Michael:
I can't help but notice that our conversation concerning the place of
rhetoric in Heidegger's hermeneutical phenomenology occurs concurrently
with a discussion of Heidegger's "truth." There's no reason the two should
be connected, but why not pursue the possibility? There is obviously a
discontinuity/ contintuity going back to Plato's critique of rhetorical
discourse as limited to Doxa whereas dialectic had the capacity to reach
further out into the realm where truth might be accessable through the
discourse of philosophy. But then at the end of the Phaedrus, there is a
suggestion that there might be a kind of rhetoric, not presently in
practice, or perhaps never practicable,which can come close to, if not
actually join, the reach, the potential achievement of our capacity for
dialectic ( Both would be part of the unity of what Heidegger calls
"Seinskoennen" no?
Then we come to come to Aristotle's Rhetoric which begins by claiming that
Rhetoric is the "Antistrophos" of Dialectic, the main difference apparently
that rhetoric is practiced in the public sphere, the Agora, where
philsophers obiviously are at a punishing disadvantage. But there is a
tantalizing ambiguity in Aristotle's Rhetoric concerning the reach of
rhetoric into the the realm of probable "truth" ( probable because at
least two possiblities present themselves as equally plausable, and so the
most we can hope for is a "likeness" to TRUTH of the absolutely certain
sort)) which is also the realm in which human beings must act. He seems to
be pointing here to the limits of scientific and logical knowing. But he
goes on to say that "truth and likeness to truth are discerned by one and
the same faculty." This statement fits with the whole thrust of the first
book of the Rhetoric that Rhetoric has philsophical legitimacy if it is
theorized not by the sophistical handbook writers, but by philosophers like
Aristotle. This consideration of rhetoric by phiosophers is essential.
moreover, because it deals with the sort of knowing that lies beyond the
limits of science and logic and concerns human action which in turn
constitutes history.
It is this foray into "practical philosophy" which interested Heidegger
most about Aristotle in the early twenties according to Gadamer. Gadamer
suggests that Heidegger meant to follow Aristotle's phenomenological path
>from pathemata to pragmata exemplifed in the Rhetoric( p. 172 in
"Heidegger's Ways."). My cite of Heidegger's "epiphany" which you ask
about was mistakenly protracted. On page 32 of "Heidegger's Ways," it is
"conscience " that Heidegger identifies with Phronesis, not Verstehen per
se. (The direct connection between Phronesis and Verstehen was actually
made to me by Sam Ijsseling in a conversation which your query helped me to
recollect) But Phronesis is en-acted through rhetoric. Hence a possible
connection between the philsophical rhetoric Aristotle outlines in The
Rhetoric and the call of conscience.
Your comments. Michael, continue to be most helpful and clarifying.
Allen.
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