Rhetorical Question Essay

For those unfamiliar with the study of rhetoric, the term rhetoric only surfaces when discussing the “rhetorical question.” The general public usually understands the rhetorical question to be a question whose answer is obvious; the speaker poses the question to prove a point that does not necessarily warrant a response from his or her audience. It is a tool for convincing and persuading, pushing the audience to see how the speaker is correct. This simple rhetorical strategy pervades everyday American conversation and alludes to the general Western consensus of rhetoric at large. Western rhetoric privileges the binaries of right and wrong, correct and incorrect, winners and losers; truth is not relative. On the other side of the hemisphere

As it pertains specifically to thinking and understanding, it “enables one rationally to understand the reality experienced by self-fulfilled personalities, and thereby to realization of Truth” (2). This differs greatly from the Western, specifically the American. view of knowledge and understanding which argues that truth is not necessarily relative and unique to every individual. Furthermore, spirituality is not as heavily intertwined with logic. In most university settings, logic is often completely divorced from spirituality. Faith implies that there is evidence of things unseen, which in Western thought does not always hold up to sound arguments. That is not to say, however, that Indian rhetoric purports that anything and everything is true and logical. It does believe that there is only one truth or Ultimate Reality, “but there are six fundamental interpretations of that reality… together they form a graduated interpretation of the Ultimate Reality, so interrelated that the hypothesis and method of each is dependent upon one another… [which] lead to the same practical end, knowledge of the Absolute and Liberation of the Soul” (Bernard 5). Indian rhetoric ultimately does arrive at a truth just as Western rhetoric does, but differs in the way it arrives and the purpose of that arrival, which is the extinguishing of human suffering and freedom from its