Shame by Shelby Steele FTP: Rhetoric - Simplifying Heady Ideas

Rhetoric eludes most readers and writers. It’s a shame. For readers, rhetoric can unlock an argument for us. And if done poorly, we see an insecurity on behalf of the author. Or in the case of fiction or satire, poorly done rhetoric stated by a character gives us a window into that character. For writers, rhetoric, when deployed correctly, injects horsepower and precision handling into our writing. And this goes for all writers. Yes, even for you copywriters, rhetorical devices are a great tool.

As I’ve gushed before, Shelby Steele is a stylist in the vein of a masterful fencer. He’s beautiful, graceful, simple, yet lethal. On page 127, he uses a rhetorical device to summarize a philosophical point that would take many writers, even great ones, a few passages to get to a clear definition.

What is The Good? Well, The Good that I am speaking of is not that timeless and hard-earned Good that our great religions and great secular documents (like the US Constitution) try to shepherd us toward. The Ten Commandments and the Bill of Rights spell out disciplines (moral and political) that, among other things, align us with The Good when we follow them ardently. This Good is earned the hard way by adhering to that long litany of classic human virtues — selflessness, courage, humility, sacrifice, fidelity, and so on.

Steele deploys, I believe, a version of Isocolon.