Zen in the Art of Rhetoric: An Inquiry into Coherence

Explores relationships between classical and contemporary approaches to rhetoric and their connection to the underlying assumptions at work in Zen Buddhism.

Zen in the Art of Rhetoric interrogates the role of dualistic thought in human communication and culture, and offers new insights into the similarities and differences that mark Eastern and Western conceptualizations of language. Beginning with a reconsideration of the relationship between Zen Buddhism and rhetoric, the book progresses through a series of essays that examines the epistemological assumptions shared by pre-classical and postmodern rhetorics and Buddhist metaphysics, suggesting that the conception of rhetoric articulated by the Greek Sophists parallels the questioning of duality posed by Zenists as well as the critique of negation advanced by some postmodern theorists.

Drawing on poetry, personal narratives, critical analysis, and epistemological explorations, this book expands traditional conceptions of rhetoric beyond an "art of persuasion" to a power to manage diverse conceptions of reality, freeing the study and practice of discourse from the essentializing constraints of foundationist philosophy. As an "inquiry into coherence," the book explores social, political, and pedagogical issues ranging from racism, to cultural and ethnic diversity, to the role of argument and persuasion in the creation and perpetuation of difference. The result of this exploration is an understanding of rhetoric as a Tao, a Way of being, thinking, and speaking grounded in what the author calls "dialogic coherence," an actively non-argumentative approach to language, life, and method that is based upon the philosophies and practices of the Eastern martial arts.

Mark Lawrence McPhail is Associate Professor of Communications in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah.