(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, Part V: Faces of the New Rhetoric)

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"Before the Law"
by Franz Kafka, from The Trial (Line Breaks Added).

"BEFORE THE LAW stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and then asks if he will be allowed in later.

'It is possible,' says the doorkeeper, 'but not at the moment.'

Since the gate stands open, as usual, and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man stoops to peer through the gateway into the interior. Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and says: 'If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him.'

These are difficulties the man from the country has not expected; the Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone, but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, with his big sharp nose and long, thin, black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better to wait until he gets permission to enter.

The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at one side of the door. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity. The doorkeeper frequently has little interviews with him, asking him questions about his home and many other things, but the questions are put indifferently, as great lords put them, and always finish with the statement that he cannot be let in yet.

The man, who has furnished himself with many things for his journey, sacrifices all he has, however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts everything, but always with the remark: 'I am only taking it to keep you from thinking you have omitted anything.'

During these many years the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper. He forgets the other doorkeepers, and this first one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law. He curses his bad luck, in his early years boldly and loudly; later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish, and since in his yearlong contemplation of the doorkeeper he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the fleas as well to help him and to change the doorkeeper's mind.

At length his eyesight begins to fail, and he does not know whether the world is really darker or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. Yet in his darkness he is now aware of a radiance that streams inextinguishably from the gateway of the Law.

Now he has not very long to live. Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low toward him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man's disadvantage.

'What do you want to know now?' asks the doorkeeper; 'you are insatiable.'

'Everyone strives to reach the Law,' says the man, 'so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?'

The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and, to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: 'No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.' " --Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir (Citation) Copyright © 1971, Schocken Books.

In the end, the matter at hand is Truth. The Neo-Aristotelians, the Positivists, and the Neo-Platonists all believe in a discoverable Truth, and though each perspective requires a different journey to get there, none suggest that anything but reality exists at the end of the path.

Classical Rhetoric finds Truth through deductive reasoning, through the faculties of a rational mind. Positivist Rhetoric finds Truth by clearing the mind of contextual baggage, and objectively observing the world. Neo-Platonic Rhetoric finds Truth internally, by the intuition inspired by Self. "In each case knowledge is a commodity situated in a permanent location, a repository to which the individual goes to be enlightened" (Berlin, 264).

Is it that easy? Are the roads to Truth so well-mapped that anyone accepting the journey may arrive at an understanding of reality?

So I am reminded of Kafka's parable. The location of the Law is known to everyone. Everyone, in fact, only has their own, well-marked path to arrive unhindered at the Law. But forces prevent us from apprehending the Law. Other people? Other contexts? Our faulty senses? Our mortality?

For some reason, these perspectives demand that Truth exists, that Truth is available to any and all.

And we still don't get it.

"The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green."
--Wallace Stevens ("Blue" - 1)

James A. Berlin champions a fourth perspective he calls the New Rhetoric, or Epistemic Rhetoric. According to this New Rhetoric, Truth itself is in flux. Classical and Positivist Rhetorics tell us that the material, independent world is a fixed reality. Not so, say the Neo-Platonists, the world is in flux, but the Truth is fixed. Truth may be found inside ourselves--but never taught to anyone else.

"They said, 'You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.'"
--Wallace Stevens ("Blue" - 2)

Not so, says the New Rhetoric. Truth itself changes, always, and continuously. Truth triples itself when you read a book, and then expands exponentially when you discuss that book with a group. When one relative perspective encounters another within the span of a moment (when I write and you read, when you write and I read, when we talk, when we meet) then the moment of that relation creates Truth. That Truth didn't exist prior to our encounter. That Truth wasn't waiting for its discovery. The Truth is the dialectic that we create.

"The man replied, 'Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.'"
--Wallace Stevens ("Blue" - 3)

The pieces of this dialectic reality "are the elements that make up the communication process--writer (speaker), audience, reality, language" (Berlin, 264). To understand this, we need to see how dynamic this Truth becomes within this perspective. Because Truth exists within the moment of communication, then it inevitably changes when anyone speaks, when someone else joins us, and when someone leaves.

Communication is no longer a way to express Truth. Communication creates Truth.

The New Rhetoric believes that Truth cannot be discovered through our senses, because those experiences must be interpreted in order to have meaning.

We are the interpreters, but without sense data there is nothing to interpret.

So instead, the relationship between us and the world, the manner of that organization creates Truth.

And now, finally, I get to the point with the asking and answering of a question:

Q: What do we call that organization?
A: We call it language.

The previous three perspectives demand that Truth creates language. The New Rhetoric says the reverse: language itself pre-exists Truth. "Truth is impossible without language since it is language that embodies and generates truth" (Berlin, 265). And further to the point: "Language does not correspond to the 'real world.' It creates the 'real world' by organizing it, by determining what will be perceived and not perceived, by indicating what has meaning and what is meaningless" (Berlin, 265-266).

Trust exists in the moment of discourse, exists expressly for that discourse and that discourse alone. Each discussion contains a new Truth. Each Truth created between author, narrator, character, and audience changes with every reading, with every minute of the day.

A professor must explain this idea of dialectic, of the millions of miniscule contexts that exist within every world of fiction. Fiction is a reality of probabilities, then: it sets up the "what if" scenario over and over, always informing itself from one scenario to the next, one writing and reading to the next. Language and structure exist at the center, then, and not as the side-line camera, or as a vehicle from one place to the next, or as a lie detector test. Language remembers everything that has gone before, but always in a new way.

Therefore, we teach writing and we write ourselves for the same reason: to create Truth.

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Additional Works Cited (See: Previously Cited Work)
Kafka, Franz. "Before the Law." The Trial. Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. New York: Schocken, 1974

Stevens, Wallace. "Man with a Blue Guitar." Source: Link.