On Belief (review)

Abstract

Socrates forced Gorgias to admit that rhetoric is a "producer of . . . belief," and thus assigned to the rhetorician, rather than the philosopher, the ubiquitous task of adumbrating the contours of belief. In the last two centuries, however, the relationship between rhetoric and belief has been called into question. Kant, for example, although he recognized the private and practical importance of belief, held that, owing to its subjective foundations, it does "not allow of being communicated . . . to others."1 Although Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca explicitly distance themselves from the Kantian disregard of belief by claiming that the subjective is precisely the "sphere of rhetoric," they nonetheless conclude that rhetoric "assumes a significance beyond mere subjective belief."2 Richard Rorty, for his part, would like to see belief completely privatized.3 It is important to note that such banishment of belief from the public sphere would simultaneously constitute the banishment of belief from the realm of rhetoric. Despite this trend, current events and new academic studies in religion and public life suggest that the present moment is an appropriate time to reconsider the rhetorical value of belief. Enter Slavoj Zizek. Although Zizek is a philosopher by trade and thus On Belief is not a product of anything called a "rhetorical tradition," rhetoricians will most certainly be provoked by the rhetorical possibilities and limitations of Zizek's discourse on belief.