Unit Reflection 1

Last week’s discussions focused primarily on the ideas surrounding rhetoric, and secondly political thought. This was done by a close examination of Booth and Burke’s writing. Personally, I understood the notion of rhetoric to be one of danger, and these aforementioned authors, in detailing the past uses and nuances of rhetoric have showcased how dangerous it can be.

I would like to begin with Booth, as his first text, the Rhetoric of Fiction, is interestingly close to some of the beliefs covered in the next class, where we talked about Nietzsche and Locke. Booth maintains the idea every piece of literature is the manifestation of someone’s opinion and how that bias affects the subject matter being talked about. This is a fair enough statement, as I would also argue something as personal as literature could never not be the subject of someone’s bias, save perhaps a scientific report. While this is not a breakthrough theory, I would like to think that Booth is prioritizing the awareness of such bias, in warning potential readers to acknowledge this ever-present bias and taking it into consideration when forming one’s opinion. In relating this to the political landscape of today, I think the need for understanding and recognizing bias does not need to be argued, obviously, the nature of politics is always going to mean the manipulation of bias and opinion to gain some sort of support, it just so happens to be ever more present today.

Jumping back to Booth, his three 3 types of reality are another interesting insight he brings into the discussion of rhetoric. The 3 types he mentions are: Permanent realities, Changeable realities, and contingent realities. While I am not going to summarize each one, what I found interesting, and perhaps where the skill lies in being a politician, is the ability to manipulate these boundaries. Politicians, as well as random encounters in our day to day life, will sometimes declare these ideas or opinions as fact, knowing that challenging these ideas would be to challenge a fact or accepted truth. Coupling this with the support they can have, politicians are able to hide behind ideas that they sell to the public as fact because they know they are protected from anyone challenging them, or at least any one of value challenging them.

When we looked at Nietzsche and Locke the following session, it was interesting to see that Locke would disagree, to an extent with Booth’s claims of unavoidable bias in literature. Locke however, instead of arguing about the bias of a piece of literature, he looks at the bias when one is born. He argues for tabula rasa, meaning that when one is born, he or she is somewhat of a blank canvas, with his or her environment to act as the bias, or paint, for the blank canvas. Could we look at these two concepts and draw similarities? Could a piece of literature be somewhat of a “new born child” with a blank slate?

Lastly, one of my favorite parts about the 2^nd class was Nietzsche characterization of good and evil. Nietzsche has such a bizarre way of coming to conclusions, and it is always interesting to understand his logic and reasoning. We discussed the Genealogy of Morality and how the ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ came to be. He reasons that the Good were inherently good because of their positions in society: strong, brave, confident. The same goes for the ‘Evil’ who were evil just because they were weak, meek and of lower social classes. However, the ‘Evil’ were able to subvert the ‘Good’ and have shifted the balance of power. This is the origins of many social groups’ rhetoric for claiming that N was a anti-Semite, as he claimed the Jewish people to be the inherently ‘Evil’ people who subverted the power of Rome. They are now the ‘Good’ as they have changed the system and colloquially turned it on its head.