Tina Bell

Dr. De Vries

5001

Commentary Week 4

12 March 2009

A New Thought

I guess I’m just going to admit that I struggled greatly with the reading this week. During the past few days, I have considered and rejected reasons for this struggle, and the inability to write a response. Some of these reasons were perhaps logical and some were not. Did I print the wrong articles? Are we switching from rhetoric to theology? Did our instructor experience temporary insanity? I couldn’t help but continually ask myself what connection I might make between these articles or others. But after many hours of contemplation, I realize that my struggle might be due to the fact that I was born in the nineteenth century. I believe that when and where I was born influences how I think, and although this issue is probably still being debated today, I have not considered it before, but I should have. How can a historical discussion about rhetoric take place without a discussion of God, truth, and/or reason?

In Abul Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd’s work, “The Incoherence of Incoherence,” he refutes the famed philosopher Ghazali. Ghazali believed that the divine light was the basis of all knowledge. Ibn Rushd believes in the separation of faith and reason. “How is it therefore possible to assert that an agent can only be understood as acting through deliberation and choice? For them this definition is indifferently applied to the empirical and the divine” (2). Although I am still having difficulty with my understanding of this article, I believe ibn Rushd demonstrated through his discussion of the misconceptions of other philosophers that the empirical and the divine are separate. When the empirical is applied and one bases decisions on observation and evidence, this is not God acting.

Keith Lloyd touches briefly on the issue of truth and agent also in his article, “Rethinking Rhetoric from an Indian Perspective: Implications in the Nyaya Sutra. He believes the Naya “perspective aligns somewhat with the Western notion that the power of truth transcends the limitations of the personal agent who propound it” (375). According to Lloyd, God exists, but truth exists separate from God. This is an interesting idea worthy of more discussion, but I am still pondering the far reaching effects on rhetoric. It certainly raises questions about the fact that a rhetorician’s knowledge is not dependent upon God, and this must certainly have changed the way one argues and persuades.

Both authors agree that truth and perhaps knowledge may be separate from God. And given the scientific revolution and the debates surrounding the idea of God, this is a connection I should have made earlier.