Chris Dodson

ENG 415
Dr. Shaw
12/2/14
Faith as a Necessary Rhetorical Tool
How do we communicate? It is a broad question, but one that is at the heart of nearly
every rhetorical discussion since the Greeks. The study of persuasion is one means of getting at
it. Persuasion can be seen as the act of convincing a listener of our own way of seeing things, of
aligning his knowledge with ours. If he sees as we see, he will do as we do. The field of
linguistics is another means, which we can perhaps see as the study of the way knowledge is
arranged within symbolic structures. But it is semantics which has given us the greatest
consternation, and which has confounded our ability to answer the question. Every approach to
the investigation of communication eventually leads to the same chokepoint: How do we assign
meaning to symbol? But there is another question just as pertinent to communication: By what
means do we interpret meaning from symbol? It is my suggestion that we have only one,
sometimes liberating, sometimes distressing answer, and in the following paper I will discuss
faith as that rhetorical tool.
From the beginning, the issue of rhetoric has been one of truth and representation. Why
is it that Gorgias was at once admired and abhorred? Was it not because he made a thing seem to
be that which we, somehow, knew it was not? Why was Plato so intent on reigning in the
passions? Or why has Aristotle continuously fallen in and out of favor over the centuries? He
ironically approached the art of rhetoric as the modern paradigm would compel us, by a method
of rationality, and in so doing he thought to discover the means by which men might be (read:

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ought to be) moved. He searched for a system, the system, the lever long enough to move the
soul.
Aristotle tells us plainly of rhetorics most powerful tool. Things that are true and just,
he says, have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites (Aristotle 180). The truth is
persuasive in and of itself. But there exists a problem in men:
before some audiences not even the possession of the exactest
knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce
conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction,
and there are people whom one cannot instruct (Aristotle 180).
Aristotles problem is not in the nature of knowledge, but in its transmission. The ultimate
solution to his problem would be the ability to transmit perfect truth. With such an ability, we
would have no need of labored instruction or roundabout persuasion. He requires the discovery
of a means by which we might, demonstrably and logically, assign meaning to symbol. It occurs
to me that we alternately embrace and reject Aristotle because his approach at once cries out for
the holy grail of semantics, and at the same time demonstrates its frustrating absence.
While Francis Bacon was one of the first to hint at the problem of semantics, Lock one of
the first to define it, and Campbell one of the first to make use of it, it is perhaps Nietzsche who
was the first to truly lament it. He lays the problem out neatly when he asks, What is a word?
It is a copy in sound of a nerve stimulusa nerve stimulus is transferred into an image: first
metaphor. The image, in turn, is imitated in a sound: second metaphor (Nietzsche 1173). He
shows us the process by which an experience of the physical world, known only in the isolated
man, is packaged into a symbol and transferred to other men. Nietzsche is concerned in this
piece with the refutation of truth, but in so doing he butts up against two implications.

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First, he speaks of physical sensation being represented in metaphor by a kind of image

(thought). But let us examine how this image comes to represent anything but that exact
sensation at that exact time. If I place my hand in a fire, I assign the experience to a reference in
my mind. But that reference is not thought, not Nietzsches first metaphor there is an
intervening step. The reference I first assign is to memory, the faculty of directly referring to
(recalling) an exact experience. Nietzsches image might be thought of in a different way: the
assignment of the aforementioned experience to the thought/image pain. Now pain, as an
image, does not refer to any physical thing, not even to a sensation, because it is a reference that
can be assigned to more than one thing at a time. Nietzsche touches on this curiosity:
Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is
not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely
individual original experience to which it owes its origin; but
rather, a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has
to fit countless more or less similar cases (Nietzsche, 1174).
I cannot remember my eleventh birthday and my twentieth birthday with the same
memory, but I can think of both with the same set of co-referential images. Nietzsches hop over
the concept of memory and straight to the concept of image might not mean much in the course
of his work, but it serves to illustrate an important point in our argument: Even within ourselves,
before we ever attempt to communicate with others, we naturally assign our physical experiences
to non-direct references, references which are of concept or essence.
For the second implication, lets return to Nietzsches opening question, What is a word
(Nietzsche 1173)? Nietzsche is defining word by its method of operation, but it is important
also to remember its definition of purpose. A word is a symbol created and intended for

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communication, for the conforming of a listeners thoughts to our own. Memory can be thought
of as an exact reference to previous experience (And even this definition we may question. Is
memory an exact reference, or is it merely a singular reference? Is it no more than a symbol
which refers to only one, isolated experience?) A word, though, is by its very nature a metaphor,
a thing which functions by means of reference to a concept, and which is then interpreted. This
interpretation is essentially a reassigning of meaning within the mind of the hearer.
A word, as distinct from mere thought, is a social tool. It exists for no other reason. If a
single man had been created from the ground up as the only occurrence of his species, if there
had never been nor was there ever to be such a thing as men, then we can imagine that such a
thing as word would not exist. The existence of words implies the existence of men, and of men
that are capable of communicating with one another: that is, men who are capable not only of
assigning meaning to symbols, but of assigning meaning to symbols in such a way as to be
usefully and productively reassigned in the minds of other men.
But these two implications, taken in conjunction, create an interesting problem. We have
no way of transferring our memories, our exact references, to other men. And yet we still
communicate. If we are to assign meanings to words which we can have any confidence will be
reassigned accurately (enough) in the minds of others, then we must have some third party; there
must be something that is external to the communication, and to which our individual meanings
can have common reference. This is what we call concept. But concept is by its nature not a
concrete thing, not a thing which can be referred to by demonstration. Otherwise, we could only
ever speak of the leaf, and never of a leaf.
As human beings, we accomplish a curious act. It is an act that occurs both within our
own minds, and between minds. It is an act which is necessary to human communication. It is

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an act which allows us to assign non-direct, non-demonstrable, meaning to communicable

symbols. And, perhaps more importantly, it is an act which allows us to accurately re-assign that
meaning. I must make clear that this paper is not about the construction of concept or
essence. That is a problem for the field of semantics, and one that I am not sure it is even
capable of solving. But there is an interesting practice that occurs in rhetorical theory, especially
over the last century. We see it in Nietzsche, in Burke, in Weaver. It is the practice of speaking
of the semantic problem in terms of theology. It is a fitting, if not inevitable practice, and I
wonder if it was perhaps the lingering, enamoring haze of enlightenment-era rationalism which
so delayed its use. Regardless, I will coopt it for my own. I am going to speak not of the act by
which we construct concept, but rather of the act by which we make use of it. And I am going to
call this act faith.
Before we go on any further, it will be useful to define faith. I have spoken of it as
something like an act of assigning meaning, particularly of assigning a commonlyunderstandable concept to a commonly-used symbol. This is a definition by purpose, but
lets be more specific. Appropriate to the term, I will use the definition given by the theology
from which I have drawn it: Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things
not seen (Heb. 11:1 KJV). I find this definition especially useful because it demonstrates that
faith, as I am using the term, is not quite analogous with belief.
Belief is an act which asserts devotion to a particular assignment of meaning. Wayne
Booth described this attitude writ large when he spoke of what he called irrationalists. He says
that,
Fanatics are always reasonable in the sense of seeing rational
connections between their abstract principles and their

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conclusions; their irrationality often consists in choosing the wrong

principles validated by an inadequately considered group of
significant others. They have lost their common sense they
do not test their commitments by seeking a genuinely common
ground shared with the relevant fellow creatures (Booth 1499).
Booth is not arguing for a theory of rationality. Rather he is contrasting rationality with its
natural opposite. The productive way, his rhetoric of assent, lies somewhere else. But his
irrationalists are a useful illustration of the assertion of belief. The validity of this assertion lies
entirely with the one who believes. He might believe something for all sorts of reasons, but
nonetheless the deciding factor for his acting in accordance with that belief is personal, not
common. He acts in a certain way solely because he has made a decision to believe a certain
thing.
But with faith, the validity of the assertion rests not on the one who has faith, but on the
object of that faith. There is something in the object itself, some value approaching truth, that
compels the assignment of a particular meaning. It is a curious combination of choice and
command, by which we are adjured to select the right assignment of meaning. Belief speaks
of a personal proactive valuation. Faith speaks of substance, of evidence, and of communal
response.
In the preceding statements I have made use of a dangerous term truth. I am going to
have to address it now by saying that I do not necessarily mean (though I do not exclude) truth as
ultimate truth. Rather, I use truth to mean a certain kind of concept, to which other individuals
have access, and which may be appealed to for the appropriateness of the use of those symbols
that refer to concepts. Whereas belief in the speaker assigns meaning to a concept, faith assigns

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meaning (and reassigns it in the hearer) to a true concept. If concept is the common referent of
language between two speakers, truth might be thought of as the grounds upon which that
commonness is built. Commonness of referent is a vital step in communication. Without it,
words do not simply mean the wrong thing in the ears of the hearer they do not mean at all.
Faith is necessary for the communicative act.
But are there other means by which we assign communal meaning, means that do not
necessarily require reference to a true concept? I will address two common alternatives.
Nietzsche himself provides one of them. He speaks of truth as being a kind of evolution
of concept, of common metaphor. He writes that,
Even the relationship of a nerve stimulus to the generated image
is not a necessary one. But when the same image has been
generated millions of times and has been handed down for many
generations and finally appears on the same occasion every time
for all mankind, then it acquires at last the same meaning for men
it would have if it were the sole necessary image and if the
relationship of the original nerve stimulus to the generated image
were a strictly causal one. In the same way, an endlessly repeated
dream would certainly be felt and judged to be reality (Nietzsche
1177).
I do not object to the assertion that truth is emphasized in this way. This is one of the prime
means by which truth gains its force in a community, and is thus a source from which faith draws
its efficacy. But is it the genesis of that force? We have seen that faith is necessary for
communication. But we have also seen that faith involves not only the acceptance of a meaning,

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but the selection of one meaning over another. If faith must be present for first communication,
how are Nietzsches concepts to be built? We must have some other way, something that does
not involve communication between two parties, to establish common concept.
Nietzsches own illustration provides a possible, and interesting, demonstration of the
problem. He speaks of a dream as a kind of experience that is as full as what we call reality,
and thereby indistinguishable from it. But we have all had dreams in which we knew we were
dreaming. And furthermore, that knowledge was not derived from the questioning of any
particular evidence in the dream itself, like the sudden ability to fly or to flit from time to time or
place to place. On the contrary, it is the nature of dreaming that such evidences, if they are even
present, are often unquestionably accepted as logical within the dream world. And yet, we still
know that we are dreaming. There is some extra-communicative evidence which tells us that all
of these experiences, all of these perfectly vivid (apparently) logical metaphors, are not properly
assigned to that meaning we refer to as reality.
For the second common alternative, I will refer to I. A. Richards. For Richards, meaning
comes not only from past usage, but from present context, the whole cluster of events that
recur together (Richards 1285). For Richards, context is our third party, the grounds upon
which commonness is built. I am using Richards here not because I believe he is setting up a
direct refutation to the idea of faith, only that what he proposes can be misinterpreted (sic) as
such. We might think of meaning-from-context almost as a kind of herd mentality. This is
what the symbol means, because it seems to be what everyone else currently thinks it means.
As with Nietzsche, I do not argue that context plays a role in our propagation of the proper
assignment of meaning, but rather that context does not itself define proper. Richards further
clarifies his statement in a way that reveals the operation of faith:

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In these contexts one item typically a word takes over the

duties of parts which can then be omitted from the recurrence.
There is thus an abridgement of the context only shown in the
behavior of living things, and most extensively and drastically
show by man. When this abridgement happens, what the sign or
word the item with these delegated powers means is the
missing parts of the context (Richards 1285).
Richards is showing us that context is not really involved in the act of assigning
meaning, but is rather a particular framework in which meaning is assigned. There is neither a
single word, nor a grouping of words, which can refer to all the missing parts of context in any
act of communication. Instead, a selection occurs. And because of this, there is still required
some justification (an authoritative property, apart from simple indication) for a particular
symbol referring, in common understanding, to a particular set of missing contextual
components. Contextual reference still requires faith.
We now must encounter the ultimate nemesis of almost any rhetorical theory: reason.
Much has made of the rule of reason, especially since Ramus, but it is no giant in need of
slaying. Reason need not be a boogeyman to faith. If faith were solely a tool of dialectic
between discrete individuals, it might possibly be so. But we must remember that faith is not
only at play in our reassignment of meaning to the symbols of others, but also in the way in
which we assign meaning to our own thoughts. Rationality is the means by which we connect
objects and events in our minds, but it must operate by means of an established logic. And logic
deals purely with concept, a concept which, however it is created, cannot be used without the
faculty of faith.

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Faith is the mirror of semantics, the missing link, the bridge across the chasm that
rhetorical theorists have been trying to leap for millennia. We cant describe the means by which
it operates. But when we look closely enough, we see it. We peek behind every curtain and
every rock, and we find it. And when we turn away from the world to examine even ourselves:
there it is. We cannot yet explain the origins of this bridge, nor can we describe the materials of
which it is built, but we likewise cannot deny that we are now, and have always been, standing
squarely upon it.

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Works Cited
Aristotle. Rhetoric. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings From Classical Times to the Present.
Ed. Patricia Bizzell, Bruce Herzburg. Boston: Bedford/St Martins, 2001. 179-240. Print.
Booth, Wayne. Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent. The Rhetorical Tradition:
Readings From Classical Times to the Present. Ed. Patricia Bizzell, Bruce Herzburg.
Boston: Bedford/St Martins, 2001. 1493-1519. Print.
The Holy Bible, King James Version. Cambridge Edition: 1769
Nietzche, Friederich. On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense. The Rhetorical Tradition:
Readings From Classical Times to the Present. Ed. Patricia Bizzell, Bruce Herzburg.
Boston: Bedford/St Martins, 2001. 1171-1179. Print.
Richards, I. A. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings From
Classical Times to the Present. Ed. Patricia Bizzell, Bruce Herzburg. Boston: Bedford/St
Martins, 2001. 1281-1294. Print.