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as well as among members of a given audience.
Rhetors and audiences bring different backgrounds,
aspirations, and assessments of the current state of
affairs to any rhetorical situation. If there were
no differences of this kind at all, rhetoric would
not be necessary. (167)
Although this is Crowley’s general definition of rhetoric, it is
an ideal that is definitely based upon the classical model, and,
because of that emphasis upon “difference,” it is an ideal that
is defined by Uncertainty, whether Crowley names it as such or
not. Regardless, this theory of classical rhetoric having
origins in Uncertainty is also shared by William Covino, as
articulated in his book The Art of Wondering. For Covino, the
realities of classical rhetoric – the realities of the
epistemology that informs classical rhetoric – has fallen victim
to century after century (after century) of interpretation, each
undertaken to suit the particular rhetorical needs of the time
and each drawing classical rhetoric’s techniques and methods
further and further away from its original defining perspective
of “reality” and “truth.” As Covino explains:
[T]here are differences that distinguish the
pedagogical use of classical rhetoric from age to
age; however, a common emphasis prevails, upon
rhetoric as technique. In the Gorgias and the
Phaedrus, Plato opens the contest between
philosophical and technical rhetoric, and the
technical rhetoric remains dominant through the
centuries, so that the history of rhetoric is a
continually stronger refutation of the suppleness of
discourse, a progressive denial of the ambiguity of
language and literature, a more and more powerful
repression of contextual variables by textual
authority. (8)
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