Anish Gautam

The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology and the Holocaust - Response

Date: 01-23-2018

David Puthoff

1. In the memo, “Merchandise” is referred to the loads of people, mainly Jews men, women and
children and other undesirables. They are referred to in this way because this is the “ethos of
expediency” which can be seen in Just’s writings, where he uses metaphors to denote process or
people.
2. According to Katz, this is a perfect document from a technical standpoint because the memo is
written in a clear technical format and style. It provides clarity. It provides a clear problem or
purpose statement which has certain assumption or goal shared by an audience and ends by
providing certain conflicts which ultimately leads to solve that problem.
3. Based on ethic of expediency, rhetoric was made to serve the holocaust. They help us to
understand the relationship between ethics and rhetoric, along with the introduction of technical
terms in the writings.
4. Science and technology get their sense of ethics from the values of industrial revolution, as used
in Hitler’s writing. It provides technical usage, efficiency, speed to the writings.
5. We can combat it by introducing both rhetoric and ethos in our writings. It is the complicated
process, which lead to the introduction of holocaust and we can use that in our writings with the
introduction of technical aspects and ethical values.