Cf. Rickert's rhetorics

This section brings to mind Rickert's rhetorics.

Brings to mind Rickert's rhetorics and Siegert's cultural techniques

Lanham says, "The Strong Defense assumes that truth is determined by social dramas, some more formal than others but all man-made. Rhetoric in such a world is not ornamental but determinative, essentially creative" (156). If that defense is not just restricted to "man-made" social dramas but cultural dramas, to dramas rooted in a particular historical and cultural context (joining Rickert's sense of rhetorics), then it can also be opened up to material forces beyond the human.

Is this what Rickert was doing with his discussion of the cave paintings?

This resonates with many of the other articles: Rickert's materialist rhetorics, Barad's materiality, ...

Is this what Rickert was doing with his discussion of the cave paintings?

Is this where cave paintings would fit as a cultural technology?

These places, these larger containers, have their own purposes and functions, and, according to Rickert's Ambient Rhetoric, they also have a rhetoric of their own. They speak to us in various ways. For Le Guin, these containers speak of her status as human, enable her to feel part of humankind.

This harkens back to both Muckelbauer and Rickert for me, also thinking about Burke's rhetoric as a kind of social and historical "bundle" à la Hume.

Locke identifies a similar problem in his own writing, but unlike Nietzsche, refuses to address it further: "Words having naturally no signification, the idea which each stands for must be learned and retained, by those who would exchange thoughts, and hold intelligible discourse with others...Those [words] which are not intelligible at all, such as names standing for any simple ideas which another has not organs of faculties to attain; as the names of colours to a blind man, or sounds to a deaf man need not here be mentioned...for if we examine them, we shall find that the names of mixed modes are most liable to doubtfulness and imperfection."

Although Locke doesn't delve much deeper into this, I do like how he notes that some words are used to describe "mixed modes" like music and color. Nietzsche addresses this concept below, saying that although a man might be deaf, he can still "feel" music (via vibrations) and therefore might understand sound in a way that is divergent from the conventional manner. I'm also reminded of Rickert's piece, in which he noted that Homer could never identify the color "blue" as we understand it today, instead calling the color of the sea "purple" or "wine red."

This section is jumping out at me this time around. Keep it mind later on when we turn to discuss the elements of the rhetorical situation. Campbell opens up for discussing the material dimensions of rhetoric: not simply rhetoric as the discursive activity of humans, but as an emergent aspect of human and nonhuman relations. Also, recall here Rickert on the role of the caves themselves in the making of cave art.

Dead opposite of Rickert, here, and stemming from Blair's need to establish a linear development and hierarchy of language.

An interesting concept that emphasizes the total subjectivity of language; a word's meaning is rooted in a common agreement reached in society. This is not a revolutionary idea now, but still a simple fact that I believe is often forgot.

This reminds me of the discussion of colors in The Odyssey in Rickert's piece from last week. Blue is only blue because society has agreed on what blue is and how it is represented. As Homer's jarring use of colors demonstrates, the meaning of words such as "blue" are totally subjective.

A bit of an open-ended question, but... how might this relate to Rickert's exploration of rhetoric as rooted in one's psychological experience, and even biological programming of an individual? It seems Locke would agree with such an assertion if knowledge is a psychological phenomenon.

"[The Elements of Style] was Will Strunk's parvum opus, his attempt to cut the vast tangle of English rhetoric down to size and write its rules and principles on the head of a pin."

Introduction Strunk and White "The Elements of Style"

I originally brought this up because of the pin-pointing relationship. However, by using the word "tangle," White comes off as the precursor to Rickert's entanglement, knotted hair, intertwinement fixations.