It does not seem terribly unfair to say that studies of both rhetoric and dialogue have tended, by and large, to pass over listening in favor of speaking. In scholarly as well as quotidian parlance, it would appear that both rhetoric and dialogue are principally concerned with speech, banishing listening to the silent subservience of rhetoric's other. Whichever way it is glossed—as rhetoric, dialogue, language, or argumentation—the Western conception of logos emphasizes speaking at the expense of listening. And the problem (...) with conceiving of logos in terms of speech and speaking is not only that it ignores the importance of listening but also that it obscures how listening makes the ethical response possible. Drawing on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, this article examines the ethical exigency of the face and its relation to primordial discourse in order to disclose the otherwise hidden ethical significance of listening and its vocation as a form of co-constitutive communicative action that can “listen persons to speech.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.2 (2002) 138-152 [Access article in PDF] Respecting the Rupture: Not Solving the Problem of Unity in Plato's Phaedrus James L. Kastely Plato's Phaedrus is a particularly instructive example of the double nature and status of rhetoric, for it embodies a tension at the heart of rhetoric. The first half of the dialogue presents three examples of rhetorical practice, while the second develops a theoretical justification (...) of rhetoric as an art. Thus, the dialogue would seem to offer a productive negotiation of the practice/theory tension. What makes the dialogue interesting, however, is the fact that this negotiation does not occur. The dialogue does not bring theory and practice into a harmonious relation, for there is a troubling discontinuity between its two halves, and rhetorical practice feels fractured. The exploration of eros that had occupied the first half of the dialogue is abandoned before the beginning of the second half, and then, following a logic that is at best associational, Socrates and Phaedrus explore the standards that should govern the practice of rhetoric. The infelicity of this transition raises a question: why did Plato structure the Phaedrus in such a way that it emphasized the dissonance between the two halves of the dialogue? To pose the question this way, however, is to go in a direction different from many of the best contemporary interpretations of the dialogue, which either argue that the dialogue is unified (Griswold 164) or suggest that the dissonance between its two halves reflects a shift in Plato's approach to philosophy (Kahn 373; Nehamas 352). In contrast, I will argue that the rupture in the dialogue is thematically purposive, for it points to an inescapable schism within rhetoric that makes rhetoric philosophically interesting.Socrates' second speech, his palinode to Eros, is a rhetorical tour de force that closes the first half of the dialogue. The importance of the palinode, however, is not limited to its role as an exemplary rhetorical performance, [End Page 138] for it also plays a crucial role in resolving the problem of erotic madness that organizes the intellectual drama of the first half. It would seem reasonable to expect that such an important and powerful moment in the dialogue would, at the very least, play a significant role in the philosophical discussion that composes the dialogue's second half. But that doesn't happen. While Socrates does refer to the palinode in his theoretical discussion of rhetoric, he makes little use of it, and, more important, he is silent on the subject of eros. Both the dramatic organization of the second half of the dialogue and its theoretical discussion cooperate to turn the rhetorical triumph of the palinode into a problem. Why has eros been abandoned as a philosophic topic, and what does this abandoning imply about the erotically grounded rhetoric that Socrates practiced and defended?To make matters worse, Socrates himself dismisses the palinode as a serious effort. He characterizes the speech as little more than a pleasant game, one that is not without value only because "these two certain forms (of gathering and dividing) were stated by chance" (265c). Far from viewing the palinode as possessing philosophical significance, Socrates appears to value it principally for its being a so-so example of a work of rhetoric that has been shaped by dialectic. While it is hard not to take Socrates' dismissal of the seriousness of the speech as partially disingenuous (just prior to his dismissal, he refers to the palinode as serious and reverent [265b]), he also does seem to mean what he says. Whether he is being straightforward or ironic does not finally matter because in either case the problem that occupies him and Phaedrus in the first half has disappeared from the dialogue. And that creates a problem: for if the philosophic issues of the first half of the dialogue drop out, then the dialogue is not coherent.This incoherence is especially troubling given Socrates' explicit endorsement of coherence as an important rhetorical value. In fact, when he begins his... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 37.4 (2004) 317-334 [Access article in PDF] Speaking from the Bedrock of Ethics Spoma Jovanovic Department of Communication University of North Carolina, Greensboro Roy V. Wood Human Communication Studies University of Denver In a moment familiar to many of us, one of the authors of this piece attended a philosophical meeting on the topic of Emmanuel Levinas. "So, you are in communication studies," said a philosopher (...) during a break. "Why would a speech person be interested in Levinas?"This paper probes the place of speech in Levinasian ethics. We hope to show that when philosopher Emmanuel Levinas rested his compelling life project on ethics, he said something new about the act of speaking itself. First, for Levinas, speaking begins with the imperative issued by the presence or face of the other. He calls that issuance the saying. Antecedent to words, the saying is the commitment of an approach to the other, the move to response, the signifying of signification. Second, the saying moves into language where it is subordinated to the said. It is in the coordination of the saying and the said that ethics shows itself or is betrayed. Although the saying is perhaps overwhelmed by the said, it remains present even in absence. Third, for Levinas we can sense the ineffable, yet present, call to responsibility in the trace. The trace, and here Levinas brings God to mind, reveals the saying, and is communicated in the face.1 The face, the saying, and the trace are where the Levinasian responsibility of the one for the other takes form. They are the home of ethics.2By paying close attention to the responsibility invoked by the face, heeded in the saying, and reminisced in the trace, Levinas defines ethics as the condition of dialogue. Later, he says that ethics allows us to pursue peace even if, or after, dialogue fails. It is in ethics that we learn that we can stand by unsolvable problems—attentive and vigilant, in dialogue (Levinas 1999a).Taken together, these ideas of the face of the other, the saying, and the trace provide the basis of ethics that is constituted in and constitutes communication. [End Page 317]Our effort here is to explore the bedrock of ethics in speech. We will do so by drawing on examples of care, rescue, and sacrifice that surfaced during the tragedy of September 11, 2001, and the days that followed. Within the context of that terrible attack, scores of eyewitnesses gave accounts of the ways that people responded to the needs of others. We argue that the ethical imperative to respond conditions every rhetorical situation and that is no more clearly seen than in times of crisis. Recognizing this ethical imperative demands that scholars examine more than words and gestures. The act of speaking itself is for Levinas at the heart of human ethics. Through this philosophical lens communication ethics not only applies to rhetorical situations but also goes forth, or does not go forth, as communicative action itself. So ethics is at the bedrock of communication and communication is at the heart of ethics. In the end we will ask, "Why would a philosopher not be interested in speech?" Ethics in communication For Levinas, ethics is metaphysical.3 Ethics does not emanate from the self as an ontological dimension, or from some predetermined epistemological principles. Levinas instead claims that the other is the basis of ethics. In sociality, we find ourselves responsible to respond to the call of the other, not as an ontological choice but rather as the recognition that ethics is otherwise than being.4 The demand issued by the other is felt corporeally. It is, if you will, an ethical impulse or compulsion that disrupts, calling the self into a dialogical encounter.Levinas asks us to concentrate not on what we can know or contain of the "Other—the move toward totality, but to contemplate that which always exceeds our grasp—the move toward infinity.... Ethics is a relationship of responsibility for the Other. But this relationship is initiated by the Other, by... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Addressing Alterity:Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and the Nonappropriative RelationDiane DavisTeaching is not reducible to maieutics; it comes from the exterior and brings me more than I contain.—Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and InfinityThere is always the matter of a surplus that comes from an elsewhere and that can no more be assimilated by me, than it can domesticate itself in me. A teaching that may part ways with Heidegger's motif of our being (...) able to learn only what we already understand—when does learning take place? what do we already understand?—the Conversation belongs, as ethical relation, to the effort of thinking the infinite, the transcendent, the Stranger. None of this amounts to thinking an object.—Avital Ronell, DictationsFrom Rhetorical Power to Reception Histories Steven Mailloux has brilliantly performed and explicated a "rhetorical hermeneutics" that demonstrates the "practical inseparability of interpretation and language use and thus of the discourses that theorize those practices, hermeneutics and rhetoric" (1998, 3). Many rhetoricians have challenged the specifics of Mailloux's various arguments and have more generally objected that "rhetorical hermeneutics" leans too far toward the hermeneutical, reducing rhetoric to an analytic or critical art and giving its productive (political) function the squeeze.1 Yet within these lively debates, very few have challenged his basic premise that rhetoric and hermeneutics are inextricably intertwined: the question has not been whether they are indissociable but which side of the production-reception coin rhetorical studies ought to emphasize.2 Michael Leff, for example, flipped Mailloux's adjective-noun relation to spotlight production, promoting a "hermeneutical rhetoric" that focuses more on political than literary texts; nonetheless, he agrees that "all interpretive work involves participation in a rhetorical exchange, and that every rhetorical exchange involves some interpretive work" (1997, 197-98). [End Page 191] Rosa Eberly goes further in Citizen Critics, offering a hermeneutical rhetoric that is less interested in "already-written discourses" than in spotlighting "rhetoric's power as an art productive of discourses and subjectivities for the present and the future" (2000, 34). Yet Eberly, too, affirms Mailloux's basic premise, which was nudged in the direction of conflation in the introduction to the 1997 collection Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time, in which the editors, Walter Jost and Michael Hyde note in passing that their title can "be understood as virtually tautological."And there is of course no doubt that rhetoric has a hermeneutic dimension; or, more carefully, that rhetoric constitutes the hermeneutic dimension. If "hermeneutics" indicates "the art of understanding," as Friedrich Schleirmacher wanted, then interpretation clearly depends upon production.3 "Rhetoric not only has its place within the sphere of objects surveyed by hermeneutics," as Werner Hamacher puts it, "but also constitutes an integral component of every hermeneutic operation. Every step in an interpretation corresponds to a rhetorical—or grammatical—figure" (1996, 70). Put more bluntly: intelligibility, including self-intelligibility, is a tropological product; cognition itself is a trope that can in no way be secured. Hermeneutics—as it's being used here—is completely dependent on, even absorbed by, rhetoric.4 I have no problem with this. Nor with Mailloux's suggestion that the reverse is also true:In some ways rhetoric and interpretation are practical forms of the same extended human activity: Rhetoric is based on interpretation; interpretation is communicated through rhetoric. Furthermore, as a reflection on practice, hermeneutics and rhetorical theory are mutually defining fields: hermeneutics is the rhetoric of establishing meaning, and rhetoric the hermeneutics of problematic linguistic situations.(Mailloux 1998, 4)I don't disagree: As the production and appropriation of meaning, rhetoric and hermeneutics are an indissociable team; together, they complete understanding's circle. I take this as a given.However, I want to suggest that there is also a non-hermeneutical dimension of rhetoric that has nothing to do with meaning-making, with offering up significations to comprehension. This dimension is reducible neither to figuration nor to what typically goes by the name persuasion; it is devoted to a certain reception, but not to the appropriation of meaning. Preceding and exceeding all hermeneutic interpretation, it deals not in signified meaning but in the address itself, in the exposure to the other; it deals not... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.2 (2002) 138-152 [Access article in PDF] Respecting the Rupture: Not Solving the Problem of Unity in Plato's Phaedrus James L. Kastely Plato's Phaedrus is a particularly instructive example of the double nature and status of rhetoric, for it embodies a tension at the heart of rhetoric. The first half of the dialogue presents three examples of rhetorical practice, while the second develops a theoretical justification (...) of rhetoric as an art. Thus, the dialogue would seem to offer a productive negotiation of the practice/theory tension. What makes the dialogue interesting, however, is the fact that this negotiation does not occur. The dialogue does not bring theory and practice into a harmonious relation, for there is a troubling discontinuity between its two halves, and rhetorical practice feels fractured. The exploration of eros that had occupied the first half of the dialogue is abandoned before the beginning of the second half, and then, following a logic that is at best associational, Socrates and Phaedrus explore the standards that should govern the practice of rhetoric. The infelicity of this transition raises a question: why did Plato structure the Phaedrus in such a way that it emphasized the dissonance between the two halves of the dialogue? To pose the question this way, however, is to go in a direction different from many of the best contemporary interpretations of the dialogue, which either argue that the dialogue is unified (Griswold 164) or suggest that the dissonance between its two halves reflects a shift in Plato's approach to philosophy (Kahn 373; Nehamas 352). In contrast, I will argue that the rupture in the dialogue is thematically purposive, for it points to an inescapable schism within rhetoric that makes rhetoric philosophically interesting.Socrates' second speech, his palinode to Eros, is a rhetorical tour de force that closes the first half of the dialogue. The importance of the palinode, however, is not limited to its role as an exemplary rhetorical performance, [End Page 138] for it also plays a crucial role in resolving the problem of erotic madness that organizes the intellectual drama of the first half. It would seem reasonable to expect that such an important and powerful moment in the dialogue would, at the very least, play a significant role in the philosophical discussion that composes the dialogue's second half. But that doesn't happen. While Socrates does refer to the palinode in his theoretical discussion of rhetoric, he makes little use of it, and, more important, he is silent on the subject of eros. Both the dramatic organization of the second half of the dialogue and its theoretical discussion cooperate to turn the rhetorical triumph of the palinode into a problem. Why has eros been abandoned as a philosophic topic, and what does this abandoning imply about the erotically grounded rhetoric that Socrates practiced and defended?To make matters worse, Socrates himself dismisses the palinode as a serious effort. He characterizes the speech as little more than a pleasant game, one that is not without value only because "these two certain forms (of gathering and dividing) were stated by chance" (265c). Far from viewing the palinode as possessing philosophical significance, Socrates appears to value it principally for its being a so-so example of a work of rhetoric that has been shaped by dialectic. While it is hard not to take Socrates' dismissal of the seriousness of the speech as partially disingenuous (just prior to his dismissal, he refers to the palinode as serious and reverent [265b]), he also does seem to mean what he says. Whether he is being straightforward or ironic does not finally matter because in either case the problem that occupies him and Phaedrus in the first half has disappeared from the dialogue. And that creates a problem: for if the philosophic issues of the first half of the dialogue drop out, then the dialogue is not coherent.This incoherence is especially troubling given Socrates' explicit endorsement of coherence as an important rhetorical value. In fact, when he begins his... (shrink)