(See Part I: Introduction to the Art of Writing, Part II: Rhetoric of Aristotelian Logic, Part III: Common Sense Rhetoric, Part IV: Neo-Platonic Taboo Creative Expression)
The perspective of both the Neo-Aristotelians and the Positivists demands that reality, the independent, exterior world, has a knowable, objective existence. Our senses record information from the material world, and our observations are True; we can express observable Truth to other people.
Neo-Platonists--the Expressionists--have a considerably different perspective, a taboo perspective, in fact, from that of the Neo-Aristotelians and Positivists. The American Transcendentalists, such as Thoreau and Emerson, represent an expressionist period of rhetoric whose "ultimate source is to be found in Plato" (Berlin, 261). In the Platonic universe, the external, material world is always changing. The world is unreliable. The images that we see, the scents that we smell, even the impression of rocks below our feet that we depend on to walk--every sensory experience suffers the taint of uncertainty. We cannot truly experience the external world, and that renders both inductive and deductive logic useless--even taboo.
We can yet discover Truth; but the discovery comes from the birth of an internal vision that transcends our sensory vision. A sudden inspiration, an epiphany occurs, and then we know. We cannot deduce Truth from other Truths, as Aristotle argued, we cannot test a theory of Truth by observing our world, as common sense may suggest, because what we experience of external reality is nothing but a faulty impression of something we either cannot see, or cannot track as it endlessly changes. Instead, we intuit the existence of external Truth from the intuition of internal truth. Therefore, what we "realize" transcends the bits of the world we think we see.
After some meditation on this idea, you might begin to see a signifcant problem. If we can discover Truth only within ourselves, if we can know reality only through a source independent of our senses, then how can we teach others the Truth we find?
We can't.
Because we can't explain Truth to other people--because what they hear is not what is said--then language must have a different purpose. "Language can only deal with the realm of error" (Berlin, 262) and act as an exercise, as a preparation for meditation. Communication itself resembles the dialectic, a dialogue where two honest individuals will each discuss his own private vision, while the other helps the other uncover errors in thought. In Platonic rhetoric, an error only signifies an untruth.
Suppose I am discussing my vision with you, and I say:
I bequeath myself to the cement to grow from the water-lily I love,
If you want me again look for me inside your jockey straps.
You do not, and cannot, know my vision of Truth. Still, your care for me, and the honesty of your intent, moves you to ask me why the water-lily I love so much must be found in cement, and why you must seek me out inside the confines of your jockey straps. You attempt to elicit my understanding of what I've written. I consider whether jockey straps have become my way of hiding from a taboo subject. And at last I might say:
"I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles."
--Walt Whitman, from "Song of Myself"
Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass
No, you still do not really understand, but you see that something has been resolved. As for myself, I have uncovered an error, a side-stepping of a personal taboo: an untruth.
The expressionist professor of writing must accept that he cannot teach writing. MFA programs world-wide must never let this irony slip until the check is in the bank: a writer may learn to write, but a teach cannot teach a writer how to write. What good are these programs then? What is the point of aspiring to teach the art of writing?
In order for this expressionist to teach rhetoric, he must accept that writing is purely personal. Writing is the art of discovering for yourself what Truth means. Language and writing cannot focus on description, as Common Sense suggests. The popular Rule #1 of MFA regimes reads "SHOW! DON'T TELL!" but the opposite must suffice for the expressionist. We cannot show. Writing instead must tell, it must create analogies and metaphors: We are stuck within the shadow of Plato's Cave, as if reality were an untouchable taboo and we had no insight to see past the taboo label.
Such metaphors inspire a dialogue, and in a sense, this is what the expressionist must teach. He creates metaphoric models to represent what it means to write, and from the inside to the out, the writer must uncover the taboo, the untruth of his assumptions.
But no MFA program can openly admit such a limitation. To admit that a writer can learn to write but a program cannot teach, is to confess the heist. Would Thoreau have discovered his Truth without Emerson? Don't ask your MFA professor to answer; that would be a violation of the MFA contract.
