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Hermeneutic vs heuristic rhetoric

#rhetoric

See: Lindqvist Ch 1.

Hermeneutik: Tolkning av helhet.

Hevristik: Analys.

In antiquity, heuristic rhetoric (ability to find arguments and create texts) was the emphasis. In modern times, hermeneutic rhetoric (the arts of interpretation) has been viewed as more important and defines the academic discipline.

Lindqvist's choice of the term heuristic emphasises that it's not about shaping a message to convince an audience – and it's questionable if it's the job of academia to teach that sort of thing – but about finding different approaches to a problem so that we and our audience can make more well-grounded decisions.

(Sounds to me like bullshitish to cover that it really is about convincing audiences.)

Not the job of even hermeneutic rhetoric to analyze how a piece of rhetoric will impact a given audience, that's more for experimental linguistics, psychology and anthropology. Instead, hermeneutics is about understanding or critiquing a text or speech.

Heuristic rhetoric could be called creative rhetoric, but it's not always about creating speeches, it could be about solving a problem or pass a private judgment.

Both heuristic and hermeneutic rhetoric are both practical and theoretical.

On a different but not orthogonal axis, we have sometimes made a distinction between Rhetorica docens (the doctrine) versus Rhetorica utens (the use of it).

Even writing a text means you are analyzing the situation you are in. Because of this, rhetoric is always both an analytical study and a practiced art; they presuppose (create the conditions for) each other.

The dichotomy is a modern invention. In antiquity, the rhetoricians interested themselves in other things.

Lindqvist takes inventio, particularly the finding and analysis of topoi, to be the core of rhetoric. He also gives a lot of room to elocutio.

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Dialectics

A way to "find" facts by discussion.

The term "dialectics" has acquired several meanings over the ages.

  • Plato introduced it as a style of discussion distinct from the rhetorical arts because of negative associations. Through critical questions and by either synthesis or analysis, it should help the discussers get rid of unfounded impressions and approach the truth.
  • For Hermogenes of Tarsus, dialectic was the argumentation art for general questions "Should one marry?" and rhetoric was the art for specific questions "Should Anna marry?".
  • In the 19th century (like for Hegel & Marx) it was something else…

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