the world only through language,” but understands as well that “language also provides the means for freedom in the world” (34).
Kent, Thomas. “Paralogic Hermeneutics and the Possibilities of Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Review 8.1 (1989): 24-42. JSTOR. Web. 1 Sept. 2012.
I was also intrigued by Kent’s claims that “discourse production cannot be reduced to a systematic process and taught in a codified manner, and that communication is essentially the attempt between writer and audience to adapt to each other’s hermeneutic strategies.” I agree—like with Will and Jillian’s discussions on Jillian’s post that teachers (especially professors at the college level) are more responsible for refining their students’ reading and writing skills, than introducing and instilling those skills—that because discourse production relies on the writer and audience adapting to “each other’s hermeneutic strategies,” the discourse then is always shifting and evolving, a malleable entity that cannot be systemically pinned down and taught in a think-inside-the-box, organized kind of way. As soon as you throw an audience into the mix, your student writers are responsible for any variety of types of writing in order to engage and most effectively communicate with their audience.