Abstract

Between Philosophy and Rhetoric is a book about dialogue, pure and simple. It «dialogues» modern / postmodern; it «dialogues» theory / praxis; it «dialogues» philosophy / rhetoric. Recognizing the ties that join rather than separate rhetoric and philosophy and their relation to aesthetic interpretation, the author discusses postmodern ways of knowing through art, literature, and the contemporary rhetoric / composition classroom. What we discover in this overlap of theory and practice is the dialogic necessity of social responsibility found in Gadamer's Philosophical Hermeneutics, Heidegger's House of Language, and Kenneth Burke's Rhetoric of Identity, three of the major voices that join to form both a philosophy and a practice based in postmodern contextuality.