ABSTRACT
Lawrence Rosenfi eld’s sobering assessment of the state of the rhetorical tradition in 1971 focuses on the split between rhetoric and philosophy, and the consequences of that split for rhetoric. To build his case he provides a sweeping review of the history of the relationship between the two fi elds. Episodes in that history, he argues, posited either by philosophers or rhetoricians, had systematically rent the tongue from the brain, with the latter usually having gone to philosophy. Rosenfi eld’s survey of that history in this short essay is selective, with praise going to the ancient Greek conception of the individual speaker as empowered to address and move the polis, where common sense was the ground for politics, where spectacle enabled communal truth to emerge in its moment of display, and where exhilaration and curiosity over the wonderment of talk prevailed. He criticizes Plato’s focus on being, Augustine’s focus on divine revelation to the mind, Locke’s focus on sense perception, and Hegel’s substitution of “historical consciousness” for history.
