Abstract
This essay takes a rhetorical pragmatist perspective on current questions concerning educational goals and pedagogical practices. It begins by considering some challenges to rhetorical approaches to education, placing those challenges in the theoretical context of their posing. The essay then describes one current rhetorical approach—based on Kenneth Burke’s dramatism and logology—and uses it to understand and redescribe another rhetorical approach—Jesuit teaching of eloquentia perfecta. Proceeding in this way, the essay presents both a general theoretical framework for discussing educational aims and a specific practical example of how such aims might be achieved.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Biesta, G. (2006). Beyond learning: Democratic education for a human future. London: Paradigm Publishers.
Biesta, G. (2007). The education–socialization conundrum or ‘Who is afraid of education? Utbildning and Demokrati, 16(3), 25–36.
Biesta, G. (2009). Good education in an age of measurement: on the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21(1), 33–46.
Biesta, G. (2012). Becoming world-wise: an educational perspective on the rhetorical curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 44(6), 815–826.
Burke, K. (2010). Linguistic approach to problems of education [1955]. In P. M. Smudde (Ed.), Humanistic critique of education: Teaching and learning as symbolic action (pp. 3–41). Anderson: Parlor Press.
Burke, K. (1966). Language as symbolic action: essays on life, literature, and method. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Burke, K. (1969). A grammar of motives (1945). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Burke, K. (1970). The rhetoric of religion: Studies in logology [1961]. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Burke, K. (1978). (Nonsymbolic) motion/(symbolic) action. Critical Inquiry, 4(4), 809–838.
Burke, K. (1984). Afterword. Permanence and change: An anatomy of purpose (3rd ed., pp. 295–336). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Burke, K. (2003). Theology and logology [1979]. In W. H. Rueckert & A. Bonadonna (Eds.), On human nature: A gathering while everything flows, 1967–1984 (pp. 174–209). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Clarke, K. (2011). How to build a better student. America, 16(246), 13–18.
Davidson, D. (1984). Inquries into truth and interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dreyfus, H. L. (1991). Being-in-the-world: A commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Duminuco, V. J. (Ed.). (2000). The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum: 400th anniversary perspectives. New York: Fordham University Press.
Enoch, J. (2004). Becoming symbol-wise: Kenneth Burke’s pedagogy of critical reflection. College Composition and Communication, 56(2), 272–296.
Foucault, M. (1986). The care of the self. Pantheon: Trans. R. Hurley.
Hadot, P. (1995). Philosophy as a way of life: Spiritual exercises from Socrates to Foucault, Trans. M. Chase. Ed. A. I. Davidson. Oxford: Blackwell.
Harrington, D. J., & Keenan, J. F. (2002). Jesus and virtue ethics: Building bridges between New Testament studies and moral theology. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Harrington, D. J., & Keenan, J. F. (2010). Paul and virtue ethics: Building bridges between New Testament studies and moral theology. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Ignatius of Loyola. (1992). The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. Trans. G. E. Ganss, S.J. Chicago: Loyola Press.
James, W. (1978). Pragmatism: A new name for some old ways of thinking (1907). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Kilpatrick, W. H. (1951). Crucial issues in current educational theory. Educational Theory, 1(1), 1–8.
Mailloux, S. (1989). Rhetorical power. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Mailloux, S. (1998). Reception histories: Rhetoric, pragmatism, and American cultural politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Mailloux, S. (2006). Disciplinary identities: Rhetorical paths of English, Speech, and Composition. New York: Modern Language Association of America.
Mailloux, S. (2011). Euro-American rhetorical pragmatism: democratic deliberation, humanist controversies, and purposeful mediation. Pragmatism Today, 2(2), 81–91. http://www.pragmatismtoday.eu/winter2011/Mailloux.pdf. Accessed 22 June 2014.
Mailloux, S. (2012). Theotropic logology? J. Hillis Miller, Paul de Man and Kenneth Burke. In M. McQuillan (Ed.), The political archive of Paul de Man: Property, sovereignty, and the theotropic (pp. 72–80). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Maryks, R. A. (2008). Saint Cicero and the Jesuits: The influence of the Liberal Arts on the adoption of moral probabilism. Burlington: Ashgate.
O’Malley, J. W. (1993). The first jesuits. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Rorty, R. (1989). Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rutten, K., & Soetaert, R. (2012). Revisiting the rhetorical curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 44(6), 727–743.
Schroth, R. A., (Ed). (2013). Special issue: Eloquentia Perfecta: Writing and Speaking Well. Conversations, 43.
The Ratio Studiorum of 1599. (1933). Trans. A. R. Ball. In E. A. Fitzpatrick (Ed.), St. Ignatius and the Ratio Studiorum (pp. 119–224). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Traub, G. W. (2002). Do you speak Ignatian? http://www.xavier.edu/jesuitresource/ignatian-resources/do-you-speak-ignatian.cfm. Accessed on 22 June 2014.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mailloux, S. Jesuit Eloquentia Perfecta and Theotropic Logology. Stud Philos Educ 34, 403–412 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-014-9435-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-014-9435-2