Scott-Coe's Essay

Submitted by Ed Appel on Tue, 2005-08-02 09:19

I certainly agree with both Hawhee and Fitzgerald that it's time to push Burke's RHETORIC OF RELIGION more into the mainstream, not just for its insight into the forms of language (it's surely gotten its share of attention, within Burke studies, on that score), but also for its shrewd commentary on the imperatives of human nature. At the panel on Burke and education at NCA last month, Robert Wess raised the question of why there's so much religiosity in the air right now. The woman sitting next to him on the plane (I think it was) reading her Bible, among other mainifestations of Christian faith to cross his path, apparently filled him with wonder and trepidation. Where's all this presumptive fanaticism---the gist of Bob's inquiry---coming from in this enlightened day and age? I responded with Burke's definition of logology---the systematic study of theological terms for the light they may throw on the forms of language---with its implicit assertion that theological concepts and beliefs will surely be with us always, even unto the end of the age.

I should have gone further with that thought, however. It's Burke's philosophy that can explain the recrudescence of Fundamentalism in our time, not any positivism, empiricism, or scientism. From a scientistic standpoint, red-state revulsion at rampant sexuality and secularism in our popular culture is inexplicable. To a modernist, maybe even postmodernist, mindset, liberal preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick's naive prediction of 75 years ago would make eminent sense: Someday everybody's going to think like me. The dictates of the hortatory negative and its perfectionist residues will be rescinded. Under the irresistible weight of scientific demystifications, religion, except in its etiolated mainstream forms, will wither.

In my view, Scott-Coe brilliantly brings these issues to the fore once again. She makes Burke's inherently theological system (well, Chesebro called it a System in the title of HIS book) stand out clearly, figure/ground, in apt comparison with Augustine and counterpositioning with Ramus. Was Burke a theologian, and if so, what kind? Scott-Coe offers some neat stuff in partial answer to that query. (A definitive answer is not in the offing to that, as well as many other, questions about Burke and his philosophy.)

I hope to get to some of this neat stuff in later posts. If I can find them in my deep files, I might share, also, a couple of Burke's epistolary answers to my claim that he was, in fact, a theologain of a kind.

Poet, then actor, then theologian---aren't those the metaphors Burke proposed, in serial progression, for the symbol-using animal?

If you dare, tell me that's not so.

‹ Situating Burke's Thought rhetoric and religion ›

Comments

Scott-Coe's Essay
Tue, 2005-08-02 09:38 — Anonymous

compulsive thrust upward toward an overarching god-term (always perfected by way of a God-term, upper case), and disorder-guilt-redemption cycle of social interactions that serve, for good and/or ill, as life's Iron Law of History.

We know for sure what Augustine had in mind, among possibly other things: the exploitation of pagan or secular terms, concepts, and associations to further a Christian rhetorical appeal, as our commentator puts it.

I'm not sure I can agree with this as a basic premise. Clearly, in his Confessions, Augustine struggled with rhetoric, likening it to a mistress. Rather than try and use the terms to further a Christian appeal, it seems to me that Augustin tried to applied what he felt wer the keep-able truths in Rhetoric as seen through the frame of his Christian beliefs.

Also,

Burke said he was an agnostic, more than one of his acquaintances has reported. Logology's bottom line, if there is one, comes in the last codicil of Burke's Definition of Man [sic]: The symbol-using [and] -misusing animal is rotten with perfection, the theological motive of perfection being the very driving force at the core of language-charged human life. The motive that forces to the surface thoughts of the ultimately perfect Being of negative theology---Infinite, Eternal, Almighty, Omniscient, Omnipresent, etc.---is, at base, the same drive that is threatening the ecosystems of planet Earth, Burke's bete noir as early as CS and P&C.

What gives, then, with Burke's theological obsessions, his relentless need for God talk way above and beyond the explanatory requirements of a pure logologer? More than one Burkean exegete has taken notice of these obsessions, as well as Burke's recurrent tendency to take the side of religion in discussions of its conflicts with secularism and science. Scott-Coe cites, in particular, Wayne Booth's take on the matter. Booth called Burke a theologian and prophet, based on his vast correspondence with our sage and leader.

It seems to me that Booth may just be correct in his estimation of Burke. He was a theologian and prohpet, or a coy theologian as described by Ed Appel, if one interprets his logology in such a way to include the argument of prime mover. In spite of his self-proclaimed agnosticism, he argued persuasively concerning the definition of man, in particularly as rotten with perfection. The often unconscious drive toward final cause combined with a relentless fascination and construction of religion would seem a compelling argument to the existence of prime mover. That, along with Burke's continued discussion of god-terms. Why? He himself it seemed, could not drown out the drive toward the Ultimate.

I'm not sure that Burke was an intentional theologian, but surely does much to advance the knowledge of the Absolute through the borrowing of religious terms used in secular way. Hence, the word coy aptly describes his status as a theologian.

Thanks for encouraging this conversation, Ed. When life gets too busy to enter into such stimulated, excellent discourse with peers and friends, then life... is too busy.

Stephanie