sophisticated burke: kenneth burke as a neosophistic rhetorician

Sophisticated Burke: Kenneth Burke as a Neosophistic RhetoricianAuthor(s): Michael HassettSource: Rhetoric Review, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring, 1995), pp. 371-390Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/465839 .

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MICHAEL HASSET[ Iowa State University

Sophisticated Burke: Kenneth Burke as a Neosophistic Rhetorician

What makes a man a 'sophist' is not his faculty, but his moral purpose.... A man is a 'sophist' because he has a certain kind of moral purpose, a 'dialectician' in respect, not of his moral purpose, but of hisfaculty.

-Aristotle, Rhetoric (1355b16)

Locating Kenneth Burke within a particular critical framework or perspective is no easy task.1 Burke's own approach to literary theory and criticism was eclectic (although both systematic and thorough) and purposefully avoided institutional constraints. As a result, attempts to position Burke relative to other theorists and theories have occupied a significant amount of time and space in conversations, both written and oral, public and private, during Burke's lifetime. Now that Burke has died, these attempts are likely to increase rather than decrease as readers of Burke attempt to "consummate" his life, to use Bakhtin's term (see Art and Answerability).2 During the last year or so, a rather heated argument over where in contemporary theory Burke might belong has been carried out in the Quarterly Journal of Speech by Celeste Condit, James W. Chesebro, Phillip K. Tompkins and George Cheney (see volumes 70 and 80). Part of the debate has focused on Burke's "debt" to Alfred Korzybski, but the bulk of the discussion has been on how well Burke fits into contemporary theoretical (particularly poststructuralist) discussions. A similar argument might be teased out of the Burke obituary carried by the New York Times. In that obituary Burke is referred to as a "philosopher of language," a "founder of New Criticism," and a neo-Aristotelian. Of course, this represents only a few of the ways in which Burke has been categorized, characterized, and systematized over his lengthy career.

In attempting another reading of Burke, a reading that is designed to place him in the company of some of the more influential and controversial of contemporary communication theorists, I am participating in what Jeffrey Williams, in a recent article on literary theory anthologies, refers to as "namebranding" (289). I am placing Burke's work "in terms of its alignments rather than as [an] individual, autonomous pocket in intellectual history" (289).

Rhetoric Review, Vol. 13, No. 2, Spring 1995 371



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Namebranding, Williams asserts, "functions as a shorthand justification for a particular critical practice, deeming that it yields appropriate and valuable ... knowledge and work" (289). Ignoring my presumptuousness in thinking that Burke needs justification, I am hoping that by aligning him with contemporary poststructuralist theorists, especially neosophistic theorists, Burke will maintain his importance in the conversations about rhetoric, composition, and communication.

Eventually, I will make the argument that Kenneth Burke is a neosophist primarily because he shares a certain "moral purpose" with the sophists of ancient Greece, or at least with the sophists as contemporary rhetorical theorists envision them. Enroute to that final argument, I will provide a summary of current readings of the sophists, their concerns, their techniques, and their purposes. More accurately, I will summarize what Edward Schiappa refers to as "neosophistic rhetoric"-not an historical reconstruction of sophistic thought but the "appropriation" of particular aspects of sophistic thought for contemporary purposes (193). I will also read Burke's techniques and concerns as analogues to those of the sophists, showing specific points at which Burke can be called a "neosophistic rhetorician," not because he consciously appropriates sophistic lines of thought, but because his own thinking seems to closely match that of the sophists as we now read them. Finally, I will move to a discussion of Burke's moral purpose to show how his purpose clearly makes him a neosophist.

Neosophistic Rhetoric

The resurgence of interest in the sophistic movement of ancient Greece has been noted by many contemporary teachers and theorists of rhetoric and composition. Thomas Kent, for example, explains that the sophists can constitute a new "genealogy" for what Kent terms "paralogic rhetoric," a rhetoric that goes beyond the systemic and dualistic rhetorics that trace their origins to Platonic philosophy (46). Stanley Fish has actually called himself a "contemporary sophist," and sees the sophistic emphasis on professionalism and antifoundational modes of thinking as key elements of a new approach to language. Walker Gibson, in a recent College English article, explains that the sophists can help reemphasize the importance of language, and they can teach us "responsibility and humility" (289). Andrew Ford discusses the resurgence of interest in the sophists among "interpreters of our intellectual history," including Feyerabend, Rorty, Heidegger, Derrida, and Foucault (46-47). However, not all of the authors writing about the contemporary influence of the sophists see the influence as beneficial. Roger Kimball excoriates Fish for his claim to sophism, accusing both the sophists and Fish of corrupting,



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misunderstanding, or ignoring "elementary distinctions of taste and value" (15).

This conversation about the sophists is a repetition of the conversation that occurred when the sophists actually lived and practiced. Then, of course, the sophists supported their own viewpoints while Kimball's position was developed by Plato, Aristophanes, and Aristotle. Later, the sophistic position seems to have died out, or at least gone underground. The attack on the sophists continued, however, through Cicero, Quintillian, Augustine, and on through the nineteenth century. Now, the sophistic position, the "weaker argument" in sophistic terms, has reemerged.3 Throughout this conversation, both sides have maintained certain notions of sophistic rhetoric, its techniques and its purposes. It is to those notions that I would like to now turn. There are three particular claims of neosophistic rhetoric that I would like to consider: (1) we interpret our world through language, a language that is inherently ambiguous; (2) as humans we lack access to a permanent, neutral framework from which we can identify Truth; (3) because we cannot find Truth and because we are forced to interpret reality, a playful approach to life becomes a necessity.

Linguistic Interpretation of the World

Gorgianic statements serve as the basis for many contemporary readings of the sophistic view of the relationship between reality and language. Logos, Gorgias explains in On Not Being, is not reality. When we communicate with one another, we "do not reveal existing things . . . but logos, which is something other than substances" (Sprague 46 [B3.83]4). Gorgias goes on to say that logos arises from our experience of the external world as we attempt to make judgments about the qualities or characteristics of the "external things impinging upon us" ( Sprague 46 [B3.85]). Gorgias seems, then, to be saying that we experience some sort of reality but that our experience is shaped by the logos with which we attempt to make sense of the experience.

Kerferd sees Gorgias "introducing a radical gulf between logos and the things to which it refers" (81), a gulf that Gibson sees as a fundamental "tenet of modern poststructuralism" (286). The schism between reality and words is the initial step toward the notion that words become our way of interacting with reality. The next step is what McComiskey refers to as the dialectical relationship between reality and words. McComiskey reads Gorgias as supporting the idea that the "logos in the human mind is not just the result of empirical observation. The human imagination creates images of things which do not yet exist in external reality, and yet these images may seem real to us" (9). Once the relationship becomes dialectical, in which reality and words work with each other to create perception, it is only a small step to seeing words as the primary way in which humans deal with reality, interpreting experience



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through words and language, as Kent does in his discussion of the sophists' hermeneutic approach to the world: "Sophists concentrated on the hermeneutic task of interpreting the world through the natural contrariness of language, . . . they understood that we find our way in the world only by following the labyrinthian twists and turns of language" (45).

Kent's comment points up two important notions of contemporary neosophism: that we interpret the world through language, and that language is "labyrinthian," that it is ambiguous. This second notion is also an important part of the reading of the sophists. Guthrie credits the sophist Antiphon with providing an overt critique of the "ambiguity of language and the shifting meaning of words, which renders them incapable of expressing reality" (203). Kent examines the sophistic use of "antilogic," the juxtapositioning of logical oppositions, as an example of the sophists stressing "the contradictory and paralogical dimension of language as opposed to its logical and systemic dimension . . . antilogic forces us to acknowledge that language-in its phenomenal existence-is inherently paralogical" (45). Kent goes on to examine how the sophistic use of antilogic is similar to contemporary deconstructive approaches.

These two sophistic concepts, that we interpret the world through language and that the language we use is ambiguous, are often pointed to as the primary elements of sophistic, and therefore neosophistic, thought. Kimball, in his critique of Fish, sees these elements of neosophism as the most dangerous: "For Professor Fish, however, rhetoric is all there is. This has always been the position of professional rhetoricians, from the time of the sophists . . . down to contemporary sophists like Rorty and Fish" (15). Of course, those who see themselves as working in the sophistic tradition, as does Kent, see this sophistic emphasis on interpretation through an ambiguous language as an important, useful, and liberating concept.

Lack of Universal, Permanent, Neutral Frameworks for Finding Truth

A corollary to the sophistic idea that we interpret our world through language is the idea that we cannot, as humans bound to linguistic interpretation, find systematic methods for discovering immutable Truth. All claims to Truth, such as those claims found in theorists pursuing the philosophical tradition dating back to Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, are then subject to analysis as interpretations, and their claims to validity must be based on their acceptance by other people rather than on any privileged access to reality. This acceptance of the inaccessibility of Truth has become another of the most significant elements of neosophistic conceptions of rhetoric and language.




Guthrie examines Protagoras and Gorgias in relation to this idea that there is no such thing as neutral access to Truth. Guthrie interprets these two sophists as saying that "you and I cannot, by comparing and discussing our experiences, correct them and reach the knowledge of a reality more ultimate than either, for there is no such stable reality to be known. Similarly in morals, no appeal to general standards or principles is possible, and the only rule can be to act as at any moment seems most expedient." Guthrie sees this lack of universal standards as the one thing that can "be spoken of as a general sophistic view . . . that there is no 'criterion"' (196). Scott Consigny agrees with this reading of sophistic thought, at least as it applies to Gorgias. Consigny ties Gorgias to the hermeneutic tradition, noting that the "hermeneutic thinker sees various discourses as viable means to articulate or generate truths, without privileging any one such discourse as providing an access to the Truth itself, the essential nature of 'things as they really are"' (49). He goes on to explain that for Gorgias, "The success-and truth-of one's remarks is determined neither by the essential nature of a putative 'reality' lying beyond every discourse, nor in an individual speaker's arbitrary inspiration or whim, but rather through the recognized protocols and criteria of the specific discourse being spoken" (51). The sophists seem to reject the idea that any person can have access to reality or Truth other than through an interpretive framework that then constrains the person's very perception of that reality.

This idea that we cannot have neutral access to reality works into a neosophistic refutation of the need for universal systems of thought. As John Poulakos explains, rhetoric for the sophists was concerned with "the contingent" rather than with "cognitive certitude, the affirmation of logic, or the articulation of universals" (37). If words cannot provide access to reality or Truth, there seems little sense in pursuing those objects as the goals of rhetoric. Instead, rhetoric becomes an investigation of how language is used and how it might be used to accomplish particular goals, or, as Poulakos suggests, with "the how, when, and the what of expression and . .. the why of purpose" (36). This view of rhetoric also leads the sophists to their emphasis on becoming over being (Poulakos 44). Gibson sees this emphasis in the sophistic rejection of is: "But to say an apple is, that is, exists, commits you to something else [something other than statements of individual perception], something the Sophists steered clear of, or, in Gorgias' case, simply denied" (286). In rejecting is, in the sense that the word is represents a statement about the essential nature of something, sophists and neosophists reject the idea that we can find universal, immutable essences.

Eventually, this rejection of the possibility of finding Truth or universal essence becomes a rejection of philosophy in the traditional sense. Poulakos notes, for example, that kairos, the sophistic notion that all effective speech must match the various contingencies of the situation in which it is used, is a



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pragmatic rather than philosophical concern (40). Ford argues that for Plato, the term sophist was a label for those who opposed Platonic philosophy: "Plato elevated philosophy to the highest and most valuable pursuits by establishing sophistry as philosophy's 'other"' (41). McComiskey explains that Poulakos, Crowley, Moss, and Leff all see the sophistic tradition as opposing traditional foundational philosophy, philosophy based on the notion that there are universal, unified systems underlying reality and our relations with it (14). This becomes an important concern for rhetoric because most rhetorical theory up through the twentieth century was based on Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of rhetoric, conceptions that are bound up with Platonic and Aristotelian foundational philosophies. It is in this sense that Kent sees the sophistic tradition as being so crucial to finding a new, paralogic conception of rhetoric. Kent explains that rhetoric since Plato has been "dominated not by pragmatic conceptions of language-in-use, but rather by epistemologically centered conceptions of language-as-system" (19).5 Kent, as do these neosophistic theorists, looks to the sophists, as noted above, for a new "genealogy" on which to base an antifoundational, antiphilosophical conception of rhetoric.

Playful Approaches to Life and Language

The sophistic rejection of philosophy leads to a rejection of another sort. Richard Lanham distinguishes between "two competing drives within human nature: the drive to be serious and the drive to be playful-philosophy and rhetoric" (qtd. in Hunter 5). The philosophical ideal, which my previous discussion would indicate both sophists and neosophists reject, in its search for a unified, absolute truth, is forced to give up the "playfulness" that results from seeing the world as a realm of contradictory, ambiguous contingencies. Hunter links Gorgias (and we might add the other sophists by extension) to the rhetorical, playful ideal through Gorgias's rejection of a unified reality: "The world of Gorgias, then, is a world of uncertainty, a world without unity. It is a world of pluralism, discovery, change, and dialogue- world of rhetoric" (3). The sophists, then, see life as a playful arena in which language can bring enjoyment and delight and reject the seriousness inherent in a foundational philosophical view in which we must be engaged in the constant pursuit of truth.

Opposing the term playful to serious misstates this opposition somewhat. Playfulness in the rhetorical sense is certainly capable of dealing with serious issues. Gorgias's Encomium to Helen, for example, which Gorgias calls a "diversion" (Sprague 54 [B11.21]), deals with issues that would be most serious: justice, mercy, responsibility. Gorgias also emphasizes the role of pleasure in sophistic rhetoric: "To tell the knowing what they know shows it is




right but brings no delight" (Sprague 51 [11.5]). But this reliance on pleasure is not nonserious; rather, for Gorgias, it is only through delight or pleasure that real change can take place in the audience. Seeing life as a game, similarly, is not to see life as unimportant; instead, it is to see life as a competitive arena in which both events and people are unpredictable and malleable. Lanham makes this distinction clear in defining "seriousness" as the acceptance of "a central self, an irreducible identity. . . . a single, homogeneously real society . . . a physical nature itself referential, standing 'out there,' independent of man" (1). Playfulness represents an acceptance of the mutability and contradictory nature of those things that are most important and most serious in the more common sense of the terms.

Plato attacks the sophists precisely because they view language as a game, and life as the arena in which the game is played. Plato's conception of this "game," however, is not Lanham's. Plato sees the sophists as playing in a traditional sense, performing a trivial, useless game. Plato's Euthydemus presents two sophists, Dionysodorous and Euthydemus, who do little more than play at words. Plato compares their verbal jousting to a "wrestling match" (277d) and a playful club initiation: "There is dancing and play there also, as you know ... and now these [the two sophists] are only dancing around you in play, meaning to initiate you afterward. So consider that you are hearing the beginnings of the sophistic ritual.... all this is just a little game of learning" (277e-278b). In the Protagoras, Plato explains why this playful approach is dangerous-the person who engages in it is "gambling dangerously with all ... that is dearest to you" (314a). Although Plato's depiction satirizes "playfulness," the rhetorical ideal of life, with its playful approach to "serious" issues, is a threat to traditional philosophy because it puts at risk the foundational perception of issues that serve as the basis of philosophy.

The notion that language, and hence all interactions handled through language, is a game is an important one in contemporary rhetorical theory, particularly among theorists who work in the neosophistic tradition. Hunter quotes Frank Lentricchia's discussion of pragmatism in a way that emphasizes this "gaming" concept: "Pragmatism . . . 'is a rejection of hierarchical structure itself, of the stabilizing (kingly) forces of structure which would always stand safely outside the structure-outside the game, but ruling the game"' (10). While Kent does not specifically discuss the sophists in terms of playfulness, the paralogic conception of rhetoric he develops from a sophistic ancestry certainly seems tied to a playful conception of language, with its emphasis on "hermeneutic guessing" (36-44), its conception within an "agonistic paradigm" (44), and its reliance on the human ability to "shift ground" (44). These notions of play and gaming all share a conception of language as shifting or loose and life as competitive and unpredictable.



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The Neosophistic Attitude

The neosophistic conception of rhetoric, in its most general sense, would seem to possess three fundamental attributes, all of which seem bound up in one another. First, neosophists accept that we, as human beings, interact with our world through some sort of interpretive framework that is constructed through an ambiguous language. Second, a neosophistic conception of language assumes that we do not have access to Truth, things as they really are, and that no framework is neutral or universal. Finally, neosophists see language use as a playful activity. These three similarities should not be taken to mean that all neosophists are the same or that they must even agree with one another. Certainly the ancient Greek sophists did not all see the world in the same way, nor would they have agreed with each other on numerous particulars. Instead, this summation of neosophistic thought is designed to reflect an attitude toward language and life, an attitude that I would call "sophistic" and with which we might judge whether a particular theorist, in this case Kenneth Burke, can be called "neosophistic."

Kenneth Burke as a Neosophistic Rhetorician

Because it would be impossible to encompass Burke's entire work in this brief discussion of his neosophism, I will focus primarily on the issues that seem most in keeping with the summary of neosophism I have provided above: the acceptance of the notion that we interpret our world through ambiguous language; the assumption that we do not have access to Truth (things as they really are) and that no framework is neutral or universal; and, the vision of language use as a playful (in Burke's terms, "comic") activity. My contention here is that Burke accepts all three of these premises and that he builds upon them in his theoretical work as well as in his own practice of rhetoric.

Interpretation through Ambiguous Language

Timothy Crusius identifies Burke's "connection between rhetoric and the hermeneutic struggle." Burke attempts to account for the "babble of interpretations" and recognizes that "how we interpret brute reality and our own motives defines who we are, who we identify with, in our rhetorical community" (30). Similarly, Burke places himself within this "hermeneutic struggle," when in Permanence and Change, while examining "interpretive schemes," he asks, "Out of all this overlapping, conflicting, and supplementing of interpretative frames, what arises as a totality? The only thing that all this seems to make for is a reinforcement of the interpretative attitude itself' (118).6 As firmly as any contemporary theorist, Burke seems to develop a




strong sense of our use of language to interpret reality and to make our way in the world.

To arrive at this conclusion, Burke, like other neosophists, begins by acknowledging that words are not the same as the world, nor is there a simple correspondence between words and the things to which they refer. In "Terministic Screens," for example, Burke notes that any terminology is merely a "selection of reality; and to this extent it must function as a deflection of reality" (LSA 45). Similarly, his essay "What Are the Signs of What?" is based on the distinction between words and reality. Burke also gets at the division of words and things in his discussion of how we learn to use language. A fundamental aspect of our becoming language users is our recognition that words are not the same as things: "We must remind ourselves that, whatever correspondence there is between a word and the thing it names, the word is not the thing. The word 'tree' is not a tree" (RR 18). In this sense, as Burke explains, there is a significant difference between experiencing a thing and telling about the experience (ATH 384). This is the first important step toward the interpretive attitude, recognizing that the words we use are not the things about which we use words, nor are words merely reflections of those things.

From that first step, Burke develops an important and enlightening view of interpretation of the world. Words actually become reality, or at least a part of our reality, but it is a new reality, different from the one that the words sought to describe. Words, once they are attached to an experience of an object, create a reality that goes beyond the object or even the experience itself. Art, for example, is the "differential between the artist's brain and the exterior world; art is reality plus the word on reality," as Robert Heath quotes from a letter written by Burke (140). Elsewhere, Burke explains this phenomenon in this way: "Note also that whereas the first moment (the thing) provided the ground for the second moment (the appropriate name [i.e., the moment at which words are applied to the thing]), both of these moments, taken together, form the 'correspondence' between them" (RR 30). Words and things correspond when they are brought together to form a new reality, a reality that could not exist before the particular merger of word and thing. It is in this way, then, that reality is built up through symbol systems (LSA 5). Burke's conception of interpretation through language merges words and things within the realm of lived experience.

Once the step is taken toward showing how humans build reality with language, not a reality separate from the world of experience but built upon that world, the ground is laid for Burke's discussion of interpretation as an orienting force. Because we attach words to things, our orientations toward the objects of lived experience are shaped by our words. In Language as Symbolic Action, Burke explains how the phenomenon of attaching words to things creates an orientation: "The things of nature, as so conceived [through the "medium" of



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words], become . . . not just a world of sheer natural objects, but a parade of spirits, quite as the grass on a college campus has its meaning for us, not just as physical grass, but because of its nature as symbolic of the promises and social values associated with the order of formal education" (362). We then orient ourselves not toward grass, but toward this particular grass with its particular spirit, which we might find comforting, alienating, or awesome depending upon our other orientations. It is in this sense that words become a "screen separating us from the nonverbal" (LSA 5), because we cannot experience the natural world merely as natural world, but we add to it the world of words, creating a new world that is neither only world nor only words.

This merger of words and experience becomes the interpretation of the world through language for Burke. Underneath the "dance of words" that is language, there is always the "dance of bodies," the physical world from which words are derived and to which they are applied (RR 288). The use of language, though, creates new difficulties for Burke because language does not merely reflect reality, nor are the words inherent in the reality they name. For this reason, language becomes ambiguous. Words always discuss things in terms of what they are not: "Words for the non-verbal must by the very nature of the case, discuss the non-verbal in terms of what it is not" (RR 18). This schism between the verbal and the nonverbal opens the use of language to the possibilities of ambiguity. This ambiguity is multiplied when we use the same words to discuss more than one experience: "Since no two things or acts or situations are exactly alike, you cannot apply the same term to both of them without thereby introducing a certain margin of ambiguity, an ambiguity as great as the difference between the two subjects that are given the identical title" (GM xix). With the introduction of ambiguity, the stage is set for the problems of interpretation and communication that lead to strife, dissent, disunity, and competition.

For Burke, however, this ambiguity is not, in actuality, a problem; instead it is ripe with possibility. Burke would actually choose to emphasize the ambiguous nature of language. Burke attempts to seek out ambiguity:

A perfectionist might seek to evolve terms free of ambiguity and inconsistency (as with the terministic ideals of symbolic logic and logical positivism). But we have a different purpose in view, one that probably retains traces of its 'comic' origin. . . . Accordingly, what we want is not terms that avoid ambiguity, but terms that clearly reveal the strategic spots at which ambiguities necessarily arise. (GM xviii)

Burke clearly revels in the ambiguities of language because it is at points of ambiguity that change can occur. It is "in the areas of ambiguity that




transformations take place; in fact, without such areas, transformation would be impossible" (xix). Since Burke's purpose, as I will discuss later, appears dependent upon our ability to change through our use of language, emphasizing a conception of language as ambiguous is critical. This Burkean position is very closely tied to the neosophistic view of both the way we interpret our world through language and the ambiguous nature of language itself.

Burkean Rejection of Truth, Neutrality, and System

Once Burke develops his notion of the interpretive attitude, he is ready, like other neosophists, to reject philosophical, scientific, and theological conceptualizations of the world that depend upon our ability to access reality or metaphysical truth in some sort of neutral or privileged manner. Perhaps, rather than saying that Burke rejects these conceptualizations, it is more accurate to say that he ignores or brackets them. For example, Burke's concept of "logology," meaning when applied to religion the "systematic study of theological terms, not from the standpoint of their truth or falsity as statements about the supernatural, but purely for the light they might throw upon the forms of language" (LSA 47), is concerned only with the use of words about God, not with the existence of God. It might be worth mentioning a story I was told about Burke by Greg Clark. [This story recently appeared on HRhetor, the history of rhetoric computer discussion list.] At a conference, a gentleman asked Burke if he believed in God. Burke replied that whether or not God existed didn't matter; what mattered was the words we use about God. Burke is not concerned with the metaphysical reality of the gods (or God); rather, he is concerned with how words about god(s) operate within human interactions.

Burke uses as primary sources for his study of language and its use the fields that have traditionally been most dependent on the existence of universal, neutral frameworks-philosophy, metaphysics, and theology-those disciplines devoted to the "search for some Grand Over-All Purpose" (RR 275). Burke examines these fields as representative anecdotes of how language comes to seem neutral, universal, and disinterested, because these fields, in Burkean terms, represent language at its most interested. This conception of the interestedness of language, with its corresponding rejection of the notion of privileged access to truth, allows us to place Burke squarely within contemporary neosophistic thought.

For Burke, language, perspective, and motivation are all inseparable, as Heath points out in his discussion of Burke's "break with formalism" (132). Because all language use is motivated, it is all interested and is employed in the interests of the language user. This interestedness holds true for explanations, which Burke sees as inherently strategic: "Any explanation is an attempt at socialization, and socialization is a strategy" (PC 24); for terminologies of



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motives, which are all molded to fit "our general orientation as to purposes, instrumentalities, the 'good life,' etc." (29); for observations, which are merely implications of the terminologies with which we begin our analysis (LSA 46); and for the "business of communication" in general (PC 37). We all seek to create our own personal systems of communication that allow us to win, or as Burke puts it, we cannot avoid the "'heads I win, tails you lose' device" (ATH 260). We interpret the world through language, a language that orients us toward the world we are interpreting, and our language then reflects the orientation we've achieved. In this sense, there can be no such thing as "neutral frameworks" built through our language.

Once he establishes that all language is interested, Burke begins his critique of philosophy, metaphysics, Truth, and other universalizing, unifying disciplines or concepts. As Crusius explains, Burke's "hermeneutical approach" is working against "philosophy in the empirical, scientific tradition; whereas the latter strives for a language as univocal and free from ambiguity as possible, Burke strives to uncover tensions latent in natural language" (25). Burke specifically critiques Platonic idealist philosophy for its attempts to transcend the Platonic debate with the sophists over differing systems of justice in ancient Greece. Idealist philosophy served, by providing a speciously unifying "ideal" justice, to hide "material injustice" (GM 173). This is not to say Burke does not see Platonic or scientific philosophies as having their particular uses, but he does not see them as having a privileged claim to some sort of universal, neutral Truth.

Burke also sees himself working outside the realm of metaphysics. As with his claim to consider words about God rather than the existence or nonexistence of God discussed above, Burke sees his project as lying outside the realm of metaphysical discussions. Metaphysics presents "pseudo-problems, as the metaphysician works out an elaborate system for reconciling differences which never existed in the first place but were invented for purposes of convenience" (PC 93). It is this nature of metaphysics as poser of pseudo- problems and inveterate systematizer that Burke seems to have in mind when he distinguishes between metaphysics and common sense (although he does also note that the difference is more one of degree than of kind; common sense, too, seeks to systematize, rationalize, and apply coherence tests) (PC 24).

Rather than deny metaphysical truth, however, Burke simply ignores issues of metaphysics. He is not concerned whether myths are true or not; his only concern is with how they arise and affect people (RR 241). In discussing his pentad, Burke notes that he need not defend it as a "philosopher's stone" but only need defend it as a "philosopher's stone for the synopsis of writings that have sought the philosopher's stone." He is here relinquishing the need to examine the metaphysical truth of the existence of "real paradoxes in the nature of the world itself' (GM 56). Rather than examining metaphysical Truth, Burke




is intent on and content with examining linguistic truth, or the attempt to create truth through language. Bracketing the existence of metaphysical truth allows Burke to concentrate on how truth claims arise in interaction and how people use these claims to accomplish certain purposes in the world.

In his discussion of philosophy, of metaphysics, of theology, and of other Truth-based systems of thought and speech, Burke is continually seeking to "liquidate belief in the absolute truth of concepts by reminding us that the mixed dead metaphors of abstract thought are metaphors nonetheless" (ATH 229). Burke attempts to convince us that all of these systems are deceptions, in the same sense that Gorgias considers them deceptive: they all use language as if that language had some sort of access to Truth when in fact, by definition, language does not. Truth-based systems become systems of magic, words with which we can "conjure" (GM 209). In Burke's dramatistic view of language, Truth is unavailable to us through the language we use to interpret our world.

Burke recognizes the force of this attempt to liquidate belief in the Truth of linguistically created systems of thought-"It should make one at home in the complexities of relativism, whereas one now tends to be bewildered by relativism. And relativism cannot be eliminated by the simple legislative decrees of secular prayer (as when one tries to exorcize it by verbally denying its presence). We must erect new co-ordinates atop it, not beneath it" (ATH 229). Placing underlying coordinates-or "essential" or "substantial" coordinates-off limits, Burke denies the possibility of avoiding dramatistic relativism with systems designed to promote Truth. This mention of relativism draws an interesting connection to Burke's discussion of Plato's concern with the sophists. Plato, according to Burke, founded his Republic on a "vision of absolute Good, as a reaction to the individualistic and relativistic teachings of the Sophists" (GM 173). Burke's understanding that his own project entails becoming comfortable with relativism, and his suggestion that Plato was reacting to sophistic relativism with severe discomfort, should help us position Burke closer to the sophists and somewhat farther away from Plato.

Along with his rejection of philosophy and metaphysics, Burke also sees himself as being outside of the realm of epistemological discussions. Burke's work is concerned with the ontology of action, with concerns of how people act in the world, rather than with what they know about that world. As part of his rejection of idealist philosophy, Burke chose to work with action (see Heath 141). And in focusing on action, Burke sees himself as ignoring issues of epistemology: "By 'dramatistic' terms are meant those that begin in theories of action rather than in theories of knowledge" (PC 274). This does not mean that an epistemological stance can't be constructed from Burke's position (as, for example, McComiskey and Leff do in seeing Burke as a representative of epistemic rhetoric). Burke's own theory would indicate that his position has implications that he himself may not recognize. However, the fact that Burke



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begins with action is important, because as Burke discusses in numerous places, the position or framework with which you begin has significant implications for where you end up. By starting with action, Burke is able to ignore the drive to form a coherent, consistent epistemological system.

Burke's focus on action and his rejection of epistemological systems allows him to develop a view of language that sees language as nonsystematic, a view that is very neosophistic.7 As Sheard explains, one of Burke's major critiques is of systematic thought (303), and this applies to language, as well. Burke proposes a "liquid attitude toward speech," an attitude that would "be ready, at all times, to employ 'casuistry' at points where these lacunae [the complexities and contrary points of language] are felt. We believe that the result will be a firmer kind of certainty, though it lacked the deceptive comforts of ideological rigidity" (ATH 231). This "liquid attitude toward speech" includes seeing discourse production as an uncodifiable process, as Burke describes in ATH in discussing invention: "It [invention] is the subtle synthesis of countless unchartable factors in personal life" (125). And it covers all of communication because "communication is never an absolute (only angels communicate absolutely)" (PC xlix).8 Burke's view of language as nonsystematic also aligns him with the neosophistic view of language.

Burke's entire project seems devoted to unmasking the "partisan limitations lurking in speciously 'universal' principles" (RM 198). Rejecting, bracketing, or ignoring philosophical, theological, metaphysical, and epistemological systems of thought seems in keeping with this project. At the same time, his dramatistic ontological position, with its focus on action, on language as it is used by people attempting to work in the world, provides him with a way into the discussion of language that has been dominated by philosophical and metaphysical systems based upon Platonic conceptions of rhetoric. Burke aligns himself against that tradition by choosing to emphasize action, to liquidate belief in Truth, and to promote a liquid view of language. In all of this, he seems more aligned with the neosophistic position than against it.

Burke's Comic Perspective

Developing a comic perspective on life is one of Burke's major preoccupations. For Burke, a comic perspective toward both language and life represents the best possibility for humans to avoid annihilating themselves. Tragedy, Burke explains, is too "eager to help out with the holocaust" (LSA 20); tragic views of the world accept the repressive orderings that come with accepting a unified, immutable reality. Comedy, by undermining the unification of the world, can serve as a corrective to tragic impulses. This emphasis on comedy again links Burke to a neosophistic world view.




Burke's analysis of comedy begins with his discussion of "piety," the sense of the "appropriate," or "what goes with what" (PC 74). Piety, which Burke sees as an inherent aspect of language use, is a "system builder, a desire to round things out, to fit experiences together into a unified whole" (PC 74). In this sense, piety, which Burke sees all humans striving for, is very similar to Lanham's description of philosophy, which is a desire to see the self and the world as a unified whole. Burkean piety, in Lanham's terms, would be the "serious" approach to life, the approach Lanham places in opposition to rhetorical playfulness.

Similar to Lanham, Burke sees an antidote or opposition to piety arising from the same language that creates the desire for piety. Language, because its ambiguities create opportunities for us to deviate (RR 282), allows us to work against desires for piety by replacing the appropriate with the inappropriate or impious. One of the methods Burke sees as allowing impiety is "perspective by incongruity," which is "guided by a principle of inappropriateness" (69). Perspective by incongruity operates by violating the "'proprieties' of the word in its previous linkages" (PC 90). The primary purpose of incongruous perspectives for Burke is their role in reorganizing orientations, or changing the ways in which we view the world (PC 80). By breaking the traditional linkages between words, in essence by disrupting the "stories" we have constructed to understand our world, incongruities can push us to reposition ourselves with respect to our experiences, both past and present. For Burke, this use of incongruity is essential to creating a "cult of comedy" which is "mankind's only hope" (LSA 20).

The comic frame provides hope for humans by virtue of its ability to serve as a "discounting" device. We can, for example, discount terminologies which overly simplify and unify the world by approaching them as simplifications and as distortions. However, in discounting these perspectives, we do not lose their value, since "error" can be useful for "the correcting of present emphases" (ATH 172). The comic frame is essentially self-reflexive, allowing for self-criticism and even the discounting of our own attempts at unification of ourselves and our world: "In sum, the comic frame should enable people to be observers of themselves, while acting" (ATH 171). Additionally, Burke's comic frame would be "charitable," an element of communication essential to "persuasion and co- operation" (ATH 166). Because the comic frame allows us to discount our own positions somewhat, as well as those of other people, it decreases "polemical, one-way approaches to social necessity" (ATH 166). In this sense the comic frame promotes "mature social efficacy" by allowing us to "'win' by subtly changing the rules of the game" (ATH 171). Finally, Burke's comic frame provides us with a method for critiquing the world around us, a method that emphasizes our own as well as others' tendency to be driven by our attempts to unify a nonunifiable world.



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The Burkean comic frame promotes the kind of world view that is found in the neosophistic playful approach to life and language. It justifies Burke's contention that

We must keep trying anything and everything, improvising, borrowing from others, developing from others, dialectically using one text as comment upon another, schematizing; using the incentive to new wanderings, returning from these excursions to schematize again, being oversubtle where the straining seems to promise some further glimpse, and making amends by reduction to very simple anecdotes. (RM 265)

In many ways, this is the notion of "playfulness" and of "shifting ground" described in the previous discussion of neosophistic rhetoric. While perspectives by incongruity and other Burkean methods can seem overly formalistic in nature, the methods themselves seem less important to Burke than the attitude those methods represent. The ultimate purpose of Burke's comic frame is to promote a view of "human life as a project in 'composition,' where the poet works with the materials of social relationships. Composition, translation, also 'revision,' hence offering maximum opportunity for the resources of criticism" (ATH 173). This is the playful view of life, the rejection of the self as a unified, reducible, systematic entity in a referential world. In more classically sophistic terms, it is a conception of life as "becoming" rather than "being."

Burkean Neosophistic "Moral Purpose"

Aristotle's statement about what makes a person a sophist, the epigraph of this essay, would seem to indicate that all of the previous discussion is perhaps less important than a consideration of Burke's "moral purpose." While Aristotle and I might not agree on morality as a concept, I can agree with Aristotle if by "moral purpose" we can read "attitude," in the sense that Burke uses the term meaning "an incipient act" (GM 235-36). Neosophists may exhibit a variety of techniques, as did the original sophists, and they may vary greatly in their particulars. However, they seem to share a particular world view, an attitude toward language and life that allows us to bind them together as a group. The three elements of the foregoing discussion start to get at that attitude, but show particular applications of it rather than the attitude itself.

Kent provides a concise statement of what I see as the neosophistic moral purpose or fundamental attitude. In discussing the sophists, Kent explains that they "understood clearly . .. the paralogic nature of the labyrinth of language, and they understood, too, the way out. The Sophists understood that we are




prisoners of language in that we interpret the world only through language, but they understood as well that language also provides the means for our freedom in the world" (45). This is a clear statement of the neosophistic attitude toward both the world and language. And it provides the best source for categorizing Burke as a neosophistic. Like Kent and the sophists, Burke sees language as trapping us while at the same time freeing us.

This Burkean attitude is best seen in "Prologue in Heaven." Burke explains through TL (The Lord) that our nature as "symbol-using animals" will place us in the realm of sheer necessity:

S. But am I to infer that their [human] freedom is but an illusion? TL. They will certainly confront sheer necessity in the sense that, as one of their philosophers might put it, each person will necessarily make his decisions in the particular situations into which he is "thrown" (and each of these series will involve a series of motives not of his own choosing). S. Then it is sheer necessity! And the rest is but an illusion? (282)

Because language is part of the "particular situations" into which we are thrown, and because our language involves motivations of its own, our language will constrain us, providing us with motives that we haven't chosen but on which we must act. However, language will also provide us with the freedom to circumvent those motives.

TL. It's more complicated than that. When I introduce their kind of words into my Creation, I shall really have let something loose. In dealing with ideas one at a time (or as they will put it, "discursively") they can do many things which can't be done when, like us, all ideas are seen at once, and thus necessarily corrected by one another. S. I see it! I see the paradox! Splendid! By their symbolicity, they will be able to deviate! TL. Yes . . . discursive terminologies will allow for a constant succession of permutations and combinations. (282)

Our discursive abilities, then, will allow us to resist as well as follow the motivations we find or construct with the world. In that sense we become free through the same words that constrain us.



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This idea of constraint and freedom in discourse runs through the entire Burkean corpus. It provides him with the dedicatory phrase "ad bellum purificandum" in Grammar of Motives, it provides the fundamental assumption of Permanence and Change, and, as shown in the quotations from "Prologue in Heaven," it provides the basis for the notion of "logology" developed in Rhetoric of Religion. It is this Burkean attitude toward language, then, that ultimately places him as a neosophist, a believer in the paradox of language as both lock and key.

So, Where Are We Now?

One of the reviewers of an early version of this essay, upon finishing the piece, posed the Burkean question: So, where are we now? Where does placing Kenneth Burke as a neosophistic rhetorician get us? It is a useful and important question. To answer it, I would first return to the point I made at the beginning of this essay by citing Burke's obituary and the recent discussions occurring in the Quarterly Journal of Speech. Finding where Burke fits in both historical and contemporary conversations is an ongoing pursuit, and this is simply one more attempt to "pin him down." As a "challenge" to other ways of placing Burke, as a neo-Aristotelian or as the "founder of New Criticism," for example, I believe it is an important attempt.

There is a larger argument to be made for the value of revisioning Burke as neosophistic. That argument is embodied in the notion of "namebranding" I cited earlier. As Jeffrey Williams notes, namebranding serves as a justification for valuing the person or concept being branded. In this case, seeing (or branding) Burke as a neosophist justifies using Burke to build the kind of postmodern theories that Kent describes as arising from sophistic roots. To see Burke differently, as a neo-Aristotelian for example, can oppose Burke to these new movements. Placing Burke as a neo-Aristotelian would seem to undermine Burke's usefulness for postmodern theories. The alignments we develop help us determine who our heroes are, whose theories can help us, and whose work we will value, read, and teach. In this sense, then, placing Burke as a neosophist is an attempt to keep him in the conversation as an important voice.

Burke develops a notion very similar to "namebranding" in Attitudes Toward History, his conception of "frameworks of acceptance." Each framework "enrolls for 'action' in accordance with its particular way of drawing the lines" (92). The way in which we draw lines between, around, among concepts, people, events, can shape the actions we take. In addition, these lines serve to shape our relationships and our own alignments, "since we form ourselves and judge others (collaborating with them or against them) in accordance with our attitudes" (92). It would seem, then, that the lines we draw guide how we enter into conversations. In this case, enclosing Burke within a




neosophistic framework can help us interpret Burke, and Burke can help us interpret neosophistic theories. This kind of alignment becomes a hermeneutic enterprise, pushing us toward interpretation and reinterpretation. Of course, this is a double-edged sword (as are all hermeneutic processes for Burke) in that once we choose to align Burke with the neosophists, we make other alignments more difficult. Perhaps the best conclusion to a piece that would align Burke with anyone, then, is the Burkean reminder that "it's more complicated than that."

Notes 1 I thank Thomas Kent, Scott Consigny, and Grant Boswell for their thorough readings of this

article. I also thank Rhetoric Review reviewers Tilly Warnock and Edward Schiappa, as well as Richard Johnson-Sheehan, Rockie Beaman, Jane Perkins, Smokey McKinney, Carol Leininger, Kevin Brooks, Cindy Dunlow, and Sue Tatro for comments and suggestions on various drafts.

21 began writing this article, unknowingly, the weekend Burke died. When I heard the news of his death, I was glad that I had spent such an enjoyable weekend with him. I realized, however, that my Burke cannot die (at least, not before I do) because he is a construct of my reading of his texts rather than his physical presence.

3 Andrew Ford provides an excellent, brief review of the many meanings and uses of the term sophist throughout Western history.

4 The Sprague text, of course, is a translation of the Diels-Kranz (DK) collection of sophistic fragments. Since Sprague maintains the DK numbering system, I have included the numbers in brackets to facilitate reference to the original DK text as well as to Sprague.

5 It should be noted that not all contemporary "neosophists" share Kent's view of epistemologically based rhetorics as akin to foundational, philosophical rhetoric. McComiskey and Leff, for example, see epistemic rhetoric as a significant movement away from foundational philosophy, and they see the sophists as proponents of an essentially epistemic rhetoric. Poulakos and Consigny, on the other hand, seem to agree with Kent that the sophists do reject any coherent epistemological foundation for their conception of rhetoric.

From this point on, I will use the following designators for Burke's books within my parenthetical references:

ATH Attitudes Toward History GM Grammar of Motives LSA Language as Symbolic Action (which I will cite as a book rather than as individual essays) PC Permanence and Change RM Rhetoric of Motives RR Rhetoric of Religion 7 This view of language as nonsystematic should not be confused with Burke's obviously

systematic approach to studying language. As the argument I make at the end of this paper points out, being neosophistic is more a matter of purpose than technique. I believe that Burke is able to systematically make a case for nonsystematic language.

8 This notion is also developed in Burke's discussion of communication between TL and S in "Prologue in Heaven." There, Burke explains that TL and S can communicate absolutely because they are nontemporal beings, while humans, as temporal beings, are bound to imperfect communication.

Works Cited Aristotle. Rhetoric. Trans. W. Rhys Roberts. New York: Random: 1984. Bakhtin, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael

Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P. 1981. Burke, Kenneth. Attitudes Toward History. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984.

. A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley: U of California P, 1969.



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. Language as Symbolic Action. Berkeley: U of California P, 1966.

. Permanence and Change:An Anatomy of Purpose. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984.

. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: U of California P, 1969.

. The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology. Berkeley: U of California P, 1970. Consigny, Scott. "The Styles of Gorgias." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 22 (1992): 43-53. Crusius, Timothy W. "A Case for Kenneth Burke's Dialectic and Rhetoric." Philosophy and Rhetoric

19.1 (1986): 23-37. Ford, Andrew. "Sophistic." Common Knowledge 2 (1993): 33-48. Gibson, Walker. "In Praise of the Sophists." College English 55 (1993): 284-89. Guthrie, W. K. C. The Sophists. Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1971. Heath, Robert L. "Kenneth Burke's Break with Formalism." Quarterly Journal of Speech 70 (1984):

132-43. Hunter, Paul. "Living With Wolves: Developmental Writing and the Rhetorical Ideal of Life." ERIC,

1985. ED 269 798. Kent, Thomas. Paralogic Rhetoric: A Theory of Communicative Interaction. Lewisburg: Bucknell

UP, 1993. Kerferd, G. B. The Sophistic Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981. Kimball, Roger. "The Contemporary Sophist." The New Criterion 8 (1989): 5-15. Lanham, Richard. The Motives of Eloquence. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1976. McComiskey, Bruce. "Neosophistic Rhetorical Theory: Sophistic Precedents for Contemporary

Epistemic Rhetoric." ERIC, 1992. ED 349 556. Plato. Euthydemus. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1961. 385-420. . Protagoras. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1961. 308-52.

Poulakos, John. "Toward a Sophistic Definition of Rhetoric." Philosophy and Rhetoric 16 (1983): 35- 48.

Schiappa, Edward. "Neosophistic Rhetorical Criticism or the Historical Reconstruction of Sophistic Doctrines?" Philosophy and Rhetoric 23 (1990): 192-217.

Sheard, Cynthia Miecznikowski. "Kairos and Kenneth Burke's Psychology of Political and Social Communication." College English 55 (1993): 291-310.

Sprague, Rosamond Kent. The Older Sophists. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1972. Williams, Jeffrey. "Packaging Theory." College English 56 (1994): 280-99.

Michael Hassett is in his final year of the PhD program in Rhetoric and Professional Communication at Iowa State University. His interests include Kenneth Burke, rhetorical theory, ethics, visual rhetoric, and professional communication. He is currently completing empirical and theoretical research into issues of visual rhetoric.



sophisticated burke: kenneth burke as a neosophistic rhetorician

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