Nathan Crick

The Conduit Between Lifeworld and System: Habermas and the Rhetoric of Public Scientific Controversies

The vibrancy and health of political culture in democratic societies increasingly depends on the publicity and resolution of public scientific controversies. However, creating a framework for analysis that avoids reductive categorization remains a difficult task. This essay proposes a Habermasian framework of analysis for public scientific controversies and draws out its rhetorical implications. We argue that the roots of public scientific controversies are found in moments of urgency that call forth contested scientific theories into the public realm. These controversies embed epistemological disputes over knowledge-claims within pragmatic contexts, thus forcing interested parties to achieve some level of intersubjective consensus on the legitimacy of broad-based policies that fuse politics, ethics, and science. These controversies thus provide the situational grounds that make possible, if not always actual, the interaction among citizens, scientists, and legislators through rhetorical forums that feature the discursive interplay among epistemological concerns, aesthetic experience, moral valuation, and practical judgment.

Rhetoric, Philosophy, and the Public Intellectual

When we went in we found Protagoras walking in the portico flanked by two groups.... Following behind and trying to listen to what was being said were a group of what seemed to be mostly foreigners, men whom Protagoras collects from various cities he travels through. He enchants them with his voice like Orpheus, and they follow the sound of his voice in a trance. ... When he turned around with his flanking groups, the audience to the rear would split into two in a very orderly way and then circle around to either side and form up again behind him. It was quite lovely. Plato (1997a, 315a-b)

The Search for a Purveyor of News: The Dewey/Lippmann Debate in an Internet Age

The rise of the critical blogosphere has challenged the authority of the mainstream media while sparking discussion concerning the proper relationship between news production and popular democracy in an Internet Age. All too often, however, this discussion is framed as a stark tension between aristocratic defenders of Old Media professionalism and democratic proponents of New Media egalitarianism. Lost in this framing is the tacit agreement, by both sides, that a solution must be found within the constraints of a corporate liberal media structure. This essay argues that if we are to make full use of the opportunities presented to us by new technologies, we must move beyond the discourse of corporate liberalism. Toward this end, I return to the philosophical debate between John Dewey and Walter Lippmann that occurred in the early part of the twentieth century. Based both on their shared principles and their points of departure, I argue that any productive discussion about democratic media reform must begin on the premise that we must supplement the current communication practices of corporate liberalism with noncommercial agencies of cooperative social inquiry and artistic news production. For both Dewey and Lippmann, only through creative investment of public resources can we facilitate intelligent and sympathetic collective judgment in a complex global environment. Their debate concerned only how and where to invest them.

The Sophistical Attitude and the Invention of Rhetoric

Traditionally, the Older Sophists were conceived as philosophical skeptics who rejected speculative inquiry to focus on rhetorical methods of being successful in practical life. More recently, this view has been complicated by studies revealing the Sophists to be a diverse group of intellectuals who practiced their art prior to the categorization of “rhêtorikê,” thereby rendering the very meaning of the general term “Sophist” far more problematic. Both perspectives conceal the common attitude that unites the Sophists as a group and is central to understanding their democratic ethos rooted in an experimental attitude that draws on the resources of speculative reason to serve the purpose of radical invention necessary for a democratization of the productive arts. Recovering the professionalism and experimentalism of the Sophists contributes to the democratic project of promoting the productive and collaborative arts—including rhetoric—that employ the resources of theoretical knowledge to inform collective practice and thereby assist in controlling the fortunes of humankind in a changing world.

A capital and novel argument : Charles darwin's notebooks and the productivity of rhetorical consciousness

With the rise of poststructuralist critiques of the autonomous subject, attention has shifted from the nature of “intentional persuasion” to the constitutive nature of discourse. Although this turn has led to valuable new insights into the nature of rhetoric, it also threatens to discount one of the most vital contributions of the rhetorical tradition—the nature of rhetorical invention. This essay seeks to recover the notion of invention by drawing from John Deweys naturalistic interpretation of experience. In Deweys framework, “consciousness” is neither the private contents of thought nor a point of articulation for social discourse, but a practice of manipulating public meanings as a means of responding to problematic situations. I then use Deweys notion to advance the concept of a “rhetorical consciousness,” which I define in terms of the sophistical principles of imitatio and dissoi logoi. To demonstrate the pragmatic significance of this concept, I then show, through an analysis of Charles Darwins notebooks, how Darwin employed his own rhetorical consciousness within his struggle to invent the revolutionary arguments that led up to his publication of On the Origin of Species. My hope is that this naturalistic interpretation of rhetorical invention will contribute to the ongoing project of cultivating a more intelligent, critical, and creative citizenry through the application of classical rhetorical principles to contemporary democratic forms of education in both the arts and sciences.

“The Effort of Reason, and the Adventure of Beauty”: The Aesthetic Rhetoric of Randolph Bourne

We are still coming to terms with the legacy of Randolph Bourne. Although he died at the age of 32 just as the United States was cheerfully entering the First World War under the banner of “democracy,” the words he penned in an unfinished essay still resonate in the American social conscience: “War is the Health of the State.” This maxim, once thought the exclusive property of leftist radicals, now can be heard echoing from every political corner of the blogosphere as progressives and libertarians alike find cause to question the motives of governmental power. Yet despite his reappearance as a symbol, Bourne in many ways remains as forgotten as ever—perhaps even more so as his once provocative claim has been transformed into a talking point. This essay endeavors to recapture the voice of Bourne in all its complexity, seeking to place him at the forefront of the contemporary American intellectual tradition as one of its most piercing critics, most visionary poets, and most eloquent rhetors. Specifically, we show how Bournes critique of the “State” foresaw the rise of the technological society organized by ideological propaganda, how his vision of the Beloved Community anticipated our modern ideals of global transnationalism, and how his literary essays practiced a form of aesthetic rhetoric which employed dramatistic methods to bring about a new state of expanded social consciousness.

The Rhetorical Singularity

Democracy is often described in terms of the aesthetics of multiplicity in uniformity, which celebrates the feeling of community of individuals coming together in difference. However, a more reliable mark of a healthy democratic society is the periodic presence of rhetorical singularities that challenge shared conventions and risk rhetorical failure for the sake of inspiring excellence in character. Like the prose of Emerson and Nietzsche, rhetorical singularities employ tragic ideals to expose the comic limitations of culture in order to transvaluate values and dare creative individuals to strive past limits and so advance society beyond the bounds of convention.

Composing the Will to Power: John Dewey on Democratic Rhetorical Education

In order to highlight the genuinely radical nature of John Dewey’s educational and democratic vision this essay articulates a vision of contemporary rhetorical education that is grounded in a pragmatic rereading of Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the “will to power.” Drawing from Dewey’s treatment of the will to power in Human Nature and Conduct, I argue that rhetorical pedagogy seeks to arouse, channel, and finally compose the impulses of students through the activity of intelligence in such a way that reflects and advocates for students’ interests within a democratic ethic of advocacy, criticism, and deliberation.

Medical Narrative and the Rhetoric of Identification: The Many Faces of Anna White Dildane

ABSTRACT When Anna White Dildane, a prostitute and heroin addict, was committed to the Laboratory of Social Hygiene (LSH) in 1917, she was treated by a staff that anticipated the methods of the biopsychosocial model later developed by Engel. That is to say, the staff members believed that Anna’s rehabilitation was contingent on a scientific diagnosis of the physical, mental, and social factors that underlay her condition. However, using Anna and the LSH as a case study, we draw from Latour to show the limitations of this “modern” method of diagnosis and treatment that persists today. Using Burke, we advocate for a pragmatic orientation focused on creating rhetorically oriented narratives whose aim is to help patients make judgments about their health and future, namely, by bringing about the experience of “form” capable of constituting new types of identification. Effective medical rhetoric thus adopts a method of persuasion that begins with the narrative and self-understanding of the patient, links aspects of that narrative with the technical expertise of physicians and other health care providers, and crafts a new, more specialized narrative attentive to the desires and constraints of a patient’s form of identification that is ultimately the seat of judgment.

Death and Eloquence

The lesson of Homer’s Iliad is that eloquence arises out of a confrontation with death. Perhaps the most dramatic of these confrontations is the death of Patroclus, an event that elicits epideictic speech by three parties: immortal horses, Xanthos and Balios; an immortal god, Zeus; and a mortal human, Patroclus. However, although the reaction of the horses and of Zeus reflect the pathos and logos of eloquence, respectively, this essay argues that true eloquence grows out of an experience of a divided self that heroically judges its own life meaningful—thereby constituting ethos through speech—in the face of death.