Davis Post 2 (Week 3)

I found the distinction between rhetorical virtue and traditional moral virtue, as illustrated in chapter six of Thank You for Arguing, to be one of the more interesting and significant facets of Heinrichs' rhetorical strategies that we've read thus far. His definitions of rhetoric as "an Agnostic art," and rhetorical virtue as necessitating only "the appearance of virtue" strongly reinforce an overarching theme suggesting that a speaker's words/motives should always be questioned and never taken at face value, an ideal that could well be thought of as a cornerstone of rhetorical analysis in general. When taking a retrospective look at chapter 2 of Eating Animals, Safran Foer is clearly making an attempt to remain rhetorically "Agnostic" through a detailed account portraying his initial vehement dislike of animals (specifically dogs), and his gradual transformation into someone for whom personification of animals becomes an inexorable force; the "Agnostic" becomes the "Gnostic."