Podcast appearances and mentions of scott stroud

Jim Iuorio joins Michael Farr for his monthly insights into the markets and talks about being uncomfortably right about the markets. Jim's view of the future is reasonably sanguine, but he's the first to say, crystal balls are pretty murky these days. Matt Leffingwell joins Michael for our look at DC, and Matt previews a bombshell New York Times article coming this weekend that could change the calculus in the GOP House. Finally for our special guest segment, Michael welcomes Keith Davis and Scott Stroud, Chief Economist and Senior Bond Manager respectively for Farr, Miller & Washington. Keith and Scott discuss the contradictory signals in the markets, and what to look for as the economy cools. Bringing you insight into Wall Street, Washington, and The World -- it's The FarrCast!

Advent 2020. Christmas Eve “Miraculous Births: Jesus” Pr. Scott Stroud. December 24, 2020 (Part 4 of 4)

Advent 2020. "Miraculous Births: John The Baptist" Pr. Scott Stroud. December 16, 2020 (Part 3 of 4)

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. “4 Reasons God’s Gift is Best” Pr. Scott Stroud. December 13, 2020

Advent 2020. “Miraculous Births: Samuel” Pr. Scott Stroud. December 9, 2020. (Part 2 of 4)

Advent 2020. "Miraculous Births: Samson" Pr. Scott Stroud. December 2, 2020

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. “Bondage Breaker” Pr. Scott Stroud. November 29, 2020

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "Our Prayer For Society" Pr. Scott Stroud. November 15, 2020

HORS-SÉRIE : Donald Trump ou Joe Biden ? Qui deviendra, dans la nuit de 3 au 4 novembre, le 46e président des Etats-Unis ? Actu'Vu n'a pas la réponse, mais on vous a préparé un épisode spécial pour tout savoir sur l'élection présidentielle. Au programme : le fonctionnement des élections, la présentation des candidats et de leur potentiel vice-président, le bilan de Donald Trump à la tête des Etats-Unis et qui le soutient encore aujourd'hui, le choix "Joe Biden" pour les démocrates, la stratégie médiatique des deux candidats et enfin un retour complet sur cette campagne inédite. Et parce que nous ne sommes pas des spécialistes du pays de l'oncle Sam, on a fait appel à des experts : Grégory Phillips, Benoît Lebot, Scott Stroud, Cédric Faiche et Charlotte Mattout. Tous nous ont aidés à comprendre ce qu'il se passe de l'autre côté de l'Atlantique.

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "The Sign of Jonah" Pr. Scott Stroud. November 1, 2020

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "Special Delivery" Pr. Scott Stroud. October 18, 2020.

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "Blasphemy!" Pr. Scott Stroud. October 4, 2020

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "Yet Shall He Live" Pr. Scott Stroud. September 27, 2020

Sunday From St. Ansgar's "Living Waters" Pr. Scott Stroud. September 13, 2020

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "Martyrdom In The End Times" Pr. Scott Stroud. August 30, 2020

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "The Unholy Trinity" Pr. Scott Stroud. August 23, 2020

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "The Day of The Lord" Pr. Scott Stroud. August 2, 2020

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "Consider the Sower" Pr. Scott Stroud. July 12, 2020

Join me for the latest Podcast with Pr. Scott Stroud of Salinas, California. Listen in as we talk about total life transformation during 4 years in prison. Scott has written a book called “Getting out and staying out.” You will love his open and genuine testimony of coming to Christ in prison. You can get the book and more info at scottkstroud.com.

Join me for the latest Podcast with Pr. Scott Stroud of Salinas, California. Listen in as we talk about total life transformation during 4 years in prison. Scott has written a book called “Getting out and staying out.” You will love his open and genuine testimony of coming to Christ in prison. You can get the book and more info at scottkstroud.com.

Join me for the latest Podcast with Pr. Scott Stroud of Salinas, California. Listen in as we talk about total life transformation during 4 years in prison. Scott has written a book called “Getting out and staying out.” You will love his open and genuine testimony of coming to Christ in prison. You can get the book and more info at scottkstroud.com.

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "Who Is My Neighbor" Pr. Scott Stroud. June 21, 2020

Today I'm talking with Scott Stroud about how we can use our imagination to unlock our creativity, find meaning and basically feel like we can take on the world. Scott works with various types of individuals and teams from artists to software developers, managers to medical professionals, and every day normal people navigate their own language and metaphors to get clear about what they want exactly and how to get it. He's also volunteered with the long-term unemployed at a local meal center to help them find purpose using the same techniques. The venture was a success and culminated in some of the attendees leading their own groups at the center. Resources mentioned Scott's website Pre-order Scott's book Metaphors We Live By Using Clean Language POWERED BY PATREON This podcast is made possible only by means of my generous supporters on Patreon. Thank you! Supporting the Creative Introvert podcast also gets you lots of goodies, from access to the League of Creative Introverts online community, to online 1-1 coaching, with yours truly. Hitting milestones also funds future projects, and ideas guided by you, my supporters. BECOME A SUPPORTER If you leave a rating and review on iTunes (here's how to do that) I will be as happy as a kitten playing with a laser beam (or sob into my pillow, depending on what you write.) Subscribe to the Podcast

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. Resurrection Sunday. "What If?" Pr. Scott Stroud. April 12, 2020

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "Pray" Pr. Scott Stroud. March 22, 2020

Sunday From St. Ansar's. "Good News, Bad News" Pr. Scott Stroud. March 15, 2020

Learn a bit about how a CRM can help your business from a man with over twenty years experience developing them. 

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "Remember the Prisoner" Pr. Scott Stroud. March 1, 2020 Find His Book Here!

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "Don't Stumble on the Cross" Pr. Scott Stroud. February 16, 2020

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "When Your Dream Dies" Pr. Scott Stroud. February 2, 2020

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "An Unlikely Convert" Pr. Scott Stroud. January 19, 2020

Advent Series 2019. "Announced by Angels: Shepherds" Pr. Scott Stroud. December 25, 2019

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "When Immanuel Comes" Pr. Scott Stroud. December 22, 2019

Advent Series 2019. "Announced By Angels: Mary" Pr. Scott Stroud. December 11, 2019

Advent Series 2019. "Announced by Angels: Joseph" Pr. Scott Stroud. December 18, 2019.

Most ex-offenders are not thrilled about the time they spent in prison. They see it as lost time. Why is it that Christian inmates see their time differently?

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "Pray For The Sinner" Pr. Scott Stroud. December 8, 2019

Advent 2019. "Announced by Angels: Doctrine of Angels" Part 1 of 4. Pr. Scott Stroud. December 4, 2019

NATO is 70. Does the World Still Need It? (0:31)Guest: Greg Jackson, Assistant Professor of Integrated Studies & Assistant Director of National Security Studies, host of the podcast “History That Doesn't Suck”World leaders are in London marking the 70th anniversary of NATO. It's not been a complete lovefest. There's been some sniping and backbiting. President Trump called Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “two-faced” and said French President Emmanuel Macron's earlier comments about NATO experiencing “brain death” were “nasty.” President Trump has been publicly critical of NATO, too, but seems to be warming to it. What exactly is there to celebrate as NATO turns 70? Is it Ethical to Cast Deceased Actors by Using CGI? (18:33)Guest:  Scott Stroud, PhD, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at University of Texas at Austin and the founding Director of the Media Ethics InitiativeJames Dean is slated to co-star in a movie about the Vietnam War coming out next year. Except that James Dean has been dead since 1955, shortly after starring in “Rebel Without a Cause”. The studio behind this new movie has acquired the rights to use James Dean's likeness and they plan to use a combination of real footage, CGI and voice actors to bring him to life in this new role. It's not totally unheard of. Both Star Wars and the Fast and Furious franchise have done it. But it raises all sorts of ethical questions. The Real Cost of Cheap Clothes (35:07)Guest: Shawn Bhimani, PhD, Visiting Assistant Professor at Northeastern University, Supply Chain Management ExpertWhen you're shopping for clothes on Amazon or Walmart's online marketplace –or even in a store like TJ Maxx or Ross-you may end up buying something that was made in a Bangladesh factory with collapsing walls, blocked exits and doors that lock from the outside to keep workers in until their shift ends. Conditions like that led to a disastrous factory collapse in Bangladesh in 2013 that killed more than 1,000 people. After that, some of America's biggest clothing retailers –including Walmart and Target –voluntarily joined a coalition to police the safety of factories that make their products. But Amazon didn't join. A Wall Street Journal investigation found dozens of items for sale on Amazon that were made in dangerous Bangladeshi factories. Is there anything we can do as shoppers to know where our clothes were made? The Apple Seed (51:10)Guest: Sam Payne, The Apple Seed, BYUradioSam Payne from The Apple Seed shares a story about Christmas. Landmark Cases That Changed Bilingual and Special Education in America (1:02:24)Guest: Marty Glick, litigator, Arnold & Porter, Co-Author, “The Soledad Children: The Fight to End Discriminatory IQ Tests”A child's race and income level are strong indicators of the quality of education that child will get in a US public school. Inequality often arises in education today because of how segregated our communities have become –with poor and minority students clustered in schools with fewer resources. In the 1950s, 60s and 70s, the reason poor and minority students got sub-par education was because of overt racism. This was the era of court-ordered desegregation and countless lawsuits brought by civil rights lawyers on behalf of black and brown students. Marty Glick was one of those attorneys. While working for California Rural Legal Assistance in the late 1960s he represented the children of Mexican farmworkers in a landmark case against the California State Board of Education that shaped the future of bilingual and special education in America. Diss on Millennial Coworkers All You Want, but Don't “Okay Boomer” a Boomer (1:26:07)Guest: Elizabeth Tippett, Associate Professor, School of Law, University of OregonVideos set to this song are all over TikTok right now. “OK Boomer” is the putdown of choice for youngsters dismissing the outdated views of someone older. Doesn't even have to be a Baby Boomer. Anyone who's not cool or “woke” could get Okay Boomer'ed. But watch out, because if you say it to a Baby Boomer at work –even in jest –you could end up with an age discrimination charge on your hands. Feel free to diss on Millennials and Gen-Z'ers all you want, though, cause they're not protected by the age discrimination laws. How's that fair?

Greg Jackson, Utah Valley University, and host of the podcast “History That Doesn’t Suck” on NATO. Scott Stroud, University of Texas, on the ethics of using CGI to cast deceased actors. Shawn Bhimani from Northeastern University on the real cost of cheap clothes. Sam Payne of the Apple Seed shares a story. Author Marty Glick on his book “The Soledad Children: The Fight to End Discriminatory IQ Tests.” Elizabeth Tippett from the University of Oregon on "Okay Boomer" diss.

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "Fear of Punishment" Pr. Scott Stroud. November 17, 2019

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "Tips for God's Kids" Pr. Scott Stroud. November 3, 2019

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "AntiChrist (Part 2 of 2)" Pr. Scott Stroud. October 13, 2019

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "AntiChrist" Part 1 of 2. Pr. Scott Stroud. October 6, 2019

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "John 3:16 (Friend Day)" Pr. Scott Stroud. September 22, 2019

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "We Have Found The One" Pr. Scott Stroud. September 15, 2019

Sunday from St. Ansgar's. "In Defense of Marriage" Pr. Scott Stroud. August 25, 2019

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "The Hate Test" Pr. Scott Stroud. August 11, 2019

Sunday From St. Ansgar's. "Shine Brighter" Pr. Scott Stroud. August 4, 2019

Scott Stroud is a founding partner of Managing Your Business with 7 Key Numbers (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0867187352/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0867187352&linkCode=as2&tag=buildingoptim-20&linkId=3ba57e70b60dd22d79053b92a36c37a9) , which is among the top selling home building books. Show Notes: [1:40] – The 7 key numbers every builder should review. [4:50] – The frequency you should be reviewing your numbers. [6:20] – Scott’s cash flow dashboard. [7:20] – The most difficult metrics to control and what to do about it. [9:00] – Why you should first establish a profit goal and then put in the processes to support it. [10:10] – Managing change orders. [11:00] – Finding the optimal pricing for your homes. [12:00] – Establishing the value of our offering. [13:40] – Why the best value propositions have nothing to do with quality. [15:10] – On knowing your customer’s value system. [15:35] – How to craft an amazing story to tell your clients. [18:00] – Why you should be using video in your marketing. [19:50] – How to reduce your costs without sacrificing quality [22:35] – Three drivers for your business you should be watching. [24:10] – The importance of speed and efficiency. [25:00] – Thoughts on leverage. [29:30] – On customer deposits. [32:00] – Valuing your time. Selected Links: www.cashflowengineering.com (http://www.cashflowengineering.com) www.storybrand.com (http://www.storybrand.com)

This tenth episode of the Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast features an interview with Dr. Scott Stroud, on media ethics. Dr. Stroud is the leading director of the Media Ethics Initiative at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of John Dewey and the Artful Life (2011) and Kant and the Promise of Rhetoric (2014), among many other works. Listen for our “You Tell Me!” questions and for some jokes in one of our concluding segments, called “Philosophunnies.” Reach out to us on Facebook @PhilosophyBakesBread and on Twitter @PhilosophyBB; email us at philosophybakesbread@gmail.com; or call and record a voicemail that we play on the show, at 859.257.1849. Philosophy Bakes Bread is a production of the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA). Check us out online at PhilosophyBakesBread.com and check out SOPHIA at PhilosophersInAmerica.com.

This week on the show we talk with Scott Stroud! Forget about complex formulas and never-ending financial analysis - you can run a multi-million dollar service business if you just know 7 key numbers. Want to know what they are? Then you're in the right place!  All that and MUCH more, coming up on this episode of GIT. Show Notes [2:12] It's actually episode #50 [14:17] Groundhog Hunting with Jerry: Somebody's Gotta Do It! [24:29] Ellen Rohr 002 | 016 | 036 [25:41] CVC Coaching [26:08] Scott Stroud intro [54:52] Cash Flow Engineering [55:11] Quote [57:09] GIT Nation Facebook Group [57:44] Suggestions? Email us at guys@guysintrucks.com [57:97] Spark Marketer [58:09] Let's get social! Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Kant podcast   Welcome to Mere Rhetoric, the podcast for beginners and insiders about the ideas, people and movements who have defined rhetorical history. Today is a re-record from when we were doing our "villians of rhetoric" series, but since we just recently did an episode where I apologized for being too hard on Kant, here's the original castigation. Enjoy!     Today we continue our podcast series on villians of rhetoric with Kant. As in Immanual Kant, and not ‘I can’t stnd him” I’ve actually been to Kant’s hometown, Kohnisberg, which is now Kaliningrad Russia. And when I say Kant’s hometown, I mean the town where he was born, studied and died. In his whole life he never even traveled more than 10 miles fromKonigsberg. He might not have been much of a traveler, but he had a spectacular philosophy career. He was apopular teacher and had success in fields of physics and natural science, but he didn’t really get into philosophy, hard core philosophy, until he was middle aged. And the emphasis is on “hard.” His critique of pure reason was 800 pages and dense dense philosophy, even for German philosophers. It wasn’t exactly flying off the shelves. But Kan revised it in a 2nd edition and eventually his philosophical work became popular. You know, for German philosophy. His ideas about Enlightenment were controversial, and he had to skirt censorship and even the King’s criticism. His disciples battled his detractors and Kant became the most important German philosopher since Christian Wolff and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. His ideas are quintessentially Enlightenment: agnostic, rationalistic, and committed to individual inquiry of philosophy instead of relying on tradition, including the classical tradition. Kant suggests that there is a thing-in-itself that exists out the in world, but that we are only able to encounter it through our senses and experiences.   Also, he didn’t like rhetoric.   And, brother won’t he let you know it. Rhetoric, he says “merits no respect whatever” because of several complaints: first, that rhetoric is just style. Kant says in the crituqe of judgment athat rhetoric is only “the art of transacting a serious business of the understanding as if it were a free play of the imagination (V 321), In this he makes the same complaint against rhetoric that some of our other villains—Ramus and Montaigne—have made: rhetoric is nothing more than style. By removing invention from the canons of rhetoric and focusing only on style, Kant can focus more on his idea of truth being something just out there rather than something constructed socially. As scholar Robert J Dostal says, “With Kant rhetoric is reduced to a matter of style—dispensable in serious philosophical matters. The requirement [of rhetoric] that one know men’s souls is eliminated in view that it is sufficient merely to speak the truth” (235).   Kant’s other complaint, like Agrippa, Jewel, Patrizi and Hobbes is that rhetoric is immortal. When Kant reads the classical rhetoricians he feels an “unpleasant sense of disapporival” because he finds rhetoric “an insidious art that knows how, in matters of moment, to move men like machines to a judgement that must lose all its weight with them in calm reflection” (V 327). In other words, if people would just sit down and think, really think like a philosopher, they’d come to the right conclusion, but these nasty rhetors mislead them with their tricky words. In this sense he defines rhetoric like this “Rhetoric, so far as this is taken to mean the act of persuasive, ie the act of misleading by means of a beautiful illusion ” Kant wasn’t the only Enlightenment philopher to criticize rhetoric. Descrates points out that you don’t need to study rhetoric to be a good speaker because “those who reason most cogently, and work over their thoughts to make them clear and intelligible are always the most persauve even if they … have never studied rhetoric.” Like Kant, Descartes believes that if you just speak the truth you don’t need rhetoric. Kant wan’t alone in thinking that rhetoric was dangerously misleading, either. John Lock wrote that “all the art of rhetoric […] are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions and thereby mislead the judgment and so indeed are perfect cheat” So Kant had good company in disliking rhetoric. But can Kant be reconciled to a sympathetic view of rhetoric?   Scott Stroud thinks so. Stroud, who works here at the University of Texas (hook ‘em horns) is the author of a book coming out in October called Kant and the Promise of Rhetoric that aims to rehabilitate Kant to rhetoric. He claims that Kant didn’t really have the same definition of rhetoric which we have—he too, was influenced by villains of rhetoric like Plato and Ramus, and when he says he hates rhetoric, he means he hates something different. Since the book hasn’t come out yet and my Delorian is out of gas, I can’t tell you all of the arguments that Stroud will make in Kant and the promise of rhetoric, but I can tell you what I’ve gleaned from his earlier articles. One of them goes in the back door of rhetoric but looking at education. In 2011, Stroud’s article “Kant on education and the rhetorical force of the example” approaches a possible Kantian rhetoric through Kant’s ideas on education.   Kant says he hates rhetoric, but he loves education and was looking for a way to teach without coersing. So remember how Kant called rhetoric a “beautiful illusion”? Stroud argues that what Kant is objecting to is what Kant else where calls the “aim of win[ning] minds over to the advantage of the speaker before they can judge and to rob them of their freedom” (5:327). In this senese, Stroud says that Kant isn’t anti-rhetoric, but anti-bad rhetoric. The word rhetoric had been so pejorativized by Kant’s time that it came to be synonymous with manipulation and in opposition to individual consideration. So earlier, when we said that Kant was all about the freedom to think without the contraints of tradition? This is that same concern. As Stroud puts it, “What Kant is objecting to is the fact that such rhetorical deception moves people without their choosing the maxims of action, or without an accurate knowledge of what principle they are acting.”   Using illustriative examples, though, can enable the student (or the audience member) to think for themselves. Again, from Stroud, “Kant did not fear the skillful orator. He feared the skillful and non-moralized orator. Examples employed by a cultivated rhetor (a teacher, a preacher, etc.) are engaging because they partake in the lively form of narrative and they readily make themselves available for moral judgment.” Through the educational example, Stroud rehabilitates Kantian opposition to rhetoric. “The way examples operate in Kant's educative rhetoric is by evoking the experience of transitioning from the prudential stage to the moral stage of development in the subject's interaction with the example at hand.” Whether young students or adult audience members, these subjects can be taught without being coersed.   So maybe Kant isn’t truly a villain of rhetoric, but a victim of other villains who made rhetoric such a dirty word that he couldn’t imagine a rhetoric that could be moral and individually affirming. A rhetoric that could be called a Kantian rhetoric.  

Dewey aesthetic Today on Mere Rhetoric, we talk about John Dewey. John Dewey was a big ol’ deal, even back in his day. Just after his death in 1952, Hilda Neaby wrote”Dewey has been to our age what Aristotle was to the later Middle Ages, not just a philosopher, but the philosopher.” And what does a person have to do to be compared to Aristotle? I mean to be compared in a serious way to Aristotle, because I’m like Aristotle because, you know, I enjoy olive oil on occasions, not because I’m the philosopher. I think one thing Neaby means is that Dewey was involved in everything. Just like how Aristotle had huge impact in politics, theology, science and rhetoric, John Dewey seemed to have a finger in every pie. By the time he died at age 92, he had written significantly on education, politics, art, ethics and sociology. But it’s not enough to be a big freakin’ deal a hundred years ago, but Dewey is a big deal in rhetoric today. It’s rare to search too many issues back in Rhetoric Review, Rhetoric Society Quarterly or Rhetoric  and Public Affairs without hitting on an article either directly about or draws on Dewey, and books about Dewey are popping up all over the map. John Dewey is hot real estate.   So because John Dewey is such an important thinker for rhetoricians today, we have to take more time than today to talk about him. That’s right-- a Mere Rhetoric two-parter. A to-be-continued. A cliffhanger. If that cliff is carefully divided, I guess and that division is this: today we’ll talk about John Dewey’s contribution to aesthetics, his book Art as Experience  and responses to that book from contemporary rhetoricans. Next week we’ll talk more about his politics, the dream of his pragmatism, what he means by Individualism Old and New  and the famous Dewey-Lippmann debate. So that’s what we’ll be doing the next two weeks. So let’s get started on the first part of this Dewey-twoey.   Like many great thinkers, Dewey started his career by realizing that what he thought he wanted to do, he  really, really didn’t. In Dewey’s case it was education. It’s ironic that Dewey became one of the 20th century’s most important voices in education because he did not teach secondary or primary school for longer than a couple of years each. Good thing he had a back-up plan as a major philosopher. He joined the ground floor of the University of Chicago and became one of the defining voices of the University of Chicago style of thinking, although he eventually left, somewhat acrimoniously, and taught at Columbia for the rest of his career. Somewhere along the way, though, he became president of the American philosophical association and published Art as Experience.   The title kind of gives away Dewey’s claim--he situates art in the experience which you have with art. As he says “the actual work of art is what the product does with and in experience” (1). But he also means the opposite, that experience can be art. Instead of thinking of art as something that happens in rarified situations behind glass and velvet ropes, Dewey opens up “art” to mean popular culture, experiences with nature and even just a way of living.   Being in the moment is a big part of this artful living. If you’re experiencing or rather, to use the particular philosophical parlance Dewey insists on “having an experience” then you are totally being in the moment: “only when the past ceases to trouble and anticipations of the future are not perturning is a being wholly united with his environment and therefore fully alive. Art celebrates with peculiar intensity the moments in which the past reenforces the present and in which the future is a quickening of what is now is” (17). In such a view, any time we live the moment artfully, in full presence of being, we’re having an artful experience. In having an experience, you have some sort of awareness and some kind of form.   As Dewey says, “art is thus prefigured in the very processes of life” (25).   This idea may sound radical. How can sitting in a crowded bus be art the way that the Mona Lisa is art? But Dewey is insistent. He sighs, “the hostility to association of fine art with normal processes of living is a pathetic, even a tragic, commentary on life as it is ordinarily lived” (27-28).   That’s not to say that there can’t be objects of art that concentrate the sensation of having an experience. But it’s the whole experience. For example, “Reflections on Tintern Abbey” isn’t really about Tintern Abbey any more than it’s about Wordworth and evenings and homecomings and 1798 and that sycamore and all of it. It expresses a complete experience of Wordsworth. And that expression is always changing as times change.“the very meaning,” Dewey writes “of an important new movement in any art is that it expresses something new in human experience” (316). Meanwhile the art that remains after the moment passes and the movement becomes cliche. “Art is the great force in effecting [...] consolidation. The individuals who have minds pass away one by one. The works in which meanings have received objective expression endure. [...] every art in some manner is a medium of this transmission while its products are no inconsiderable part of the saturating matter” (340)   And the value of art is moral. First off, Dewey says that“The moral function of art itself is to remove prejudice, do away with the scales that keep the eye from seeing, tear away the veils due to wont and custom, perfect the power to perceive. The critic’s office is to further this work, performed by the object of art” (338).   Pretty cool stuff, huh? But wait, there’s more. The process of having an experience, that complete being, has its own moral value, or so argues Scott Stroud in John Dewy and the Artful Life: Pragmatism, aesthetics and morality. There he claims “I want to examine how art can be seen as a way of moral cultivation” (3) because“At various places, Dewey’s work provides us with tantalizing clues to his real project--the task of making more of life aesthetic or artful” (5) Put in other words: “art can show individuals how certain value schemes feel, how behaviors affect people, etc.--in other words, art can force the reflective instatement (creation) of moral values” (9)   Stroud connects the pragmatists like Dewey with mysticism in Eastern philosophy and medieval monastic Christianity. Remember how Dewey is all about having an experience, really being in the moment? So Stroud says, “The way to substantially improve our experience is not by merely waiting for the material setup of the world to change, but instead lies in the intelligent altering of our deep-seated bahits (orientations) toward activity and toward other individuals” (11). “The important point,” writes Stroud, “is that attentiveness to the present is a vital way to cultivate the self toward the goal of progressive adjustment and it is also a vital means in the present to do so” (69)   For Stroud, as for Dewey“the art object [...] imbued with meaning partially by the actions of the artist, but also because of the crucial contributions of meaning that a common cultural background contributes to the activity of producing and receiving art objects” (97)--the way that the artistic object is received popularly and by critics. And for that aim “criticism does more than merely tell one what an important work of art is or what impression was had; instead, it gives one a possible orientation that is helpful in ordering and improving one’s past and future experiences” (122). And in that, criticism, or even appreciation, is also a moral act. Stroud’s argument has immediate application of the artful life. He ponders “How can we render everyday communication, such as that experiences in mundane conversations with friends, cashiers, and so on, as aesthetic?” (170). To answer this, he draws on dewey to suggest that we avoid focusing on a remote goal, cultivate habits of attending to the demands of the present communication situation and fight against the idea of reified, separate self (186-7). Next week we’ll continue our Dewey Twoey by talking about Dewey’s political and educational contributes and Individualism Old and New and modern responses to it. Between then and now, I hope you have the chance to enjoy some great art, even if that great art is popular art, or even just this moment you’re in ...right ...now.

Sometimes I make a podcast and I think, “Golly I hope I did justice by that idea, person and movement that shaped rhetorical history.” Sometimes I make a podcast on the work of someone living, like Scott Stroud’s book about John Dewey, and sometimes I make a podcast on someone dead, like Kant. If I misrepresent a dead person, who will stop me? A living one. today, on Mere rhetoric, not exactly a retraction, but a revision of a previous episode on Immanual Kant, the philosopher who has been long-identified, including by me, as diametrically opposed to the field of rhetoric. Scott Stroud’s Kant and the Promise of Rhetoric, today on Mere Rhetoric.   Intro music   Welcome to Mere Rhetoric, a podcast for beginners and insiders about the ideas, people and movements who shaped rhetorical history. I’m Mary Hedengren, specially thanks to the Humanities Media Project at the University of Texas for their support in making these new episodes both possible and awesome. Also thanks to Jacob in the booth, and Scott Stroud, also of the University of Texas. I emailed Dr. Stroud when I talked about his book in the Dewey episodes, and he told me he was working on a book on Kant that may change my opinion on him. Alright, I thought, let’s hear it.   And I did. Stroud wrote a few articles about Kant’s views of education which suggested that there may be a rhetoric of Kant after all, and they piqued my interest to the point when I was ready to jump on this book when it released.   Essentially Stroud argues that Kant didn’t hate rhetoric as much as we think so, which is pretty high because Kant says things like, “Man, I hate rhetoric.” Stroud even points out that Kant turned down a position as professor of poetry even though he wanted “academic advancement and funds” (4), just because he seemed to dislike linguistic fla-dee-la. But it’s possible that some of Kant’s antipathy towards rhetoric is just antipathy towards a certain kind of rhetoric.   Kant’s frienemy, Christian Garves, was a loud-and-proud Ciceronian, which criticized Kant openly and behind anonymity. “Kant rejected this way of doing philosophy,” Stroud writes “and in doing so, rejected the notion of rhetoric that appeared connected to it in practice” (23). He hated the idea of all the self-interest inherent in Garves’ understanding of rhetoric, felt like it was categorically opposed to the categorical imperative: that any action you undertake could be a universal law. Remember when your mom would catch you littering or picking the neighbors’ flowers and ask, “What if everyone did that? What would happen then?” That’s essentially the mom version of the categorial imperative.   But rhetoric isn’t about universals. It’s not about telling people to do things that are applicable to everyone in every situation--it’s hopelessly conditional. Garston in Saving Persausion, another book we’ve talked about on the podcast, banishes Kant from the world of rhetoric because he loved universals so much. Stroud responds to GArston’s complaints. “Rhetorical message are primarily not universal, since few things relevant to pressing decisions in the present are of such general scope,” he admits “Yet Kant’s philosophy seems to demand that practices be universalizable.” (187) The detachment usually described as a condition of scholarly logic is actually “an orientational or dispositional feature as as such is applicable to all forms of communicative activity” (189)  There are things that are universalizable in how we do rhetoric, even if each instance of rhetoric may be specific to its moment of kairos. As Stroud says, “Kant did not insist that a reason be a reason for every potential listener; he does seem to insist, however, that it be a reason for everyone in a comparable situation” (190).   Okay, that’s all well and good, but what about the fact that Kant pretty much straight out says, “Do you know what I hate? rhetoric. I really hate that field. Ugh.”? Well, first off, that’s paraphrase, but secondly, it’s also translation. There are multiple words that could be translated as rhetoric. Even in English, we have rhetoric and eloquence and persausion and all sorts of words that fan out like a Vann diagram with overlapping meanings. Some of the terms are manipulative, but not all. “clearly, the larger genus of ‘skilled speaking’ or elequence is re (42)levent to Kant’s moral project.” stroud says, but “If one honors the complexity of the phenomena of human communication and the range of terms being used by Kant, one can conceptualize rhetoric simply as the persuasive use of language in community with others “ (43). And that’s something that Kant can get behind Okay, so if we accept that Kant doesn’t have a deep abiding hatred for all things communication, what would a Kantian rhetoric look like? Building fromKant’s philosophy, what if he had taken that poetry job? what would he have said to the writers in his class? That’s the second task that Stroud takes, after his resuscitation of Kant into the field of rhetoric. Or as he himself puts it: “what sense of such rhetorical action are enjoined by Kant’s complex thought on morality, religion, politics, aesthetics, and education? Taking ‘rhetoric’ not as a simple term but as a complex concept, what uses or forms of rhetorical activity fit into Kant’s mature thought, especially the important topic of moral and the formation of the ideal sort of human community?” (7).   There are two venues where Kant’s ideal human community really comes out: education and religion. Both are troublesome to the fundamental question of rhetoric for Kant: how can you honor someone’s autonomy and their freedom and still try to change them? Kant hated manipulation, but you wouldn’t necessarily say that fourth-graders and manipulated into learning long division or state capitals, and you don’t even need to say that they’re manipulated in learning how to share, cooperate and treat others with respect.   Stroud points out that “Kant is notably hostile to rhetoric, but only one version of it--that of persuasive speech used with an orientation toward selfish and manipulative use of one’s social skill. Avoiding such an orientation is the primary aim of education” (106). Part of Kant’s ideal community is that people learn to do the right thing for the right reason. Maybe they can be constrained in the kingdom of right, but in the ideal kingdom of ends, people all do the right thing collectively because they are committed to it individually. Learning how to commit is the object of education.   The most moral way to teach people--especially young people--how to develop the internal discipline to choose the right thing instead of the selfish thing is to present them with lots of good examples. Examples don’t threaten or bully, but present themselves to autonomous agents who can decide for themselves how to interpret the actions and consequences. But since the internal state is key for Kantian ethics, the internal state of the example has to be part of the story. Using examples, especially as a way to teach, uses hypothetical about internal motives for making the choice. “They are, in an important sense, unreal and fictional” (116), even when actual and historical. Take the story of Washington at Valley Forge. If you tell kids that Washington persisted because he believed in the promise of our country, you will forge patriots. If you tell them that he endured because he thought he would wind up on people’s currency you create mercenaries. So in this sense, examples are always fictions of the people who tell them.   Let’s lay aside education and stories for a moment and turn to religion. Religion, too, involves a lot of stories and examples, but it also lets people participate in self-denying actions like prayer, especially traditional, public, set prayers.  When you’re reciting along with other people, you can’t express your inter state as much as alter it to match up with everyone else and the traditional prayer. Praying “forgive us our debts as we forgive our tresspassers” reminds you to be forgiving, even if your inclination is otherwise. Devotees who all gather together, in person or world wide, to say “as we forgive our trespassers” form an “invisible church”: a group of people who all have accepted the same internal conditions together. As Stroud explains it: “the invisible church is the ideal ethical community that we ought to aspire to form--a community that encompasses all agents who are members of it by virtue of their willing of the moral law over the incentives of inclination” (144). As opposed to a nation or a family, these community members opted in because of something they all agreed to believe internally together.   finally Stroud turns to the hardest sell: Kant as political rhetorician. He describes how rhetorical critics (those listening to rhetoric) and critical rhetors (those producing rhetoric) can do so most ethically. there are a lot of lists here, so get out your pens and paper.   So manipulative rhetoric has three characteristics: For Kant, manipulative rhetoric can be seen to have 3 characteristics 1-inequality of knowledge, between speaker and audience 2- this sort of rhetoric exerts a causal force on its listeners. “How rhetoric can treat humans as inherently valuable rational beings, or as machines with causality” (44), 3- idiosyncrasy of the goals of this rhetoric--private own goals. (44)   Non manipulative rhetorics have their own list of four characterstics 1- domain-specific concepts and knowledge--somthing to talk about 2- uses what Kant calls “lively presentations” especially through examples (44-5) 3- nonmanipulative rhetoic doesn’t violate respectability in language and “respect for the various parties in the interaction” (45) 4- public goals or transitive across agents (45)   Above all, you are to treat your audience as though it were comprised of autonomous individuals, not elements of the environment that can be manipulated. The best critical rhetors, “ should see the process of public testing as a way to optimize beliefs,” says Stroud, “including their own views. This quest implicates them in using second-personal reasons in an effort to con (214) vince others that the grounds for their views are sufficient subjectively and objectively. Seeing one’s audience as mere causal objects, however, inclines one to find the right utterances to say to move them as causal objects” (215) “Seeing people as part of the natural world is a vital step in using or manipulating them as a mere means, since this conceptualization of a person as an object with predictable causal interaction with other natural objects is a vital starting point to intelligently using them for some contingent purpose” (218).   And when you’re taking in the rhetoric, you similarly must abide by a set of standards:   Rules of criticism always treat the rhetor being studied or listened to as an equal always consider the utterance or object of study as at least a bearer of truth claims and second-person reasons. Do not make casual explanations exclusionary of attributions of dignity to a rhetor Do not believe that your criticism of such utterances is certain or exclusive of alternative readings (229) All of this is pretty life-affirming, and I have to admit that I was moved by Stroud’s (and Kant’s) description of the ideal world of rhetoric, just as I was at the end of his text on Dewey. In fact, I’m going to let Stroud have the last word because he puts the ideal in such a clear way.   “thus, Kant answers the ‘Q question’ [need the rhetor be moral] with a nuance reply--a moral agent may not necessarily be eloquent, but the most complete agent is perfected in pragmatic and moral ways. The complete agent is both a morally good person and person who possess the capacity to speak well” (234). outro

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