Abstract

John Henry Newman, though well-known as a stylist, has only recently been studied as a rhetorical thinker. Philosophical and theological qualities in his works have led many scholars to overlook the fundamentally rhetorical nature of his reasoning. An Aristotelian/Thomist understanding of rhetoric and its truth-finding, truth-telling capacity informs this study. This understanding allows Newman's thought its full "rhetorical-epistemological" force without appropriating Newman to any particular philosophical school. ;Newman's rhetorical predispositions are seen first in his biography. His religious sense of mission in a fallen world, coupled with a profound insight into the workings of others' minds contributed to a uniquely rhetorical approach to philosophical and religious liberalism. Likewise, his personalism--a predisposition toward the orality of discourse and to addressing "the whole man" with regard to any issue--habituates Newman to the use of rhetorical reasonings even upon normally philosophical subjects. ;Newman's personalistic discourse and rhetorical mode of knowing had historical antecedents in the patristic and middle ages. This is seen in the works of Augustine, Gregory the Great, Aquinas, and others. The mechanistic thought encouraged by Agricola and Ramus, then codified by Descartes, Locke, and the scientific revolution resulted in both skepticism and the denial of any access to truth through probable, contingent reasonings. ;In reaction to skepticism and the narrowing of man's access to truth, Newman defended man's ability to know through probable, contingent matters and "common sense". While Newman's Philosophical Notebook reveals a deep inability to treat questions philosophically, his Grammar of Assent explores and defends rhetorical reasoning. Even probable matters can lead to the apprehension of truths. An analysis of the Grammar reveals that Newman is neither a skeptic, as Harold Weatherby asserts, nor an epistemic rhetorician along the contemporary, solipsistic lines that Walter Jost's study delineates. Newman is a realist. Because he is no philosopher, his is not a metaphysical realism, but a rhetorical realism