Hope, Truth, and Rhetoric

4Hope, Truth, and Rhetoric

Prophecy and Pragmatism inService of Feminism’s Cause

John C. Adams

1

On November 16, 2005, I listened to a broadcast on National PublicRadio titled ‘‘My Lobotomy’’ by and about Howard Dully, a man whoseparents had him lobotomized when he was twelve years old.1 In an inter-view segment with Howard Dully’s father, when asked if he had anyregrets about having Howard lobotomized, the senior Mr. Dully re-sponded, ‘‘Nobody is perfect. . . . Hindsight’s beautiful. . . . Fifty yearslater I can say it was a mistake. Well, World War I was a mistake.’’ He,like the twenty-five hundred others whom Dr. Walter Freeman treated

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80 Feminist Interpretations of Richard Rorty

with his revolutionary procedure, probably had faith in the ‘‘science’’backing the procedure as it was medically represented by Dr. Freeman.However, in retrospect, as Mr. Dully claims, he was ‘‘manipulated’’ by hiswife and Dr. Freeman into allowing the lobotomy to take place. That is,Mr. Dully does not seem to question the efficacy of lobotomy per se.Instead, he appears to regret the fact that he permitted his son to belobotomized when he probably did not really need to be. There is a drasticdifference between seeing a practice as bad and seeing it as badly prac-ticed.

Howard Dully’s lobotomy is a case, like any case of decision making,that is settled by the light of what at the time is taken to be advisable.Howard’s parents applied what they believed about the process, and itslikely positive effect, to a particular case of decision making. To a greatextent, their decision rested on their doctor’s authoritative assurancesthat the procedure would do the job. In retrospect, Howard’s parents’decision to lobotomize him may be taken as a lesson in trusting ‘‘experts’’too much. Its reporting on NPR offers a paradigm case of some mistakethat we may wish to presently avoid, as we try to decide what to do byapplying what we presently believe to be true, as taken on trust, to acurrent case of trying to decide what to do next—of trying to decide thebest means for achieving a hoped-for aim in the face of an unknown andunknowable future.

There is risk involved in any projected movement toward a hoped-foror desired future; risk is always involved in the performance of any deed,whether it is founded on knowledge or faith or some other combinationof motives that are good enough to induce action. Before one acts, onemay ask: Does the plan flow from well-considered deliberations? Does theproposal flow out of controversy’s test of foresight’s insights by the lightof precedent, and a clear understanding of its relevance to the present?Does the plan not rationally flow at all, but rather prompt a leap of faithfrom the present to a hoped-for future as the gap between them is madeto appear comfortably narrow by a rhetorically induced prophetic vision?

Nobody is perfect. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose—sometimeswe are right and sometimes we are wrong. Live and learn. But in thephase of taking up a solution, what draws the line between what is rejectedand what is accepted, regardless of the eventual outcome of a prosecutedplan? What plan gets adopted? What plan moves the collective toward ahorizon? That is, again, what prompts a plan’s adoption? Truth? Yes andno. Lies? Yes and no. Facts? Yes and no. Reason. Yes and no. Possibilities?

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Hope, Truth, and Rhetoric 81

Yes and no. Probabilities? Yes and no. Emotions? Yes and no. Character?Yes and no. Trust? Yes and no. The list of motives to follow a plan intothe future goes on forever. Nevertheless, the overarching answer, at alltimes and all places is ‘‘It depends,’’ as we deliberate and weigh alterna-tives at life’s crossroads. Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no. It depends. Thisis contingency’s imperative—make a decision—the future is wide open;things can, and often will, change.

What could decision depend on? What should decision depend on? Onewould like to think that in the best cases of decision making there is aconnection between the two—between could and should, the possibleand preferable—perhaps captured in pragmatic philosophy’s criterion ofexpediency, the combination of what works to prompt action with theprompted action’s actualization of a better future. Ah—but what makesone future better than another? There is no telling until we get there!Moreover, we often get ‘‘there’’ only to begin deliberating again aboutwhether this is actually where we thought we would be, or if we havereally gone anywhere at all. Nevertheless, from within the horizon of thepresent, we do know quite well what works to prompt action, regardlessof the action’s practicality or its capacity to fulfill a value-laden promise:effective rhetoric. It is all about persuasion, and persuasion offers no guar-antee. It motivates. Sometimes it lands us where we thought we wouldland, and other times it does not. For Mr. Dully it did not. By his accounthe was ‘‘manipulated.’’

The story of rhetoric’s risk—of its successes and failures—is the storyof rhetoric’s play as humans use and misuse symbols to project possiblefutures, to attend to what is not yet actualized but may be ever present ashope in life’s mutable and mutating flow. Life’s key risk is the risk ofdecision. One of rhetoric’s key movements is toward the future—towardwhat is not-yet—toward what cannot be known by any means, but canonly be wisely and plausibly calculated. In a sense, rhetoric’s engagementof discourse to set a course into the future is always vested in some wayin hope and fear and trust and belief (and their opposites). While How-ard’s parents could settle their idea of what to do about him on the assur-ance of medicine’s ethos, a set of prior successes cited by their doctor, anda sense that what they were doing was socially right, how are people ableto consider and take up courses of action that cannot be founded on anyof the above? Moreover, even with all ‘‘they had going for them’’ as theymade their decision, the Dullys’ decision turned out to be wrong—nobody is perfect. Not even us (you and me). Nevertheless, social and

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political futures, for better or worse, cannot be actualized without rheto-ric’s assistance—without persuasion’s play playing a role in promptingindividuals and groups to forge ahead—to make what they hope will bea better future by stepping out into the unknowable unknown and mak-ing hope real in the performance of action motivated by the hope, andconsequently registered as such as hope realized becomes history, a con-crete social fact, undeniable, as proved to be possible as a done deed.

There is no doubt that social and political movements move on rheto-ric’s prompts as people are persuaded to take up change—not only intheir beliefs but also in their actions as far as their actions are what ittakes to bring into being a palpable, concrete, actual (not virtual) future.That future may ‘‘overcome’’ the ills it is designed to remedy, or it may,as in Howard Dully’s case, leave people feeling as if they have got ‘‘some-thing missing’’ in their souls. There is no guarantee where rhetoric will‘‘lead’’ us, but its power to make change when wielded by prophets andseers has prompted countless people to take up their prescribed plans ofaction to make hoped-for futures. But just as people have sometimes man-aged to ‘‘evade philosophy’’ in their quest for a better future by taking uppragmatism’s criterion of expediency at its rhetorical foundation, otherswish to evade rhetoric and somehow ground their plans for a better futurein some kind of persuasion that is not rhetorically induced. But whatkind of persuasion is not rhetorically induced? What kind of persuasiondoes not somehow engage other minds in an intersubjective project thatis made together—that is intended to ‘‘elicit or increase’’ its intendedaudience’s ‘‘adherence’’ to its premises and thereby induce it to believein, or act upon, a given discourse’s claims?2 Well, the various answers tothis question ride on key controversies permeating philosophy’s history.These controversies are continually played, replayed, and displayed bywhat counts as philosophic discourse. Feminist philosophy is a case inpoint.

In Sabina Lovibond’s ‘‘Reply,’’ her response to Richard Rorty’s attemptto marry feminism and pragmatism in his essay titled ‘‘Feminism andPragmatism,’’ rhetoric’s vexed association with her thread of feminist phi-losophy is immediately apparent. In her view, Rorty’s linguistic turnplaces him on the side of a debate that ‘‘is almost as old as Europeanphilosophy.’’3 The debate engages language’s representational characterand is deeply entwined in the philosophy/rhetoric divide and its age-oldstory of rhetoric’s sole interest in inducing desired effects on audiences:‘‘His allegiance in this debate is to the skeptical position which maintains

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that language and reality are incommensurable—that they do not standin any relation which would allow us to assess the one as more or lessfaithful to the other. . . . This doctrine of the logos leads its modernadherents, as it apparently led its inventor [Gorgias], to regard languageas—not just occasionally and contingently, but essentially—a means ofproducing effects on one’s audience, or manipulating them for one’s ownends.4’’

In fact, it may be pragmatism’s so-called rhetorical underpinning thatfinally authorizes its rejection by feminist philosophers such as Lovibond.For, apparently, pragmatism, as it is implicated in rhetoric, will serveopposing purposes and serve them well—fascists and misogynists alikehave been well served by rhetoric’s practical persuasive practice: its abilityto manipulate audiences ‘‘for one’s own ends.’’ But what other ends arethere, or should there be? That is, shouldn’t one practice persuasion inthe hope that one’s own ends will be realized? It seems that the ethic ofeffectiveness is not in itself a bad thing—it all depends in some way onwhat exactly those ends may be, on what is hoped for.

Further, Lovibond notes that when ‘‘speech is no longer answerable toreality,’’ a sort of ‘‘subjective irresponsibility’’ is to be expected. This thenleads to the intrinsic interest of rhetoric (as Lovibond describes it) in ‘‘playand trickery rather than in communication, and a tendency to rejoice inthe untruthful—even ‘deceptive’—character of speech in general.’’ Whatremains is rhetoric’s twofold commitment to ‘‘psychological manipula-tion’’ and its use as a ‘‘weapon.’’5 Last, as far as manipulation goes handin hand with deceit, and weapons go hand in hand with violence, rheto-ric goes hand in hand (as does Rorty’s antirealism) with ‘‘ ‘the two formsof deliberate assault on human beings [deceit and violence]’ . . . or ofrefusal to deal with others on the basis of mutual recognition.’’6

Even if we accept Lovibond’s assumption that pragmatism’s commit-ment to rhetoric sits uneasily with a commitment to truth and mutualrespect, a deep and significant problem remains: the truth does not speakfor itself—as Lovibond’s own attempt at persuasion clearly illustrates. Infact, the truth does not speak at all—people do. And for better or worse,some speech is effective (it achieves its aim), and some speech is ineffec-tive (it fails to achieve its aim). That is, there is effective speech andineffective speech, and rhetoric is the rationale of effective speech. Mypoint is, moreover, that it is rhetoric that moves social or political reformor revolutionary movements along toward their aims—even if that rheto-ric conjures violence as the best means of moving a movement to its end.

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Accordingly, feminism may succeed or fail as its discourses achieve, orfail to achieve, rhetoric’s aim of effectiveness. After all, feminism is amovement.

2

As always in rhetoric’s historical tribulations, a ‘‘real’’ philosophical posi-tion such as Lovibond’s is staked out in opposition to an idea of rhetoricthat enables the positing of a persuasive discourse that is not rhetorical—that is philosophical. For Lovibond this nonrhetorical discourse is a dis-course conveying an ‘‘anxious vigilant’’ tone that accords with her mind’scensor as it holds sway over her ‘‘expressive acts’’ as far as they are com-mensurate with reality.7 Rhetoric is what bad people use; good people usedialogue, conversation, dialectic, math, or some other ‘‘nonrhetorical’’discourse to persuade (and be persuaded).

But what exactly is Lovibond’s idea of rhetoric as it operates in herargument against Rorty’s brand of pragmatism and its linkage to his sortof feminism? For starters we need to understand that her essay is a rejoin-der to Rorty’s citation of a scrap of her writing. In her essay she claimsthat Rorty has misappropriated her text and used it to impute a brand ofrealism to her that she does not subscribe to. Nevertheless, she does sub-scribe to some brand of realism (a brand of realism that is not implicatedin the idea of rhetoric’s dirty little deeds and that underwrites her critiqueof Rorty’s conception of the rhetorically filled gap between language andreality). However, the realism she offers as a ground and a corrective torhetoric’s misguided ‘‘anything goes in the name of victory’’ cunning—what she calls dialogue or communication—is just the kind of rhetoricshe condemns. How can this be? Let me explain.

Lovibond asserts that once language is uncoupled from reality it in-duces a sort of evil play whereby the effectiveness of a given discourse isthe sole measure of its worth. Whether it persuades people to take upfascism, socialism, or Christianity (or some combination of all three) isof no concern in its evaluation. So long as it persuades and achieves itsintended effect, there is nothing outside its effectiveness that rhetoricaldiscourse ‘‘answers to.’’ Lovibond wants discourse to answer to somethingother than its power to move people so its persuasiveness will be thwartedin cases where it promotes ends, ideas, identifications, actions, or com-

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mitments that she takes as mistaken or downright evil—ends that arejust plain (and sort of objectively) wrong. But here’s the problem: justlike Rorty, she can’t escape a social context of language acquisition andmeaning making. Lovibond is still committed to linguistic naturalism,insofar as people must be taught how to evaluate by the light of conven-tions established in a community with which they identify: ‘‘Linguisticunderstanding, however, involves mastery of a system of rules, which inturn calls for imaginative identification with the behavioral patterns ofan actual (historically existing) community; and this identification is se-cured through training, that is, by exposing the learner to a large enoughsample of established usage to convey the ‘spirit’ of the relevant prac-tices.’’8 Her position is that while we learn rules and procedures, thelearned rules and procedures enable us ‘‘to say how things are irrespectiveof whether or not they are currently believed so.’’9

While for Lovibond the fact that nobody may believe one’s assertedtruth claims is beside the point, for rhetoric’s proteges it is the sign offailure—not only of rhetorical failure, but of failure to do one’s duty as ahuman being—to make the truth effective here and now, in this particularcase. From a rhetorician’s standpoint, Lovibond’s failed truth is indeed adeeply dismal failure. Her position, unfortunately, can lead to exactly theoutcome she claims rhetoric will arrive at, not as an analogue of violenceand force as she describes what rhetoric virtually is, but in actual forceand violence. People who have ‘‘truth’’ on their side may actually feelobligated to ‘‘force’’ it on nonbelievers—that is, when they are unable topersuade others to believe it. Here, coercion, not persuasion, prevails outof a desire to make the truth prevail—here truth’s victory is indeed—intruth—a victory won by force. So, Lovibond’s linguistic naturalism canprovide a justification for undertaking force—to ‘‘help’’ those who areunable to ‘‘see’’ the truth. In fact, any violence that is done against ‘‘non-believers’’ may be justified by the belief that the truth in some way speaksfor itself to those who will listen—who are not in some way depraved orotherwise blinded from its uptake. Thus, persons well rehearsed in theircommunities to see women as inferior to men can self-righteously persistin this view regardless of what other communities may believe or notbelieve. And when these differently believing communities come intocontact—as they may enjoin a cross-cultural conversation over a scarceresource that is important to them both (such as oil)—how do they effec-tively negotiate their differences, share the resource, and live in peace?

In sum, there is a pattern of cultural transmission that does not escape

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the relative aspect of language’s status as truth-bearing or even one’sdeeply cultured beliefs about what language can do and cannot do andhow and why it does or does not do it. In fact, teaching itself is an act ofpersuasion as far as a significant degree of what is learned is taken onfaith, especially where history (the past) and science are concerned. I donot know about you, but most of what I know about the ‘‘science’’ ofnatural order I have taken on faith from my teachers and textbooks. Thatdoes not mean that the experts I learn from have grounded their knowl-edge likewise; it just means that I am not technically competent to criti-cally evaluate the ‘‘truth’’ of natural science’s findings: I am not on thereview board of any scientific journal. Instead, like the Dullys in thelobotomy decision, I take those truths on trust and I use them to makedecisions about what to do next: I am persuaded by the ethos of scienceand the utility of its claims as I may apply them to the practice of every-day life—for better or worse. That is, in most cases of decision I know‘‘that’’ something or other is the case, but I do not know why. And inmost cases of decision, like taking an aspirin, my application of knowing-that to doing-that works out—I survive, and sometimes my expectationsare even surpassed! But, more often than I would like to admit, I end uplike Howard Dully’s father realizing I am not perfect, and for that matter,neither is Sabina Lovibond or Richard Rorty. Even if there is a ‘‘truthabsolute’’ as Lovibond would hope, its application by fallible people (akaany human) may lead to some unanticipated bad consequence (or theopposite). In this case, one painfully comes to see that what one held as‘‘truth absolute’’ was the foundation of ‘‘error absolute’’ as the future oneplanned to inhabit by the truth’s application to a decision did not materi-alize. Maybe it was the wrong truth that was chosen and not the truthitself that was wrong. Maybe it was ‘‘true’’ but unwisely applied. Live andlearn. Who knows?

So, no matter what kind of a linguistic turn one takes, one must returnto rhetoric: the story of language’s cultured attachment to what it de-scribes, evaluates, or expresses that is based in intersubjective consensus.Now, what I am concerned with, and to some extent what Rorty is afterin his essay, and Lovibond too, is this place or site or way of speakingthat legitimates a given discourse regardless of its effectiveness right here, rightnow—that legitimates a given discourse that rhetorically fails at the pres-ent time. That is, if effectiveness is the sole criterion of a discourse’s claimto value, then what is to be done with those discourses that are generallyineffective in their ‘‘own’’ time, but nevertheless are taken up by enough

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auditors to be preserved, repeated, and not retreated from despite theirfailure to make social or political or economic change right here, rightnow—not tomorrow, not eventually, not at the end of time, but rightnow? Should these failed discourses be put on ice? Should they be storedaway until the time is right? For eventually, we hope, they will lay claimto the future’s empowered judges’ assent. But, especially for Rorty, howunpragmatic it would be to persist at pressing a position of advocacy thatis not to the point—that fails, and fails, and fails—how inexpedient.How unsophistic!

But wait! Even for Rorty (and Lovibond too), there is help on theway. Rorty recognizes that help is afforded by the prophet—the prophet’sprophetic voice—the crazy-to-contemporaries voice that, as only timecan or will tell, might ultimately pan out and be taken up, and perhapseven achieve social, political, and every other kind of cultural hegemony.Let’s face it, some ideas (aka hopes) are just ‘‘ahead of their time.’’ Theprophet, for Rorty, emerges on the scene and makes change possible bylinguistically reframing present experience—by offering an apparently‘‘crazy’’ description that, by dint of its competitive edge over other de-scriptions, may eventually be taken up as a reorienting frame of under-standing:

Prophecy, as we see, is all that non-violent political movementscan fall back on when argument fails. Arguments for the rights ofthe oppressed will fail insofar as the only language in which tostate relevant premises is one in which the relevant emancipatorypremises sound crazy. We pragmatists see universalism and realismas committed to the idea of a reality-tracking faculty called ‘‘rea-son’’ and an unchanging moral reality to be tracked, and thusunable to make sense of a claim that a new voice is needed. Sowe commend ourselves to feminists on the ground that we can fitthat claim into our view of moral progress with relative ease.10

At the site of seer-sight afforded by failed but persistent rhetoric we haveprophetic feminists—people speaking from within the present aboutwomen, sexism, sexual harassment, marital rape, and gender equality whomay sound crazy to contemporaries, who threaten, who lose, but who are(and were) right—they had, and have always had, truth on their side.Wait—when were/are they right? That is the question—as in all thingsrhetorical (and we are talking about rhetoric, good rhetoric), time, timing,

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or kairos counts in the settling of contingency on possibility’s foundationas a plan of action and a chosen way of being together that actualizes somehope that has been hoped for a long time (too long), but now is the time,and incidentally, now is the place where some hoped-for hope takes holdand is held for now as the truth, and for later, as a motive (not cause) foraction and a prompt to action’s judgment. It is hope that persists throughtime, and as hope is consensually realized-in-social-action it becomes atruth—a socially sharable intersubjective fact-of-the-matter that is ac-counted for in the vocabularies of motive we employ in narratives—instories—about why we did what we did when we did it the way we did it.

But, wait again!

3

Both Rorty and Lovibond, coming from different places—one is a linguis-tic relativist (Rorty) and the other a linguistic naturalist (Lovibond)—conclude that there is a set of human predicaments that always have beenwrong, slavery, for example. Lovibond, taking the position that there areintrinsic evils and that it is this characteristic that time-proofs them,criticizes Rorty’s claim that slavery has always been absolutely wrong atthe same time he denies that it is intrinsically evil. ‘‘It is something of atour de force to argue simultaneously (i) that ‘Slavery is absolutely wrong’has always been true, and (ii) that slavery is not an intrinsic evil. Atany rate, the attempt to do so raises a question about the meaning of‘intrinsic.’ ’’11 But, in a note, Rorty elaborates his position: ‘‘Pragmatistsneed not deny that true sentences are always true. . . . Pragmatists shouldagree with everybody else that ‘slavery is absolutely wrong’ has alwaysbeen true—even in periods when this sentence would have sounded crazyto everybody concerned, even slaves (who hoped their fellow tribespeoplewould return in force and enslave their present masters). All that pragma-tists need is the claim that this sentence is not made true by somethingother than the beliefs we would use to support it—and, in particular, notby something like the Nature of Human Beings.’’12 Must ‘‘always’’ alwaysall of a sudden become operative as an afterthought as we rise up togethernow to fight the good fight; change social, political, economic and everyother order relevant to oppression’s elimination? Must we claim that ithas always been the case that what we have got/believe now has always

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been true? That is, on both sides of the Lovibond-Rorty feminist cointhere is the token—the image—of change’s possibility; one side lookstoward change as finally according with what’s always already forevereternally been there waiting for us to fit to, while the other side lookstoward change as making accord with, and consequently bringing intobeing, what’s always been hoped for, but never was until we made it so byinstantiating shared practices that actualize it in the material affairs ofbeing together—as members of groups, relationship partners, and citizensunder laws promulgated to ensure the actions’ status as integral to a givencode of justice—as ‘‘real’’ in the light of regulatory consequences thataffect the body and other sites of material costs (and benefits).

Accordingly, at the start and the finish of the day (or epoch), truth’ssource, foundation, purpose, process, sociopolitical actualization, is neverevidenced or accomplished by truth itself (no matter how we account forits existence and understanding)—it is accomplished by people who be-lieve it—and the truth-now-operative was always potential in the proph-ets’ hopeful, but failed, cries. Now, some philosophers may like prophetsbecause they appear to be unconcerned with rhetoric—their failure to‘‘win’’ in their own time or to produce the results they hope for may betaken as the tokens of their deep philosophical understanding of some-thing that corrupt, power-blinded, immoral, or otherwise distracted orunruly minds could not readily perceive/receive/believe. That is, one ofthe key attributes of any true prophet is her or his failure in her or hisown time to sway enough auditors to keep out of harm’s way, avoid theinsane asylum, be laughed off life’s stage, or be ignored by some otherswho, now, in hindsight we see as themselves depraved. However, there’s adrastic difference between a Copernican stance as it faces natural order,and a Socratic stance as it faces social order. Both positions ‘‘cried out’’in some kind of wilderness—but there’s a drastic difference between thecosmos and cosmopolis as sites of prophetic speech’s desire to set thingsright. Between physis and nomos there’s a difference—between naturalorder and social order there’s a difference. Between Galileo the scientistand Eugene Debs the socialist there’s a difference. No matter how pro-lifically social change agents may seek to strategically identify with sci-ence’s ethos in keeping with their time’s valorization of science’sepistemic efficacy and apparent capacity to answer all questions underthe sign of knowledge, the prophets seek not only to change peoples’minds, but also seek to change the order of things. Galileo was eventually‘‘proved’’ right by the intersubjectivity that his method’s application af-

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forded to those who would replicate in their own experiences what his‘‘science’’ had enabled him to see. But such is not the case for projectedsocial and political futures, as the projections may fall on so-called deafears. That is, as the prophet cries out for a new and different social orpolitical order she or he may not pose as a scientist describing somethingthat presently exists. The prophet’s cry does not map what is and makeit knowable to others; rather it projects a hope that, in effect, may be-come what is to others, who at the present cannot see or even experienceit because they are unwilling to act upon it. As Rorty points out, thisproject is a project of redescription. But the redescription is itself a rhe-torical process that, for example, may persuasively enable the uptake of adefinition for a social practice, whose observable motions may remain thesame (sexual intercourse between married people), as its imputed motivemay change (marital rape) as its performance may be viewed and persua-sively displayed from different points of view. Motives are not observ-able—they are linguistic formulations that are judged by judges asplausible, believable, sincere, and truthful accounts of what prompted agiven action; they are contestable and their consensual settlement is amatter of persuasion. At what point, and by what means, does a malesupervisor finally assent to the view that his taken-for-granted ‘‘supervi-sory’’ actions toward female employees are motivated by misogyny; thathe is an oppressor? How is the social role of ‘‘supervisor’’ reviewed andreformed—where its name remains the same, but its practice is refiguredas a site for the actualization of a ‘‘better’’ social reality that may actuallybe affected by legislation proscribing motives that underwrote the ‘‘old’’sexist way of supervising.

Now that we are persuaded to see a given ensemble of social actionfrom ‘‘this’’ point of view instead of ‘‘that’’ point of view, we may claimthat it always was what we see it as now in the present; but we understandthat our new ‘‘definition’’ is not essential—it is positioned by a wideningsensitivity to other ways of seeing and being that are not preferable be-cause more true, but are preferable because, once affected and actedupon, they enable us to actualize our hope for a better world. Accord-ingly, the ‘‘better world’’ is an accomplishment that affords a palpableshift in the quality of our lives—in our shared experiences of being-to-gether. As people are persuaded to ‘‘try out’’ different perspectives, andare widely willing to affect redescriptions, a new intersubjectivity isbrought into being. Similar to the scientist’s successfully replicated exper-iment, the uptake of a new perspective provides a shared experience that

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socially validates its efficacy, and as a motive (imputed or avowed)changes the order of social order by sanctioning or eliminating previousways of interpreting given social actions, but that yet, even in their con-tingency, in the present are experienced under the circumstances as alwayshaving been right or wrong because right or wrong right now. Who is tosay otherwise—all along we could have been mistaken, right?

At any rate, when the list of nonscientific prophets is rolled out (peo-ple like Debs or Susan B. Anthony), we find (and we must find) that theywere mostly people who took the risk of rhetoric’s publicly spoken word,who stood embodied and delivered, who courageously and hopefullyspoke on behalf of their hope as they sought to linguistically release it astruth at particular times and places, at gatherings outside the safe havensof academe (although some who spoke within the academy suffered evendeath, perhaps for an overheard lecture—but most likely for a publishedtext—the unfortunate downside of the printing press’s trace-leavingtechnology). In short, the prophets I’m talking about gave speeches—compact, emotionally charged, rhetorically formed announcements oftheir prescriptions and redescriptions for change (their visions of ‘‘order’’were not those of natural order’s order, although they sometimes drewupon it as a rhetorical topos calling for alignment with it); the revisionof ‘‘error’’ they proposed was not that which is enabled by science’s exper-iments, but were instead changes in beliefs about being-together thatproposed to change our experiences with each other in positive, life-ful-filling ways. By changing our minds and ways of being together for thegood of it, the new ways of being together are in fact a kind of experimentperformed by the experience of the palpable and felt difference thechanges make to us. As we realize our agency by changing the way welive together, we change the meanings we make together at the sites ofbeing together where the difference is felt by performing one’s beliefs andthereby actualizing a new, and deeply felt, quality of communal connec-tion.

Students of rhetoric (if not philosophy) still read the prophets’speeches today. For what? And why? For inspiration as sources of practiceand practical wisdom through the contemplation of rhetorical failure’ssuccess as a strategy of keeping hope; of keeping faith—despite the unaf-fected sensibilities of one’s empowered judges, be they the masses or themagistrates authorized to condemn. Yes, even Socrates gave at least threedeeply rhetorical speeches. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates gives two epi-deictic speeches on love and rhetoric. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates delivers

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his defense in a courtroom as a rhetorically inept forensic speech—as aconscious condemnation of his condemners. Accordingly, Socrates’ de-fense bombed rhetorically. Socrates was sentenced to death by his judges,and he duly followed through on their sentence—he drank hemlock anddied as he condemned them to guilt-ridden lives. Hence, his ‘‘apology’’ isprophetic and Socrates is deemed a martyr. That is, as far as Socrates’guilt has been vindicated by the light of Plato’s Apology, we are now ableto see the truth of what Socrates saw as it is ‘‘transcribed’’ in his court-room speech in the constructed context—the circumstances—of theApology. In short, we are rhetorically positioned by Plato to see the injus-tice of his teacher’s sentence—we are persuaded by Socrates’s defensebecause we (Plato, you, and me), unlike his contemporary judges, are notcorrupted by their false opinions. Plato, across the centuries, has enabledus to see the light! Ironically, Plato’s persuasive portrayal of Socrates’ trialand death is paradigmatic of rhetoric’s play at the foundation of Lovi-bond’s (and others’) ideal of a truth that is true regardless of whether itis believed by one’s contemporaries—as prophets are laid slain by bearersof false opinions that are taken as true at a given time and place becausemost people believe them, because most people have been presently per-suaded to hold them. So, again, from a rhetorical perspective what can wepossibly learn from the prophets’ speeches? Is there a lesson to be learnedabout truth’s contingency from its prophetic bearers’ particular, and rhe-torically situated, failures?

We learn from these prophets’ speeches how to courageously play intothe particular cases of life’s urgencies and the cultural, political, and so-cial emergencies that inevitably arise. They are paradigm cases of virtue-in-the-light: at the agon in agony over contested and contestable terrainthey exemplify not only hope’s unrealized truth, but courage’s real-lifeplay in time—at the threshold of death’s always open door. ‘‘Now is thetime,’’ said Martin Luther King Jr. Time and time again, in ringing anaph-ora, until in death did he depart, we heard his magnetic voice’s clearclarion call to help, hope, risk, act, love, cry, and even die to realize adream together. He took the risk of rhetoric and gathered togetherenough people who saw it his way to make a difference—to bring aboutchange.

Now, we need to joyously proclaim, that dreams (not fairy tales) cancome true—it happened to us as we took up and continue to take up thecause of civil rights, and took up and continue to take up the cause offeminism. But what makes dreams come true—their truthfulness? No.

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People make dreams come true because they presently believe in them.In this dream space though, we know that one person’s dream is anotherperson’s nightmare—Hitler’s dream was everybody’s but the Nazis’ night-mare. As we enjoin the discourse of hoping, dreaming, prophesying, andall the rest of anything related to actualizing some future that does notpresently exist and cannot presently be empirically experienced, the sameold claim is lain—what’s to keep fascism (or pick your favorite evil) atbay? What’s to keep my nightmare (aka your dream) from coming true, ifthere is nothing that independently authorizes its status as a nightmareand not a dream—as a Bad Thing, not a Good Thing? As Lovibond andRorty and all the rest point out (and it is one of the oldest points in thebook [and in oral traditions too]), there are winners and losers. Fascismdid not temporarily triumph because it was true any more than modern-ism, feminism, communism or any other ‘‘ism’’ (or ‘‘ocracy’’) did, will, orcould triumph because it is true. What triumphs is what people believe,and what people believe is a matter of persuasion.

The prophet’s ultimate value is that even given the knowledge thatshe or he will lose today, there is an optimistic hopeful edge that edgesthe prophet toward the edge—every day all day, over and over again,always already the same (like the truth itself): the prophet, motivated byhope, just keeps speaking, and over the years, across the generations,successions of prophets speak and fail, speak and fail, until finally thetime is right—the prophecy, if not the prophet, prevails. As its point oforigin is in failure, and its continued failure reminds us, persistence mat-ters—time is everything. As generations live and die the circumstances ofprophecy’s ‘‘truth’’ now proved must be constantly reclaimed if it is tostay operative—and its effective reclamation too takes the form of rheto-ric, epideictic rhetoric, that special brand of rhetoric that publicly dis-plays paradigm cases of virtue—particular people whose particular deedsindubitably exemplify hope actualized in the observable ‘‘fact’’ of its mo-tive-to-action, even as that motive is contestable—one person’s courageis another person’s senseless risk-taking. Epideictic rhetoric amplifiesthese paradigms that, in turn, inspire us and keep us gathered aroundthem as taken signs of virtue’s and vice’s presence in our time—at thisplace. As we gather around them we commune: we publicly actualizehope’s hope as the social fact of the shared and celebrated present.

Moreover, the paradigms of virtue delivered up in occasional speechprovide points of departure for subsequent cases of conscience that playin the open-air theaters of everyday life. The lessons of the past must be

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strung into the future on strands of praise and blame. The examples ofvirtue that persist through time’s vexations provide starting and endingpoints for moral deliberation—the type cases, the paradigm cases, are allwe need so long as we take heed of their embodied claims to virtue;as Lovibond claims, quoting Kant, ‘‘ ‘Examples are the go-cart of . . .judgement.’ ’’13 Moral deliberations resting on the paradigm cases dis-played by epideictic rhetoric have consistently worked to thread the waythrough particular cases of moral judgment in the guise of casuistry. AsI have written elsewhere, drawing on Johnson and Toulmin’s work oncasuistry,

Epideictic [speech] . . . draws upon the presumptive power of ex-emplary actions that ‘‘carry conclusive weight, absent ‘excep-tional’ circumstances.’’ In so doing, it displays what is worthy ofpraise and narrates the example as a contemporary point of refer-ence. Drawing on the rhetorical power of ekphrasis to enable averbal vision of virtue, the commemorated deed’s depictionscripts out possibilities for mimesis. That is, the ascription of virtueto deeds enables their categorization as charges to action. Theparadigm case assists moral deliberation by bridging the unique-ness of every event with a settled and embodied point of compari-son. In essence, in their deliberations casuists seek analogies ordisanalogies between present cases and paradigm cases. Epideicticrhetoric continuously rehearses and updates the paradigms of vir-tue to perpetuate passionate and reasonable ways of thinkingabout virtue and vice.14

In this view, once settled as starting points for moral deliberation, theparadigm cases set by epideictic play the role of truth in calculationsconcerning the good—in discourses prompting action and maintaining agiven social order’s ethos.15 Again, however, the movement toward thesettled sense of community that epideictic celebrates and continually in-stitutes and reinforces through acts of praise and blame, is itself contin-gent and open to revision. That is, the very idea of epideictic rhetoricrests on the realization that concepts of the good, the true, and the beau-tiful must be adhered to and work in practice in the everyday lives ofpeople who identify with one another, and associate with one another,and make sense with one another in the light of their guidance as theconcepts are made concrete in particular courses of action that are

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praised or vituperated. That is, the ethos of a community is not settledonce and for all by the community’s settlement. Change is always possibleas new perspectives are adopted and new possibilities are envisioned andnew orders are prophetically, and rhetorically, performed.

So, at the end of the day, what keeps the lie at bay? The truth does notspeak for itself. That’s a given. All things being equal (that is, no guns),it is rhetoric’s effectiveness that actualizes what is considered truth (andconversely lies) in people’s lives. If we are to live free, we must makewhat we consider truth count in contests with its other. The truth isactualized—brought into being—by the power of rhetoric as far as itsbeing is the consequence that its uptake fosters by coactive persuasion atsites of intersubjectivity. The problem is, however, that in the design ofsocial life the only difference between a lie and the truth as they aretaken up in persuasion is their consequences.

So, wherever persuasion is claimed as the outcome (or hoped-for out-come) of a given discourse (philosophy included), rhetoric is operative.As Lovibond is not persuaded by Rorty, and as Rorty may even not bepersuaded by Rorty, it is in persuasion that truth is hope actualized—thatit (whatever it is) operates in people’s lives as a motive prompting what’snext. The same can be said for lies. This leads to a final note on prophecyin its ‘‘traditional’’ religious sense: its assurance—its guarantee—is ulti-mately God’s warrant. Prophets don’t speak for themselves. In this story,the failure of the prophet is actually the failure of her or his audience tobe ‘‘ready, willing, and able’’ to take heed of God’s humanly mediatedvoice. Regardless, though, of rhetoric’s ultimate source, its power, then,is vested between a speaker and a listener. Together they make the truthappear, or not, by what they do next—what they do after the silence theend of a speech affords, as far as they may account for what they do nextas a consequence of the speech’s eloquence—its possible truth-actualizingeffect, its persuasiveness as it raises a vision and steers desire toward thefulfillment of hope as the expectation of good’s actualization. In short,there is a quality of truth that is accomplished by mutually honoring a givenhope and applying it as a motive for conjoint action. This quality of truth isa promise that can only be fulfilled by faith that enlarging the scope ofour mutual interests in this particular way is the expedient thing to do—itis possible, it is practical, it is wise, it is good—and we won’t regret it,and if we do regret it, we have just us to blame. In the light of rhetoric’sinducement to cooperate, we always run the risk of failing to bring intobeing what we hope for—even if we follow a course that is clearly and

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credibly plotted, there’s always room to live and learn. That is, nobody’sperfect and we should not give up on rhetoric, or disparage it, because ofthe mistakes that have been made at its prompting. Sometimes it worksbeautifully, peacefully and expeditiously, bringing us to a hoped-for place,and keeping us there by epideictic’s ample setting of paradigm cases ofvirtue as it reinvigorates our adherence so that what we take for grantedmay be continually granted as a criterion of judgment in particular cases.

As real deeds are commemorated as indubitable signs of virtue’s playin the life of a community, we can apply these examples to our ownactions and live in accord with their experienced consequences. Thesame can be said for vice and its avoidance. There are lessons to belearned by observing the deeds of others. As we presently consider theprospects of feminism’s future in light of recent changes on the bench ofthe Supreme Court, and at other sites of social and political power, howdo we hold on to the changes that were made—how, for example, do wekeep the laws intact that ensure a woman’s right to abortion? Outside ofviolence, there’s no recourse to anything but rhetoric—rhetoric may bepresently closing the door that rhetoric probably opened. Any discourse insupport of feminism’s cause, or any cause, for that matter, that disavowsa commitment to rhetoric’s effective practice is probably willing itselfinto oblivion by failing to take up a key cultural practice available toenable, at a minimum, the status quo to stand. That is, all philosophizingaside, it is important to realize that even the site of feminist philosophyis held clear by persuasion—by enough people with enough power believ-ing that there should be a place for it in the academy and everywhereelse. There is nothing outside of solidarity rhetorically voicing its com-mitment to a cause that will cause the cause to flourish, and feminism isa cause.

So, it would seem that any feminist discourse that disparages rhetoricis set against itself and may ultimately contribute to the movement’s fail-ure. First, it uses rhetoric to disparage rhetoric—this is deeply ironic,especially when it speaks philosophically out of a deep interest in avoid-ing even the appearance of self-contradiction. Second, feminist antirhet-oric rhetoric may push the illusion that there is something other thaneffective persuasion that will peacefully bring about (or maintain) socialand political change—no matter what the avowed rationale for thatchange is. Last, winning is everything when it comes to overcoming op-pression. How does one compromise with one’s oppressor? By becominga little bit less of a slave, and he, a little bit less of a master? Rhetoric is

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still the best available peaceful and legal means for winning ‘‘the cause’’in democratic social order. Rhetoric that is effectively and strategicallypracticed with an eye toward an audience that is actually present andempowered to decide feminism’s fate may win the day. But there’s noguarantee. So, I would ask Sabina Lovibond to take Richard Rorty up onhis offer—to take up rhetoric’s practice in the guise of pragmatism anduse it to induce others to honor feminism’s hope for a better world andto make feminism socially true by its practice and the epideictic celebra-tion of its accomplishers’ accomplishments, as at the annual gathering atSeneca Falls.

In fact, it is high time that rhetoric be awarded its rightful place in thefield of philosophy. That is, philosophical discourses consistently evokethe concept of ‘‘persuasion’’ in their writings by claiming that a givenposition is persuasive or not persuasive. Rhetoric is the rationale of per-suasive discourse—it is now, and it always has been. When philosophersrefer to ‘‘being persuaded,’’ what exactly do they mean? To be sure, theydo not mean that they have been ‘‘manipulated’’ by the kind of ‘‘irrespon-sible’’ discourse Lovibond associates with rhetoric in her critique of Ror-ty’s antifoundationalism. Even the failed discourses of prophets arerhetorical—while they may fail to move enough people in their own timeto pay attention to the futures they prophetically project, still, they afforda projection of the prophets’ characters as they inspire the prophets’‘‘crazy’’ followers to follow as a sort of mimetic emblem of their adher-ence. Character or ethos is a primary mode of rhetorical proof, and in theend, it just may be a prophet’s projected character that engenders a qual-ity of trust sufficient to move masses of people to take up her or his causeas they believe that now is the time to make real the prophet’s prophecyby honoring its hope in the present: by making it socially true.

4

It is important to understand once and for all that a persuasive argumentis a rhetorically effective argument. In the case of abstruse philosophicalargument, it is clear that one cannot claim an argument’s persuasivenessoutside of the answer to the question, To whom is it persuasive? A typicalhigh school student will not find Hilary Putnam’s arguments persuasive.Does that mean that there’s something wrong with Hilary Putnam’s argu-

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ments? Well, if it is a group of high school students he is intentionallyand avowedly addressing, yes. If not, no. If it is philosophers he is address-ing, possibly, no too! In short, it is his (and every other philosopher’s)intended audience, whether he is conscious of it or not, who determineswhether his argument is persuasive, and there are fellow philosopherswho do not find his position persuasive. But there are at the same timefellow philosophers who do find his position persuasive.

Alternatively, if one is in possession of a truth that others do not be-lieve in, it may be one’s duty to tirelessly work to discover and communi-cate a complex of reasons that will enable the nonbelievers to ‘‘see thelight’’ instead of, perhaps, smugly reveling in one’s superior insight andpronouncing the nonbelievers infidels, recalcitrant, ignorant, unjust orsome other put-down designed to rationalize one’s rhetorical ineffective-ness. And it is in this exercise that one must examine one’s audience andfind reasons that that particular audience will find are persuasive. Thetruth has need of rhetoric.

In the end, as rhetoric’s history so vividly teaches, there’s a place forit in, and at, every site of communication. That is, whether one is a post-positivist, a poststructuralist, an antifoundationalist, a realist, or a mystic,or whatever, there is a rationale of persuasion that is suited to you—thatis suited to the site of one’s desire to be believed; to be affirmed, to be.While the designs of rhetoric may shift as they are themselves adapted togiven standpoints, rhetoric still maintains its identity as a strategic technedesigned to win, or deepen, the adherence of intended auditors, includ-ing, moreover, one’s self. The only case that can be made for rhetoric’scriticism as a social practice is probably vested in the characters of thepeople who use it and the persuasive artifacts they may produce by rheto-ric’s lights: artifacts, for example, that may induce people to drink cya-nide-laced flavored sugar water, turn attack dogs loose on civil rightsmarchers, bomb abortion clinics, or believe that women are inferior tomen. However, for every discourse that may take people down, thereare (or better be) opposed discourses waiting their turns in the culturalconversation, waiting their turns to persuade people to the opposite posi-tions, to different actions and beliefs, to lift them up or walk them towarda future through portals opening out toward their hope’s actualization-in-practice as a social truth.

As Lovibond and countless others have always pointed out, rhetoriccan be used to move any agenda, and rhetoric can be used irresponsiblyto undermine and thwart hope’s play and the construction of common

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interests at sites of deliberation. But as Lovibond makes the case for rhet-oric’s more or less intrinsically evil character, she actually, like manyothers (including even Plato), makes the case for not yielding to thetemptation to use language to dissemble, seduce, or manipulate. For somereason she calls the misuse of language rhetoric. As I’ve argued through-out, it is all rhetoric, for better or for worse, that persuades. Let us not failto register rhetoric’s ubiquity because it may make lies effective. As Aris-totle said in the Rhetoric, we need rhetoric to make the truth more effec-tive than lies. Accordingly, if truth, and not falsehood, is to be hopeactualized in the lives and practices of citizens, the most effective rhetoricmust be on its side.

While people who have an interest in the ethics of rhetoric would liketo find something intrinsic to the art that grants its practice some intrin-sic value tending toward some perceived good, there is nothing outside ofits interest in effectiveness that finally determines its value. It is up to thepeople who use it to use it well, and it is up to all of us to admit that itcannot be evaded if inducements to belief of any sort are to be effective—not only as they are offered to external audiences, but also as they areoffered, when they need to be offered, inside our own heads. Even insolitude we must make decisions and foster beliefs about what to donext—whether silently or out loud as in Hamlet’s soliloquy.

So, there is no doubt that there is a recalcitrant world out there. Andthere is no doubt that people are the measurers of all things. And at thispoint, it is my hope that the reader has come to see that the truth doesnot speak for itself. Whether discourse attaches in some mysterious wayto natural and social order and represents them as they are or, at theother extreme, whether discourse brings into being the natural and socialorders as we communicate them and imbue them with meaning, or someother story of discourse’s course, at the end of the day, there’s an elementof persuasion—an addressed intention—attempted, if not realized, some-where in any discourse’s delivery and uptake. Regardless of rhetoric’s pri-macy in the process of making knowledge, or its secondary role in makingknowledge established by some other means communicable and poten-tially believable, rhetoric remains a part of the process—persuasion iswhat seeks to persuade, and rhetoric, however it is conceived, is the tech-nique by which the persuasion process is played. It is an always detectabledimension of any discourse, whether discourse is believed or not believed.All discourse projects a judge and judgment, whether by habit, by snap,or by painstaking examination culminating in belief, regardless of

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whether it is commensurate with the ‘‘call’’ of the discourse under view.That is, I may be persuaded that I am not persuaded just as clearly andcertainly as I am persuaded that I am persuaded. This reflective awarenesscan go on forever in whirligigs of the mind, but at each ‘‘I am’’ I ampersuaded.

In sum, hope, truth, and rhetoric may all converge in a prophetic voicethat serves feminism’s cause—whether that cause is construed as philo-sophical or whether it is manifest in speeches spoken on street corners orfrom park benches on cold winter afternoons. Bringing into being whatis not yet has always been one of rhetoric’s chief aims; and it has alwaysalso celebrated and maintained the presence of some desired social factin service of maintaining a status quo. Nevertheless, rhetoric is alwaysabout change—whether it manifests change in deepening one’s commit-ment to what one already believes by modeling an incentive to act uponit in a particular case, or it projects a fanciful, yet vivid and plausible,hope toward an as of yet unactualized future. Or even if it sounds crazy asit is prophetically cast toward the future from an inhospitable present.

Rhetorically effective feminists are needed to win our cause, and solong as that cause is not yet won, feminists need to keep on making thecase and adapting it to the standpoints of whoever will listen—to who-ever has the power to act so as to bring about the hoped-for change. Asfeminism’s hope is honored in the present, its truth will be claimed, andas feminism’s truth is routinely celebrated by the paradigms of virtue-in-action its epideictic celebration will proclaim, its influence on socialorder will be effectively maintained. So, we must act and motivate othersto act as feminists as a prelude to the new order, or as a motive to keeporder. But do we need to continually ask what a feminist is before we canidentify, and identify with, actions that are motivated by feminism’shope? Are there not already existing indubitable paradigm cases of partic-ular people-in-action that we may clearly and unhesitatingly entitle bythe name feminist—who display its virtues-in-action and may rhetoricallyinspire mimesis?

In conclusion, in Rorty’s spirit of redescription and its potentially lib-erating effect, it is my hope that, along with everything else I’ve at-tempted in this brief chapter, I’ve offered a redescription of rhetoric thatestablishes its efficacy as an agent of philosophy’s interest in making dis-courses that are taken up by peers and, as is the case with feminism, maybolster its hope with yet another collective’s judgment of its truth by itsuptake in practice. Finally, this tale of rhetoric’s place in philosophy has

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persisted through time and has never been taken seriously by enoughphilosophers to revolutionize philosophy’s practice. In a deeply ironicway, the rhetorical story’s failure bears witness to the rhetorical effective-ness of the philosophical story of ‘‘rhetoric’s’’ otherness as the threat itposes to ‘‘philosophy’s’’ core commitment to truth rather than effective-ness—its commitment to truths that others may or may not presentlybelieve. So, in the end (or at the beginning) philosophy thereby inducesthe belief that its effectiveness—its persuasiveness—is vested in some-thing other than rhetoric. It establishes its disciplinary identity by con-cealing rhetoric’s play in the field of philosophical persuasion by namingit philosophy.

Accordingly, people like me see philosophy as a discipline in denial ofthe rhetorical ancestry that is evident in the genome of its discoursepractices and the persistent trace of their cunning effectiveness—a tracethat is invisible to the analytic ‘‘I,’’ but vividly shows itself to collectiveswho have mutually suffered, and to those of us who still and will sufferfrom a story of truth’s metaphysical foundation that effaces the propheticrevelation that the truth so conceived, more often than not, is a slavemaster—an agent of social control. As truth ‘‘self-evidently’’ passes forsomething other than rhetoric, it is dissociated from contingency andhuman-willing—it is set before us as an idol that we must answer to,rather than a malleable symbol of hope’s primacy; a hope that displayspersuasion’s play as we may adjust or change its design to effectively ad-dress the uncertainties of everyday life—the bodily pressure and pleasuresof carnality, the finite horizon of the present intertwined with the pastand the future—two times that are central to settling life’s crises but thatdo not actually exist.

Notes

1. Howard Dully, ‘‘My Lobotomy,’’ November, 16, 2005, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId!5014080 (accessed 14 January 2006).

2. See Chaım Perelman, The Realm of Rhetoric, trans. William Kluback (Notre Dame: NotreDame University Press, 1982), 9–20. Broadly considered, Perelman’s audience-centered concept ofargumentation and, generally, his ‘‘new rhetoric’’ inform this chapter’s claims concerning rhetoricand its place in philosophy.

3. Sabina Lovibond, ‘‘Feminism and Pragmatism: A Reply to Richard Rorty,’’ New Left Review193 (May–June 1992): 61.

4. Ibid.

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5. This and the previous two quotations are from ibid.6. Ibid., 62. Lovibond begins her critique of Rorty’s linguistic turn with a broad reference to

logos as speech, but as her final point associates the kind of speech she writes of with rhetoric, Ibelieve it is fair to claim that she is referring to rhetoric all along.

7. Ibid.8. Ibid., 64.9. Ibid., 65.

10. Richard Rorty, ‘‘Feminism and Pragmatism,’’ in Truth and Progress, vol. 3 of Philosophical Papers(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 207–8.

11. Lovibond, ‘‘Feminism and Pragmatism,’’ 61.12. Rorty, ‘‘Feminism and Pragmatism,’’ 225n46.13. Lovibond, ‘‘Feminism and Pragmatism,’’ 64.14. John Adams, ‘‘Epideictic and Its Cultured Reception: In Memory of the Firefighters,’’ in Rhet-

orics of Display, ed. Lawrence Prelli (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), 297–98,drawing on Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988).

15. In this connection, see also Perelman, Realm of Rhetoric, 18–20.

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Hope, Truth, and Rhetoric

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Transcript of Hope, Truth, and Rhetoric