Abstract
Nietzsche tells us that if we cannot be absolutely certain in our judgments, then perhaps we should not judge at all; he quickly follows, however, with “would that it were possible.”1 This insight highlights not only the risk and danger of post-metaphysical projects, but shows also the necessity of those risks. Rhetoric, by dealing specifically with that which must be probable and possible, rather than certain, understands the necessity of risks. Because a rhetorical thinking toward liberation understands that cynicism and quietism have not avoided risks, it therefore does not see risk as a prohibition from action. In the following reflections I would like to sketch the ground of judgment, the logos of judgment as transversal rationality, and the future’s role in judgment via the imagination.
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At no time can one say: “I have done all my duty,” except the hypocrite. Levinas
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Notes
F. Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. Martin Farber (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1984), aphorism 32.
C. O. Schrag, Communicative Praxis, and the Space of Subjectivity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), see esp. pp. 179–196 and “Rhetoric Resituated at the End of Philosophy,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 71(1), pp. 164–174. See also, Calvin O. Schrag and David James Miller, “Philosophy and Communication: Convergence Without Coincidence,” in The Critical Turn: Rhetoric and Philosophy in Postmodern Discourse,eds. Ian Angus and Lenore Langsdorf (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993).
Schrag, Communicative Praxis, p. 202.
See David James Miller, “Immodest Interventions,” Phenomenological Inquiry II, 1987, pp. 108–114.
J. M. Fritzman, “The Future of Nostalgia and the Time of the Sublime,” Clio 23: 2, 1993, pp. 167–189.
Schrag, Communicative Praxis, p. 207.
Schrag, The Resources of Rationality (Bloomington Indiana University Press, 1992), p. 166.
Resources, p. 166.
Only a sketch can be provided here, though in just this brief outline, one can note the relation among the concepts cited by thinking about the way these concepts function in the following: Deleuze’s Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia, 1983), Derrida’s “Difference,” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1982), and Foucault’s History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1980).
Resources, p. 109.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1357a, 23–27.
Resources, pp. 135–136, italics mine.
I am indebted in the following to the very fine analysis of Richard Kearney, Poetics of Imagination (New York: Harper Collins, 1991).
P. Ricoeur, From Text to Action, trans. K. Blarney and J. B. Thompson (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991), p. 174.
Ramsey Eric Ramsey and Lesley Di Mare, “Transforming and Transformative Ideals: A Contribution to Critical Rhetoric,” Top Paper presented to the WSCA Convention, Portland, Oregon, February 1995. Schrag has taken this position and incorporated it into his own recent work: see The Ryle Lectures: forthcoming, Yale University Press.
Ricoeur, p. 184. See Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962).
Ricoeur, p. 185.
I have already made some moves in this area dealing with the work of Ernst Bloch; see “A Politics of Dissatisfaction,” Rethinking Marxism 8: 2, Summer 1996.
See Ramsey Eric Ramsey, “The Earth Might Be Round, But the World Is Flat,” Kinesis 21: 2, Fall 1994.
There are lessons here to be learned still from Arendt. See Kant’s Political Philosophy, edited with an interpretive essay by Ronald Beiner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
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Ramsey, R.E. (1998). Transversal Rationality, Rhetoric, and the Imagination. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) The Reincarnating Mind, or the Ontopoietic Outburst in Creative Virtualities. Analecta Husserliana, vol 53. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4900-6_8
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