I'm picking up some serious Strong Defense vibes from this. The study of eloquence builds a community, a world.

I'm in.

Weak defense much?

This sounds like Lanham's strong defense of rhetoric, the idea that meaning is communally negotiated and anchored to socio/political/cultural contexts. Although here Locke is not happy about that.

This is what sparked Lanham's chapter, right? The affirmation of the authority/superiority of the book itself over other media as a means to "preserve culture."

Lanham says, "The Strong Defense assumes that truth is determined by social dramas, some more formal than others but all man-made. Rhetoric in such a world is not ornamental but determinative, essentially creative" (156). If that defense is not just restricted to "man-made" social dramas but cultural dramas, to dramas rooted in a particular historical and cultural context (joining Rickert's sense of rhetorics), then it can also be opened up to material forces beyond the human.

Is this the Strong Defense of rhetoric again? Meaning arrived at not through empiricism but a communal negotiation?

My initial response to this title was to assume Muckelbauer's question was the same as Lanham's (the 'Q' question). Instead, he's tackling the "what is rhetoric?" question.

Muckelbauer's language use and word choice here is similar to Lanham describing rhetoric as a cosmetic.

Unlike Lanham, Muckelbauer doesn't seem bothered by this sort of repetition. Dwelling on and returning to this question isn't "simple" repetition for him but achieves a more complex purpose.

read: the executives and high-salary concept engineers "found that it engaged far more of the human personality than the highly ritualized and spiritualized competitive atmosphere at Pepsi" -- let's not forget that Pepsi and Apple are both hugely successful businesses that profit from low-wage labor; whether they're "second wave" or "third wave," the economic outcome is the same: a product consumed by millions of people. I take Lanham's point that the latter emphasizes form in relation to content and flexibility over rigidity, which (debatably) produces a better product (though I agree that a curriculum founded on these principles can produce a better student), but I question the utility in the corporate analogy here. What makes an Apple-flavored student superior to a Pepsi-flavored one? If we accept Lanham's metaphor, aren't both companies successful? Probably splitting more hairs here, but I'm always wary when we start using economic language to describe aspects of life not explicitly related to the market. To his credit Lanham prefaces this paragraph with a nod to not "sentimentalizing the life of a volatile corporation."

There's a weird tension here for me between the idea of rhetoric as "determinative, essentially creative." I'm perhaps inserting a reading that focuses too much on the similar-but-different word "determinate" rather than "determinative." I don't object to the creative aspect, but identifying something as "determinative" seems to suggest a kind of rigidity antithetical to the fluid, contextual nature of rhetoric that Lanham outlines. I might just be spitting hairs here, but it struck me as odd.

A paideia is similar in concept (though not identical to) to our idea of a curriculum or pedagogy; it's essentially a course of study that a Greek youth would begin at a young age and continue into their late teens. Interestingly, it is a holistic program, one that encompasses all areas of intellectual and physical pursuit. Quintilian's 12-volume Institutes of Oratory, referenced here, is a kind of instruction book for such a program. As Lanham notes, the goal here was to ultimately cultivate a virtuous, learned man that might participate productively in political life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paideia

Some possible connections to Lanham and his use of social drama.

Some nice connections to Lanham and his "social dramas."

Is this Lanham's girl without makeup?

A Lanham connection here.

Virtuosity is some evidence of virtue, to recall Lanham.

Sounds like bad girls aren't allowed to wear makeup...

It's interesting that rhetoric started as this practical system for ancient Greek society, but then comes Bloom and other people Lanham talks about whose interpretation of humanism, rhetoric and the university is super apolitical, with the humanities in the university separate from society.