ABSTRACT
Class rhetoric involves many kinds of identifications and takes many forms. Adjustments to the hierarchal mystifications of those in power take many and varied forms. Every fully developed society creates characteristic ways for attempting to reduce the burden of hierarchal mystifications to manageable proportions. Burke reviews some of these in the work of Diderot, La Rochefoucauld, De Gourmont, Pascal, Machiavelli, Dante, and the rhetoricians of the Middle Ages. In Diderot's Neveu de Rameau, as in La Rochefoucauld's Maxims, courtly positions of pantomime, "the dance of hierarchy", so to speak, are used to explore the mystifications of courtship in much the same way that Carlyle used clothes. The highest relationship in La Rochefoucauld's hierarchy of courtly relationships was friendship. Only in the open, free, and equal bonds of noble friendship is there hope for overcoming the degradation of the "vile pantomime" at court, or the insatiable raging demands of self-love, and thus purifying the courtly principle of hierarchy.
