Ernesto Grassi
Ernesto Grassi is neither
rhetorician nor compositionist; Grassi himself never theorized the internet,
much less online education. However, I find that Grassi's notions on metaphor, ingenium,
and on rhetoric intersect quite remarkably with the Kenneth Burke's
dramatism, as well as providing a way to talk about MOOspace, how we might
perceive MOOspace and how it might be used as an educational environment.
Grassi seeks to theorize the human imagination using the philosophical precepts
of Italian Humanists, such as Vico. He notes that analytic language, privileged
since the Cartesian cogito ergo sum, rational, scientific thought grounded in
eternal verities, limits and constrains the discipline of philosophy. He points
to Heiddeger's pronouncement on the death of philosophy, locating and
highlighting 20th century preoccupation with subject/object binaries.
He notes that a
grounding in the eternal, fixed platonic Truth provides a poor basis for the
intellectual work needed to be done. By returning to the Italian Humanists,
Grassi seeks to restore human non-rational, imaginative thought, returning to
pre-Socratic? and/or Platonic? notions of metaphor as a basis for humans
understanding their world. Furthermore, Grassi seeks to restore the poet and
rhetoric as central to an understanding of contextual truths.
Grassi asserts
that scientific, rational epistemological paradigms are based on, grounded in,
Platonic, fixed, eternal objective reality; by framing theoretical questions in
a fixed ontology of "Being," a static, unchanging world world view,
one can never contextualize any theoretical problem because one has lost the historicity
or the context, the human context.
One
of the central problems of Humanism, however, is not man, but the question of
original context, the horizon, or "openness"
in which man and his world appear (HRH 17).
A philosopher who
worked closely with Heidegger for ten years, Grassi came to examine the clash
between two philosophical positions which informed his work and studies: German Idealism and Italian Humanism. Foss Foss and Trapp note "Grassi's
philosophical and rhetorical contributions have emerged from the tension
between Italian Humanism and the scientific tradition that culminated in German
Idealism" (CPR 146). His study of the Italian Humanist tradition, and Vico in particular,
prompted Grassi to challenge, not only philosophy, but also rhetoric, grounding
his own philosophical theory in a contextual field of the imagination through
metaphor, privileging rhetoric???? Gotta be a better way to say this.
Grassi explains:
"For Vico, it is the imaginative word that gives rise to the world of
human "being there." The poetic word is the original and uniquely
human attempt to give meaning to the frightful power of being which reveals
itself in what is" (HRH 27). Grassi's belief that the poet and the
rhetorician form the basis for communal existence challenges Platonic
traditions of Descartes and Kant as rational, a priorisystems,
closed to ontological investigation. Grassi argues for the "theoretical
significance and present-day importance of Humanism, especially in connection
with Heidegger's thesis of the end of philosophy." Grassi finds the
intersections in Heidgger and Vico, noting that he feels Heidegger just didn't
quite grasp the importance of the Humanists. Grassi demonstrates how
Heidegger's theories on Being-in-the-world shares a basic philosophical stance
with Vico's poet-in-the-world.
Traditional metaphysics must today come to an end
because it began with the question of the rational foundation of what is. In
place of the question of logical truth, Heidegger explains, the much more
original problem of unhiddenness must take its place...here a new task for
philosophy arises, to uphold the primacy and originality of poetic language
over rational language. (HRH 26).
In order to
situate Grassi in a field outside his own sphere, rhetoric, one must understand
his metaphor for thinking and learning,ingenium, a metaphor itself for
the learning thinking process. Grassi situates learning and thinking in
rhetoric rather than philosophy. Grassi grounds the ability to *see* and
understand in rhetoric rather than philosophy, surprising, given that Grassi is
a philosopher. In this way, Grassi privileges a dialogic process of learning in
ways similar to Burke, Gere, and Rose. The suspension of binary oppositions as
the ruling paradigm, indeed, the move away from a Platonic notion of verities
toward a more sophistic approach to cognitive metaskills explains why Grassi is
useful to the study of computer mediated writing.
The very statement
that communities exist and flourish on "virtual words" seems the kind
of contradiction of logical terms that Grassi might say is indeed his whole
point. The ability we have to *see*, define, or understand ourselves as *being*
in a virtual environment can be better understand by looking at what Grassi
terms Ingenium. But before I discuss his notions of Ingenium it
would be useful to look at his ideas on metaphor, since the very notion of a
data base being a virtual space is closely related to what Grassi has to say
about metaphor.
Relate this to Burke???????
In order to be effective, the metaphor must be so
constructed that by uncovering relationships, something peculiar and
unique...becomes visible. The metaphor uncovers something that has not
previously been seen; it leads to light because it stems from the need to see;
that which is not obvious...is to be transferred. It permits us, "to see
the similarity between what is actually the most widely separated"
...Finally the metaphor is characterized by the fact that it shows us something
unusual...something unexpected. 42
Grassi seeks to overturn traditional Cartesian
epistemologies by replacing rational "cogito" the basis for modern
philosophical thought with poetry and rhetoric as the "ground",
stance or attitude one must assume .....
On Folly:
Tie this together
with Burke's notions..........
Grassi's work on folly is an extension of this theme;
he believes that the notion of folly, rather than being a kind of insanity, is,
in fact, an original grounding in the essential human condition--a linguistic
capacity to see things as they are and the opposite possibilities
simultaneously. This singular human ability allows humans to create the world
in which they live by making choices about how to perceive and live in it ().
For Grassi, rhetoric informs philosophy precisely
because rhetoric "is identified with the power of language and human
speech to generate a basis for thought."77 (book?) Philosophical truths
then arise out of a rhetorical *ingenium*, metaphor, which allows us to
*think*, to define our world and how we choose to define ourselves.
·
Folly
·
Metaphor
·
Ingenium
·
unhiddeness
·
Capacities:
o
rational knowledge
o
memory
o
will
·
Attitudes:
o
belief
o
hope
o
openness
Grassi notes:
a surprising parallel between Heidegger's writings on
the primacy of the function of poetry and analogous theses in Italian Humanism
Note 1
Grassi's ideas about rhetoric have not yet had
widespread impact on the field of speech communication; he is best know to
scholars interested in Vico and in Renaissance Humanism. Of the journals read
most frequently by communication scholars, Grassi has published only in
Philosophy and Rhetoric, and relatively few critical discussions of his work
exist. His four books that have been translated into English have increased his
familiarity in the discipline, but to date, no essays elaborating on Grassi's
ideas, or using them methodologically, have appeared in the field at large.
(CPR 164).
Published in 1996 by Janet Cross
California State University,
Northridge
Actually, if you have any site you would like to add, please send it/them along with
Questions, Comments, Quandaries, Cusswords to janet.cross@csun.edu
http://www.csun.edu/~hceng028/Thesis/Theory/grassi.html
___________________________________________________________
Academic year 2008/2009
©
a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Cristina Rusu
rucris@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València
Press