Kenneth Burke and the Conversation After Philosophy

Throughout much of his long life 18971993 Kenneth Burke was recognized as aleading American intellectual perhaps the most significant critic writing inEnglish s... » 

Throughout much of his long life 18971993 Kenneth Burke was recognized as aleading American intellectual perhaps the most significant critic writing inEnglish since Coleridge. From about 1950 on rhetoricians in both English andspeech began to see him as a major contributor to the New Rhetoric. But despiteBurkes own claims to be writing philosophy and some notice from reviewers andcritics that his work was philosophically significant Timothy W. Crusius isthe first to access his work as philosophy.Crusius traces Burkes commitment and contributions to philosophy prior to1945 from CounterStatement 1931 through The Philosophy of Literary Form1941. While Burke might have been a late modernist thinker Crusius showsthat Burke actually starts from a position closely akin to such postmodernfigures as Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty.Crusius then examines Burkes work from A Grammar of Motives 1945 up to hislast published essays drawing most heavily on A Rhetoric of Motives TheRhetoric of Religion and uncollected essays from the 1970s. This part concernsBurkes contributions to human activities always closely associated withrhetorichermeneutics dialectic and praxis. Burkes highly developed notionof our species as the symbolusing animal argues Crusius draws togetherthe various strands of his later philosophy his concern with interpretationwith dialectic and dialogue with a praxis devoted to awareness and control ofthe selfdeceiving and potentially selfdestructive motives inherent inlanguage itself. «