Rhetorical Analysis

Rhetorical Analysis Prejudice is an issue that has been around for hundreds of years. It has become a part of natural human behavior. Two sides divide prejudice at the present: one fighting to eradicate prejudice and the other in defending it and claiming it can be socially productive. Most people choose the side of eradicating prejudice from society, but Jonathan Rauch has chosen the side with less support. In his article, In Defense of Prejudice: Why Incendiary Speech Must Be Protected, he supports the intellectual pluralism opinion of how to make best of prejudice and rejects the purism view of trying to eradicate prejudice by using the rhetorical techniques of ethos, logos, and pathos rhetoric. Rauch explains that intellectual pluralism is the idea that society can make the best of prejudice if intellectual freedom, the progress of knowledge, the advancement of science, and all those good things are the goals of society. Purism is the antipluralsitic idea that “society cannot be just until the last trace of invidious prejudice is scrubbed away” (Rauch 3). Throughout the article, Rauch gets his thoughts across to the reader clearly by using rhetoric to capture his readers. Logos rhetoric appeals to reason, rationality, and logic. Rauch’s use of logos is true to its definition. An example of logos in his article appears in the quote from David L. Hull, a philosopher of science; “One strength of science, is that it does not require that scientists be unbiased, only that different scientists have different biases”(Rauch 2). Rauch uses this quote to explain that the common belief that science stands for reason against prejudice is completely wrong, because although science is an unbiased area of academia, scientist themselves as individuals are biased, driven by personal desire and gains. Another prime example of the use of logos in support of Rauch’s thesis is the quote from philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, which talks about how in historical

Cited: Rauch, Jonathan. "In Defense of Prejudice: Why Incendiary Speech Must Be Protected." Harper 's Magazine 1 May 1995.