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Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent
When should I change my mind? What can I believe and what must I doubt? In this new "philosophy of good reasons" Wayne C. Booth exposes five dogmas of modernism that have too often inhibited efforts to answer these questions. Modern dogmas teach that "you cannot reason about values" and that "the job of thought is to doubt whatever can be doubted," and they leave those who accept them crippled in their efforts to think and talk together about whatever concerns them most. They have willed upon us a "befouled rhetorical climate" in which people are driven to two self-destructive extremes—defenders of reason becoming confined to ever narrower notions of logical or experimental proof and defenders of "values" becoming more and more irresponsible in trying to defend the heart, the gut, or the gonads.
Booth traces the consequences of modernist assumptions through a wide range of inquiry and action: in politics, art, music, literature, and in personal efforts to find "identity" or a "self." In casting doubt on systematic doubt, the author finds that the dogmas are being questioned in almost every modern discipline. Suggesting that they be replaced with a rhetoric of "systematic assent," Booth discovers a vast, neglected reservoir of "good reasons"—many of them known to classical students of rhetoric, some still to be explored. These "good reasons" are here restored to intellectual respectability, suggesting the possibility of widespread new inquiry, in all fields, into the question, "When should I change my mind?"
Booth traces the consequences of modernist assumptions through a wide range of inquiry and action: in politics, art, music, literature, and in personal efforts to find "identity" or a "self." In casting doubt on systematic doubt, the author finds that the dogmas are being questioned in almost every modern discipline. Suggesting that they be replaced with a rhetoric of "systematic assent," Booth discovers a vast, neglected reservoir of "good reasons"—many of them known to classical students of rhetoric, some still to be explored. These "good reasons" are here restored to intellectual respectability, suggesting the possibility of widespread new inquiry, in all fields, into the question, "When should I change my mind?"
- GenresPhilosophyLiterature
254 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
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October 17, 2011saw this on a friend's facebook page. Booth is a cool rhetorician. This book seems to be a rhetorical take on what we non-modernists (?) call 'the triumph of suspicion,' I think.
"Scratch a sceptic and find a dogmatist" - Booth
"Scratch a sceptic and find a dogmatist" - Booth
May 11, 2021
This is my favorite book by Booth. Here we see him--not only critique the "dogmas" of Modernism--but offer an alternative called "The Rhetoric of Assent." Instead of reducing debate into a search for "falsifications," he offers criteria for "assenting" to propositions. It is a bold defense of philosophical pluralism that gets to the root of our greatest problems as a Democracy: learning how to rigorously agree with one another! Perhaps, Booth's most under-rated and under appreciated books. Perhaps even more relevant than when it was first published.
May 10, 2025
I cried in an airport reading this, grad school has done weird things to me
April 14, 2015
Why and how does rhetoric break down? For WB the issue is that there has been a loss of faith in the idea of good reasons--that we can, indeed, persuade each other to change minds. The crucial assertion is that we are able to change minds.
Modern dogmas--either sciencism or romanticism-- assert that"the purpose of offering reasons ... cannot be to change men's mind in the sense of showing that one view is genuinely superior to another" but it all must be trickery (87). Because of the dogmas of modernism "what had once ben a domain with many grades of dubiety and credibility now becomes simply the dubious (for scientism) or the arena of conflicting faiths (for irrationalism)" (89). The poster boy for these--conflicting enough-- positions is Bertrand Russell, or--rather--Bertrand Russells. Booth splits Russell's work into three parts: Russell I, "the genius of mathematical logic" who was all into proof and facts, Russell II who "tried to disestablish certain past beliefs and establish the more adequate beliefs" of science, and Russell II who was "the man of action and passion, the poet and mystic" (46-7). Both the completely, sterilely rational and the impassioned romantic are part of the modernist perspective that can undermine rhetoric.
The crazy thing is that "Not only do we talk and write and create art and mathematical systms and act as if we shared them: we really do share them, sometimes. Sometimes we understand each other" (113).
Boothe can take it a step further and say that not only do we understand each other, but we actually make each other. We "successfully infer other human beings' states of mind from symbolic clues" but also we "characteristically, in all societies, build each other's minds" (114). This is, in fact, "the supreme purpose of persuasion"-- to "engage in mutual inquire or exploration" and rhetoricians should be committed to learn "whatever conditions make such mutual inquiry possible" (137). "Rhetoric is a supremely self-justifying activity for man only when those engaged in it fully respect the rules and the steps of inquiry" (138). In the rhelm of rhetorical inquiry "we can add value fields that modernism would exclude: in love by lovers, in gastronomy by gourmets, in ever kind of value by those who have some to know a good reason from a bad" (143)--in short what I have called, before, untenetable claims.
The way to do this is through--surprise--thoughtful dialoge. "as I do so I will know that the justic of my action is determined by whther what looks like good reasons" are, in fact (149). We must "somehow constitute [society] as a rhetorical field" (149). Ultimately, "it is not a comfortable community nor a stable one. Even those who join it consciously and sustematically, as we all do by talking together here, cannot provide a convenient list of gods and devils, friends and enemies. But at the same time it can give us some ease in whatever subcommunity we have already assented to" (203).
There's also a great part on rhetoric of poetics and narrative, which I could include in a rhetoric of poetics course--"story as reasons" "Every kind of argument that anyone could ever use in real life might be used in a narrative work and it could presumably carry as much force one place as another" (181).
"if there are good reasons for confidence in the values of discoursing together, then we can get about our business, what ever that may be" (100)
"truth is not always on the side o th rebel"..."simply to say no when everyone else is saying no is just antoher form of group compliance, a disguised and therefore feeble yes" (195)
Motivism is a dogma "not because I think that all or most value choices are made on the basis of fully conscious and 'scientifically cogent reasoning' but because I find many people assuming, without argument, that none of them ever can be. 'Look for the secret motive'"(25). In practice, motivism has often led to a cutting down of man's aspirations and capacities to the 'merely animal' or, in a natural further step, to the chemical or physical" (29)
Modern dogmas--either sciencism or romanticism-- assert that"the purpose of offering reasons ... cannot be to change men's mind in the sense of showing that one view is genuinely superior to another" but it all must be trickery (87). Because of the dogmas of modernism "what had once ben a domain with many grades of dubiety and credibility now becomes simply the dubious (for scientism) or the arena of conflicting faiths (for irrationalism)" (89). The poster boy for these--conflicting enough-- positions is Bertrand Russell, or--rather--Bertrand Russells. Booth splits Russell's work into three parts: Russell I, "the genius of mathematical logic" who was all into proof and facts, Russell II who "tried to disestablish certain past beliefs and establish the more adequate beliefs" of science, and Russell II who was "the man of action and passion, the poet and mystic" (46-7). Both the completely, sterilely rational and the impassioned romantic are part of the modernist perspective that can undermine rhetoric.
The crazy thing is that "Not only do we talk and write and create art and mathematical systms and act as if we shared them: we really do share them, sometimes. Sometimes we understand each other" (113).
Boothe can take it a step further and say that not only do we understand each other, but we actually make each other. We "successfully infer other human beings' states of mind from symbolic clues" but also we "characteristically, in all societies, build each other's minds" (114). This is, in fact, "the supreme purpose of persuasion"-- to "engage in mutual inquire or exploration" and rhetoricians should be committed to learn "whatever conditions make such mutual inquiry possible" (137). "Rhetoric is a supremely self-justifying activity for man only when those engaged in it fully respect the rules and the steps of inquiry" (138). In the rhelm of rhetorical inquiry "we can add value fields that modernism would exclude: in love by lovers, in gastronomy by gourmets, in ever kind of value by those who have some to know a good reason from a bad" (143)--in short what I have called, before, untenetable claims.
The way to do this is through--surprise--thoughtful dialoge. "as I do so I will know that the justic of my action is determined by whther what looks like good reasons" are, in fact (149). We must "somehow constitute [society] as a rhetorical field" (149). Ultimately, "it is not a comfortable community nor a stable one. Even those who join it consciously and sustematically, as we all do by talking together here, cannot provide a convenient list of gods and devils, friends and enemies. But at the same time it can give us some ease in whatever subcommunity we have already assented to" (203).
There's also a great part on rhetoric of poetics and narrative, which I could include in a rhetoric of poetics course--"story as reasons" "Every kind of argument that anyone could ever use in real life might be used in a narrative work and it could presumably carry as much force one place as another" (181).
"if there are good reasons for confidence in the values of discoursing together, then we can get about our business, what ever that may be" (100)
"truth is not always on the side o th rebel"..."simply to say no when everyone else is saying no is just antoher form of group compliance, a disguised and therefore feeble yes" (195)
Motivism is a dogma "not because I think that all or most value choices are made on the basis of fully conscious and 'scientifically cogent reasoning' but because I find many people assuming, without argument, that none of them ever can be. 'Look for the secret motive'"(25). In practice, motivism has often led to a cutting down of man's aspirations and capacities to the 'merely animal' or, in a natural further step, to the chemical or physical" (29)
May 14, 2015
Знаменитый у нас нигилист Базаров из «Отцов и детей» говорил: «принципов нет вообще, а есть ощущения». Эта догма нигилизма является одновременно и догмой позитивизма, и именно с ней, с жестким противопоставлением проверяемых фактов и бессодержательных, по мнению позитивистов, утверждений о ценностях спорит автор книги, литературный критик Уэйн Бут.
При кажущейся противоположности терминов "позитивизм" и "нигилизм" они парадоксальным образом обозначают одно. "Нигилизм" отрицает не все, а только лишь метафизическое, что не может быть подтверждено методами естественных наук. "Позитивизм" также утверждает не все, а лишь то, что можно получить естественно-научными методами.
Вместо прославления сомнения и отвержения всего не выдержавшего самую строгую проверку Уэйн Бут предлагает следовать пути принятия того, в чем нет особых причин сомневаться. Есть множество соображений о людях, о том, что такое хорошо и что такое плохо, которые менее сомнительны, чем многие построения относительно устройства вселенной. Помимо того, что на практике мы именно так и живем; того, что художественная литература может дать то, чего не даст научная книга; есть еще одна деталь. Так живут и сами профессиональные позитивисты-нигилисты. Наука, если так можно выразиться, держится на честном слове: каждый делает ничтожно маленькую долю всех экспериментов и исследований, а остальные принимает на веру, если (если!) не находится причин сомневаться. Что хорошо ученому, не должно быть плохо обычному человеку.
При кажущейся противоположности терминов "позитивизм" и "нигилизм" они парадоксальным образом обозначают одно. "Нигилизм" отрицает не все, а только лишь метафизическое, что не может быть подтверждено методами естественных наук. "Позитивизм" также утверждает не все, а лишь то, что можно получить естественно-научными методами.
Вместо прославления сомнения и отвержения всего не выдержавшего самую строгую проверку Уэйн Бут предлагает следовать пути принятия того, в чем нет особых причин сомневаться. Есть множество соображений о людях, о том, что такое хорошо и что такое плохо, которые менее сомнительны, чем многие построения относительно устройства вселенной. Помимо того, что на практике мы именно так и живем; того, что художественная литература может дать то, чего не даст научная книга; есть еще одна деталь. Так живут и сами профессиональные позитивисты-нигилисты. Наука, если так можно выразиться, держится на честном слове: каждый делает ничтожно маленькую долю всех экспериментов и исследований, а остальные принимает на веру, если (если!) не находится причин сомневаться. Что хорошо ученому, не должно быть плохо обычному человеку.
May 23, 2012
Favorite book to date. Beautiful and relatble writing that cut right to the fundamental issues of effective communication. Can't wait to read more from him!
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