修辞当代意义的人类学研究

Anthropological Approach to the Contemporary Significance of Rhetoric

修辞学在人类学中的重要意义,最为明显地呈现在形而上学的背景下。自古典时代以来,形而上学一直居于主导地位,而它具有一种宇宙论的基础谋划:理念构成了和谐宇宙,供现象世界摹仿。可是,作为位于宇宙整体中心的静观者,无论居于何等优越的地位,人类都不是什么特例,而是多种异质实在的交汇点,一种合成的复杂实体,本质上迷雾重重。一切修辞术的公理,乃是理由不充足律(principium rationis insufficien-tis)。此乃本质匮乏存在人类学的客观对应物。如果人类世界符合莱布尼茨形而上学的乐观主义(莱布尼茨为"毕竟存在者存在,而虚无并不存在"提供了充足的理由),那就没有什么修辞学,因为根本就不需要也不可能有效地运用修辞术。

Rhetoric's anthropological importance stands out best against the background of the metaphysics that has been dominant since antiquity,a metaphysics that has a cosmological ground plan:the ideas constitute a cosmos that the phenomenal world imitates.Man,however privileged his position may be as an onlooker in the center of the whole,is nevertheless not a pure special case but rather a point of intersection of alien realities,a compound—and,as such,problematic.The axiom of all rhetoric is the principle of insufàcient reason(principium rationis insufficientis).It is the correlate of an anthropology of a creature who is deficient in essential respects.If the human world accorded with the optimism of Leibniz's metaphysics,who thought that he could assign a sufficient reason even for the fact that anything exists at all rather than nothing(“cur aliquid potius quam nihil”),then there would be no rhetoric,because there would be neither the need nor the possibility of using it effectively.