Quality and inspiration. A study of the diversification of rhetoric of quality in relation to different conceptual domains in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig

This article discusses the basic types of concepts of quality occurring in Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. These terms refer to the different conceptual domains, creating diversi ed types of rhetoric. All kinds of rhetoric refer to the discovery and awakening of individuality. The quality of education at university or on a motorbike must extend to all possible levels of the Great Chain of Being, it can not only be addressed with abstractedness. Conceptual diversi cation means diversifying rhetoric and style, which possibly corresponds to different levels of quality for Pirsig. In this sense, his proposals of a metaphysics of quality is part of a current dispute about the crisis within the humanities and the need to give it meaning, practicality and socially responsible utility. A metaphysics of quality uses the rhetoric of conceptual schemata which include: road, inclusion and container.Artykuł omawia podstawowe typy pojęcia jakości występujące w powieści Roberta M. Pirsiga pt. Zen i sztuka obsługi motocykla. Rozprawa o wartościach. Te pojęcia odnoszą się do różnych domen konceptualnych, tworząc tym samym zdywersyfkowane typy retoryki. Wszystkie typy retoryki odnoszą się do odkrywania i przebudzenia jednostkowości. Jakość kształcenia na uniwersytecie czy na motocyklu musi sięgać do wszystkich możliwych poziomów Wielkiego Łańcucha Bytu, nie może adresować jedynie abstrakcji. Dywersyfkacja konceptualna oznacza zdywersyfkowanie retoryki i stylu, co może odpowiadać także różnym poziomom jakości u Pirsiga. W tym sensie jego propozycja metafzyki jakości wpisuje się w aktualne spory o kryzysie humanistyki i konieczności jej usensownienia, upraktycznienia i użycia społecznie odpowiedzialnego. Metafzyka jakości posługuje się retoryką schematów konceptualnych drogi, inkluzji i pojemnika

From contrastive rhetoric to intercultural rhetoric: Why intercultural rhetoric needs to reframe the concept of culture

Udostępnienie publikacji Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego finansowane w ramach projektu „Doskonałość naukowa kluczem do doskonałości kształcenia”. Projekt realizowany jest ze środków Europejskiego Funduszu Społecznego w ramach Programu Operacyjnego Wiedza Edukacja Rozwój; nr umowy: POWER.03.05.00-00-Z092/17-00

The Orality of a Silent Age: The Place of Orality in Medieval Studies

'The Orality of a Silent Age: The Place of Orality in Medieval Studies' uses a brief survey of current work on Old English poetry as the point of departure for arguing that although useful, the concepts of orality and literacy have, in medieval studies, been extended further beyond their literal referents of spoken and written communication than is heuristically useful. Recent emphasis on literate methods and contexts for the writing of our surviving Anglo-Saxon poetry, in contradistinction to the previous emphasis on oral ones, provides the basis for this criticism. Despite a significant amount of revisionist work, the concept of orality remains something of a vortex into which a range of only party related issues have been sucked: authorial originality/communal property; impromptu composition/meditated composition; authorial and audience alienation/immediacy. The relevance of orality to these issues is not in dispute; the problem is that they do not vary along specifically oral/literate axes. The article suggests that this is symptomatic of a wider modernist discourse in medieval studies whereby modern, literate society is (implicitly) contrasted with medieval, oral society: the extension of the orality/literacy axis beyond its literal reference has to some extent facilitated the perpetuation of an earlier contrast between primitivity and modernity which deserves still to be questioned and disputed. Pruning back our conceptions of the oral and the literate to their stricter denotations, we might hope to see more clearly what areas of medieval studies would benefit from alternative interpretations

After the Great Recession: Law and Economics\u27 Topics of Invention and Arrangement and Tropes of Style

AFTER THE GREAT RECESSION: LAW AND ECONOMICS’ TOPICS OF INVENTION AND ARRANGEMENT AND TROPES OF STYLE by Michael D. Murray Abstract The Great Recession of 2008 and onward has drawn attention to the American economic and financial system, and has cast a critical spotlight on the theories, policies, and assumptions of the modern, neoclassical school of law and economics—often labeled the Chicago School —because this school of legal economic thought has had great influence on the American economy and financial system. The Chicago School\u27s positions on deregulation and the limitation or elimination of oversight and government restraints on stock markets, derivative markets, and other financial practices are the result of decades of neoclassical economic assumptions regarding the efficiency of unregulated markets, the near-religious-like devotion to a hyper-simplified conception of rationality and self-interest with regard to the persons and institutions participating in the financial system, and a conception of laws and government policies as incentives and costs in a manner that excludes the actual conditions and complications of reality. This Article joins the critical conversation on the Great Recession and the role of law and economics in this crisis by examining neoclassical and contemporary law and economics from the perspective of legal rhetoric. Law and economics has developed into a school of contemporary legal rhetoric that provides topics of invention and arrangement and tropes of style to test and improve general legal discourse in areas beyond the economic analysis of law. The rhetorical canons of law and economics—mathematical and scientific methods of analysis and demonstration; the characterization of legal phenomena as incentives and costs; the rhetorical economic concept of efficiency; and rational choice theory as corrected by modern behavioral social sciences, cognitive studies, and brain science—make law and economics a persuasive method of legal analysis and a powerful school of contemporary legal rhetoric, if used in the right hands. My Article is the first to examine the prescriptive implications of the rhetoric of law and economics for general legal discourse as opposed to examining the benefits and limitations of the economic analysis of law itself. This Article advances the conversation in two areas: first, as to the study and understanding of the persuasiveness of law and economics, particularly because that persuasiveness has played a role in influencing American economic and financial policy leading up to the Great Recession; and second, as to the study and understanding of the use of economic topics of invention and arrangement and tropes of style in general legal discourse when evaluated in comparison to the other schools of classical and contemporary legal rhetoric. I examine each of the rhetorical canons of law and economics and explain how each can be used to create meaning, inspire imagination, and improve the persuasiveness of legal discourse in every area of law. My conclusion is that the rhetorical canons of law and economics can be used to create meaning and inspire imagination in legal discourse beyond the economic analysis of law, but the canons are tools that only are as good as the user, and can be corrupted in ways that helped to bring about the current economic crisis

From \u3ci\u3eHeo\u3c/i\u3e to \u3ci\u3eZir\u3c/i\u3e: A History of Gender Expression in the English Language

With the growing presence of the LGBTQ+ community on the global stage, the matter of gender has been rushed to the forefront of the public consciousness. News outlets have hotly debated the topic of gender expression, a topic which has motivated mass demonstrations and acts of violence, and this has promoted a linguistic conversation at the international level. This thesis is intended to provide the historical context for the contemporary debate on gender expression in the English language, and explores both the grammatical background (the Indo-European origins of linguistic gender, the development of the modern pronoun system, etc.) and the conceptual background (the Greek origins of “gender” as they differ from modern usage)

Laying Claim to Authenticity: Five Anthropological Dilemmas

The introduction to this special collection examines five dilemmas about the use of the concept of authenticity in anthropological analysis. These relate to 1) the expectation of a singular authenticity “deep” in oneself or beyond the surface of social reality, 2) the contradictions emerging from the opposition of authenticity with inauthenticity, 3) the irony of the notion of invention of tradition (which deconstructs, but also offends), 4) the criteria involved in the authentication of the age of objects (with a consideration of their materiality), and 5) authenticity’s simultaneity, its contemporaneous multiple conceptualizations in context. I argue for a perspective on the study of authenticity that acknowledges the simultaneous co-existence of more than one parallel manifestation of authenticity in any given negotiation of the authentic

The Incognito of a Thief: Johannes Climacus and the Poetics of Self-Incrimination

In this essay, I advance a reading of Philosophical Crumbs or a Crumb of Philosophy, published by Søren Kierkegaard under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus. I argue that this book is animated by a poetics of self-incrimination. Climacus keeps accusing himself of having stolen his words from someone else. In this way, he deliberately adopts the identity of a thief as an incognito. To understand this poetics of self-incrimination, I analyze the hypothetical thought-project that Climacus develops in an attempt to show what it means to go further than Socrates. In my reading, I distinguish between a Socratic and a non-Socratic conception of education, both of which rely on an incognito. Socrates takes on the maieutic incognito of an ignorant bystander in order to force his interlocutors to turn inward so that the truth that is already within them can be born. In contrast, the non-Socratic education that Climacus advances as a hypothesis relies on what I call ‘the incognito as a true form’. It is an incognito insofar as it confronts the pupils with a paradox on which the understanding runs aground. It is a true form insofar as its immediate appearance is not a disguise, but a true form. This indirect mode of communication is necessary, without it pupils will not be able to encounter a truth that is not inherent within them. Climacus’ poetics of self-incrimination, I argue, tries to repeat this indirect mode of communication by adopting the incognito of a thief as a true form

Difference and Diversity. (Review Article)

Review of Piper, H and Stronach I (eds) 2004 Educational Research: Difference and Diversity (Cardiff Papers in Qualitative Research) Aldershot: Ashgate Publishers. £45.00. IBSN 0754633551 This collection of papers on educational methodology are drawn from two conferences, ‘Realism, Relativism or Post-Modernism’ (1997) and ‘Feminism and Educational Research Methodologies’ (1999), suitably updated and with additional material. The overview and introduction are given in the final chapter, with separate text from each editor side by side in two columns. This overview is critical, even ‘rude’ (Piper’s word) so as not to seem to be 'sycophantic'..