Rhetoric as Epistemic

Rhetoric as commonly understood for centuries is the art of persuasion. Many have attempted to offer definitions of rhetoric which all lead to the art of persuasion and to some the art of trickery; because of this misuse of rhetoric it now bares negative connotations. Rhetoric is not simply the art of persuasion but also bares an epistemic function- it serves as a way to discover what is known and what can be known. Epistemic rhetoric, therefore, unlike the belief of many is an attempt to generate knowledge. In this paper the idea of Rhetoric being epistemic is examined through the perusal of the works of Robert L. Scott and Richard Weaver.
Richard Weaver in his essay “Language is Sermonic” examines the significance of rhetoric in a world where science is given the highest recommendation. Weaver explores the decline of the importance of rhetoric. Rhetoric having once been upheld as a discourse of utmost prestige; to teach rhetoric one had to be well versed in the art of rhetoric as it required great knowledge and skill. It was considered to require qualifications undisposed to the “plodding sort of professor” (201), whose job was merely to impart information to the students. However, in today’s educational dynamic, the roles have been reversed; the teacher of literature is more highly esteemed than the teacher of rhetoric whose position has now been reserved for “anyone who will take it” (202). According to Edmund Burke: “[b]beginners, part-time teachers, graduate students, faculty wives, and various fringe people, are now the instructional staff of an art which was once supposed to require outstanding gifts and mature experience” (202-203). Apart from the decline in the competence of the professors of rhetoric, the course itself has departed from philosophical understanding to what is merely conventional, “decline from one dealing philosophically with the problems of expression to one which tries to bring below-par students up to the level of