(RET) Kairos Revisited. An Interview With James Kinneavy (R. Thompson 2000)

Kairos Revisited: An Interview with James Kinneavy Author(s): Roger Thompson Reviewed work(s): Source: Rhetoric Review, Vol.
19, No. 1/2 (Autumn, 2000), pp. 73-88 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/466055 . Accessed: 13/11/2012 08:33
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ROGER THOMPSON Virginia Military Institute
Kairos Revisited: An Interview with James Kinneavy

"So you say, tell me where kairos is important,and I say to you, tell me whereit's not important." In the spring of 1998, RichardLeo Enos, as chair of the LorraineSherley lecture series, invited James Kinneavy and Linda Ferreira-Buckleyto speak to the faculty and students at Texas ChristianUniversity. As a graduate student working on a dissertation involving kairos and American literature,I saw in Professor Kinneavy's arrival a significant opportunity to clarify some of the ideas I had been considering. In particular,I had read Kinneavy's article on kairos as a "Neglected Concept"and saw in his ideas a great potential for the integration of literary and rhetorical studies. Nonetheless, I felt Professor Kinneavy had failed to address fully the transcendentalaspect of kairos (best articulated Paul Tillich) that, I felt, was centralto the type of interdisciplinary by work I was interestedin pursuing.When I approachedKinneavyat TCU, then, I was, truthbe told, on a naive mission to right a wrong I felt he had committed. Needless to say, I was quickly disabused of my perception. Professor Kinneavy and I began a conversation on the complexities of kairos, and he carefully illustratedthe significance of the term to both rhetoric and literature. Most importantlyKinneavy asserted that kairos was transcendent in that it worked across culture lines and that it offered a subtle way of addressing the situationsin which rhetoricis born. Indeed, kairos, he argued,actuallyexplained how rhetoric was born. He felt the term expressed how certain cultural movementsand conditions united with special moments to create ripe times for the rhetoricalact. In this way kairos was a cornerstonefor rhetoric. When Professor Kinneavy left TCU, he and I began a dialogue through email and phone that culminatedin the interview printed here for the first time. The interviewwas conductedat his home in Austin, Texas, in August 1998 and was initially meant simply as backgroundresearch for my dissertation and an article I was writing. My hope for the interview was that Professor Kinneavy would expand upon his idea of kairos and that he would clarify his position in relationto those of othertheorists. During one of our interchanges, Kinneavy stated that he did not think rhetoricwas possible withouta concept of kairos, and at that moment I realized that his argumentmoved significantly beyond the claims of his articles. In his 73
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article on "Kairos in Aristotle's Rhetoric," he states that early rhetorical theorists, such as Aristotle and Plato, "distinguishthe general rules of the art of rhetoric from their situational application" (134), and in his "Neglected Concept" article he argues for the broad applicability of kairos through a but composition curriculum; nowhere had he so definitively set out the profound of significance that a concept of kairos brings to our understanding the power of language. Indeed, in the interview, Kinneavy makes it clear thatkairos is central to understandinglanguage's persuasive force because it accounts for certain elements of the rhetoricalact that are ultimatelybeyond the rhetor'scontrol. Part of what makes language persuasive at a particulartime is not only the timing of the event, and not only the situationalcontext of the rhetoricalact, but also the intermingling,the unification, and the interdependenceof the distinct aspects of timing and propriety. This interdependenceultimately leads Kinneavy to returnfrequentlyto the topic of ethics. Often in our discussions (and presentin the interview),Professor Kinneavy expressed the opinion that if an ethical education could be made to work in the universitytoday, it would take place in the composition classroom, and it would have at its center a concept of kairos. The reason, I think, is that kairos offers a way for students to examine their cultural situations and understandhow their times might affect other times. Kinneavy believed that by unifying their times with their situations, studentsmight begin to see how they could create change througha rhetoricalact. Professor Kinneavy and I continued our discussions through e-mail throughoutthe fall of 1998 and into the spring of 1999. We discussed seeking publication for the interview and coauthoringan introduction,hoping to seek a venue in the fall 1999. Our last discussion about the work was in May 1999, when he attended my dissertation defense. There, during the ride between the airport and TCU, we discussed once again his position in relation to Tillich's transcendental position. Ultimately, he was willing to grantTillich's position as a possible interpretation, he remainedunwilling to assign to kairos a divine but dimension. He did, however, find the interpretationof kairos as a divine moment interestingand noted, as he had before, the personificationof Kairos as a god. After he departed,we had two more e-mail exchanges before I left for an extended trip over the summer. Professor Kinneavy and I agreed to resume correspondenceupon my return,but in late August, Rich Enos contacted me to tell me of ProfessorKinneavy's death on August 10, 1999. With his passing, the discipline has lost one of its giants, and what I hope this interview offers is a continuation of the many significant contributions Kinneavy made to the discipline. I have tried to capture his voice throughout, leaving in many of his asides and embolalia in an attemptto replicate the way
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that he argued and explained his points. He was a profoundthinkerand a refined arguer,as I hope is made apparent,and his resurrectionof kairos in the field of rhetoric, now some 17 years old (he first delivered a lecture on the topic at the Conference on Classical Rhetoric and the Teaching of FreshmanComposition on October7, 1983) remainsone of his most lasting contributions. The Interview Thompson: When you wrote your article, "Kairos: a Neglected Concept in Classical Rhetoric,"did you foresee it having such a tremendousimpact on the field of rhetoric? Kinneavy: No, as a matterof fact I didn't. I know it was a worthwhileessay, but I didn't realize the impact it had and continues to have. I'm a little surprisedby that to tell you the truth. Well, there are some reasons for that, I think. The importance of situational context, and especially in postmodernism the importanceof situationalcontext, kairos is an aspect of that. Thompson: -of the situationalcontext? Kinneavy: Yes, and of the change which can take place in ideas applied to a particularsituation. So I think that's one reason for it. I think anthropologists like Malinowski and their emphasis on situationalcontext that I adopted from them long before postmodernism is another reason for it. Then there are intangiblesthat I can't put my finger on. Thompson: So you thinkpostmoderism's appeal to the situationalcontext... Kinneavy: Has made kairos an appealing concept in the postmoder situation, yes. Thompson: How do you define kairos? Kinneavy: I've given about a twenty-pagedefinition in the article, but I would define it briefly as "theright time and due measure." Thompson: Exactly as you outlined in the article? Kinneavy: There's a double dimensionthat runs all throughhistoryI think. So I would say that kairos has a dimension of time to it, but it also has a dimension
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of measure, which is ethical and aesthetic and has different situations. So I would emphasize both dimensions; in fact, I don't think you can't. For that reason there is no adequatetranslation any modem language. I have an article in that is going to appearin a historicaldictionaryof classical rhetoric,and I give translations: Kairos: Latin: tempus speciale, occasio; German: Zeitpunkt, Gelegenheit; French:juste mesure, occasion; English: right measure and time; Italian: momento opportuno, giusta misura; and even the Hebrew, which only has one word, thatone word doesn't accountfor the two dimensionsof kairos. Thompson: Such a rich term. Kinneavy: It's a term that has no single translation in any major modem language.That's how I would define it. Thompson: So you want a historicaldefinitionin some sense? Kinneavy: Yes, and I don't think we can just take the right time as being the definition. It's a matter of timing at the right time in the right measure. It's rathercomplicated. Thompson: Very layered. Kinneavy: That's why I wouldn't say you could translate it with any single word. Thompson: Where did you rediscover this term-how did you come across it and decide thatit needed attentionand discussion? Kinneavy: I ran across it in [Paul] Tillich, the theologian, and as I indicatedin my article, he has four or five major statementson it in differentbooks, at least two or three of which have not yet been translated.And he said it was very important-well, it was a combinationof his whole theology, and he points out how importantit was in the New Testament.I've done some work on biblical scholarship, so I was impressed by that and I said, "that's impressive, maybe I should look into it." Then I read Levi and others who had historicalarticleson it and going back to the pre-Aristotelian pre-Platonicphilosophies in Greece. Thompson: Sophist philosophies?
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Kinneavy: Yes, right, but also even especially Plato. I rereadthe Phaedrus, and I was just amazed how important this word was. I had been teaching the Phaedrus for years, and I said "how could I overlook that?"So, basically, I got it from Tillich originally,and then what I have done is transferhis concept of its importanceto theology to rhetoricand to otherthings too for that matter. Thompson: So for you the foundationof it has been kind of interdisciplinaryyou found it in a theological field? Kinneavy: Right, yes. Thompson: Ralph Waldo Emersonbelieved that a ripe moment was needed for "true" rhetoricto occurKinneavy: That's interesting,that's very good. Thompson: Do you feel kairos is a necessary component of rhetoric;can there be rhetoricwithoutkairos? Kinneavy: I don't really think so. I thinkthat there can be rhetoricaltheory, but even rhetoricaltheory has to take into account something like a concept of right timing and due measuretoo. So I don't thinkthat either in theory, but especially in practice can there be a rhetoricwithout a concept of timing. And as a matter of fact, I've tried to show that it is very importantto Aristotle, and that has been neglected. I neglected that initially; I didn't know, and I'm an Aristotelianmore or less. Also, as I have attemptedto show, it's importantin Cicero. He didn't use the word because the word didn't go into Latin completely. But, like the Greeks, they had a god they called Occasio, and occasio is not exactly the same thing as right timing. Occasio is a theological term as well: the occasion of sin, the time or situationwhere you can be led into sin. It comes to English in that way, which is kind of a backwardway at that. Thompson: Do you believe kairos is beyond the rhetor's control, or can the rhetormanufacture create kairos? or Kinneavy: Well, I can see that a rhetor can choose the right time, and in that sense he can create it. He may realize this is not the right time to bring this up yet, but if he waits too long it's going to be too late. So timing, or the right time, is sometimes in the hands of the rhetorician, but not always. Sometimes a situationjust arises, and if a rhetoricianwants to persuade, he has to use the
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time, and so in that case what he can do is simply to adapthimself to that time. Or, sometimes, say these times are not very good or not very favorable to this idea, then he may show you back historicallyhow this has been a very important idea, and we should not forget that. So, there are different things a rhetorician can do with regardto time. It is not totally in his control. Thompson: Would it be along the lines of carpe diem? Kinneavy: That's a part of it, but also if the diem is not right, then you can tell people, "you people nowadays don't think very much of the importanceof this particular concept, but it is important"-you can create thatkind of a timing. Thompson: So you create the feeling thatthere needs to be looking back? Kinneavy: That somethingneeds to be done, yes. Or even looking forwardtoo. Thompson: You've mentioned today and you mention in your article Paul Tillich-does his notion of kairos as "the eternal breakinginto the temporal"fit within your understanding kairos? of Kinneavy: Let's say we can interpretit that way. I do say that I don't agree with Paul Tillich; I'm not really of the same theological persuasionas he is, but I can see his position, given that concept, yes. But, I don't think it needs the concept of an eternal, especially an eternal truth or something like that. It's still importantthat it is a truth,whetherit's eternalor not, thatyou're tryingto apply. So I'm not drawing as large, as grand, a picture as Tillich would. But you can take an idea that transcendsthis particulartime, or maybe time in general, and situation.Yes, I agree with that. you can apply it to a particular Thompson: So it could be a situationaltruth? Kinneavy: Right. Thompson: What is the difference, if any, between kairos and Lloyd Bitzer's "rhetorical situation?" Kinneavy: Yes, I don't think that Bitzer included it in his conception of the rhetorical situation, and I'll expand this to include Malinowski's concept of situationalcontext also, or even Burke's concept of the Pentad.I don't thinkthat any of these others, especially Bitzer's, has the richness of the concept of kairos,
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especially the concept of due measure,or a political or ethical dimension, or an aesthetic dimension. So, I don't see that that's quite the same thing at all, no. I think there are elements that are similar, but I don't see these other dimensions in Bitzer, or in Malinowski,or in Burke. Thompson: So the difference is largely in richnessof the term? Kinneavy: Somethinglike that, yes. or Thompson: Discussions of transcendental universal principles are absent in your article, even though you discuss Plato, Tillich, and a biblical tradition of kairos. Do you see kairos as a universalor transcendental principlein any way? Kinneavy: As far as I can judge, I think the concept of timing is present in any civilization that I have examined. So, the answer is yes. It's disconcerting also, however, that all these different languages that I gave to you don't have a word for it; they have to have several words, which indicates that it's a complex idea. But I don't know any civilization or culture which I have looked at, and I've looked at them especially in the currentbook I'm working on and have read a two-volumework on the developmentof the concept of moralityin civilizations, and in all these there's a concept of time. But not an explicit articulationof this particular principleas it has been so carefullyarticulated the Greeks. by Thompson: So it's universalas far as rangingacross ... Kinneavy: Every civilization, yes. in Thompson: Would you call it transcendent any way? Kinneavy: Well, it transcendsan individual civilization as far as I can see, in that sense. Thompson: Is it a political principle?Is it inherentlypoliticized? Kinneavy: In its origins it was. As a matterof fact, you may rememberthat the symbolic referencewas to kairos as a God. He was a God in Greece, and he was representedas a young man, a student at the two-year, kind of junior-college preparationthey had for policing and for war. And then, when the idea transferredinto Latin, Occasio, she also became a Goddess, and she had a political connection too. But the major emphasis of the effete, the effedia, of
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Greece was to prepare for political life by rhetoric. So it had a political dimension. Thompson: Do you feel it does now? Kinneavy: Well, I don't think it does now-that's the problem. Even with the emphasis I have given to that concept in the articles I have written,I see many people will adopt the word kairos and won't drag along a lot of the aestheticand political and ethical implications which it has. I can obviously see how you could use kairos without, at a particulartime, its political dimensions,but it had basically a large political dimensionto it. I'd have to say that. Thompson: And it would be difficult in many discussions to carryalong all... Kinneavy:... All the dimensions, sure. Yes, I'm sure aboutthat. of Thompson: Do you feel there have been any misunderstandings kairos-has the field adoptedand utilized it in a way that is valid and productive? Kinneavy: I actually think there have only been two fields that have adoptedit right now, maybe three. Obviously, theology has adopted it, and I think that by and large Tillich's interpretationsof kairos have not done a whole lot of violence to the Greek concept. They put it into a particular religious framework, but I don't think that they have distortedthe idea in any way that I can think of right now. I have not thought about that. Maybe I will disagree with what I'm saying, but at the moment I don't see that. The other two fields that have somewhat adopted it are rhetoric,currentrhetoricright now, and I don't see any major misinterpretationof kairos so far. The people that write about it are American rhetoricianssuch as myself and others, and so I don't see any major distortionsthere. And the only other field that has adopted it ever so slightly is philosophy; there have been several philosophy articles, articles in the there either. Philosophical Review and so on, and I don't see a misinterpretation Some of these philosophy people have acknowledged my influence too, and it's kind of hard to read what I have to say and violently disagree with these same concepts. So, I'd have to say to that I don't see any major misinterpretations. But it has not been thatuniversallyadopted. I wish it were. Thompson: I thinkit will continueto expand. Kinneavy: Well, I think it will too, yes.
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or of Thompson: Would you like to see any new interpretations understandings kairos, or would you prefer that the term retain a specific, historically based meaningand application? Kinneavy: Well, I think the idea has to be adopted, adaptedto our civilization, our media, radio and television, and speaking to a people at a distance and all that. Kairos has to adapt to that, and in that sense there are going to be dimensionsto kairos that may be new, and that doesn't botherme, as long as the fundamental epistemological ethical and aesthetic and political dimensions remain. Thompson: So you can especially see it changing, at least in some respects, in relationto technology? Kinneavy: Right, certainly. Thompson: Do you see any applicability of a theory of kairos to fields other thanrhetoricand composition? Kinneavy: Oh, I think it's very importantin ethics, and I thinkthat that's almost how the concept began with Protagorasand people like that. In other words, the just thing is that you work for five hours and I only work for two; thereforeyou should get more money than I do and so on. That's an ethical application.And, I don't know-there is currently,nowadays, you've probablyheard of it, a thing called situationalethics, and situationalethics would be very close to a concept of kairic ethics. So I think that ethics is a field in which a concept such as kairos could apply. Composition is a part of education, but I think it applies more generallyto educationthanjust to composition. Thompson: So more broadly? Kinneavy: Oh yes, I think the concept of kairos is much larger than just composition. I frankly think that you could probably take a concept of kairos and apply it to practically almost anything. I think historically you could examine how a particularcultureor period felt such and such a way in termsof a concept of kairos. So I think it can be applied to many other fields to which it has not yet been applied.
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Thompson: Is there any field that you feel in particularneeds an understanding of kairos, a field thatwould be especially helped by such a discussion. Kinneavy: Ethics would be a field like that, and I thinkhistoryalso. Thompson: And how aboutliteraryanalysis and literature? Kinneavy: There is a fellow by the name of George Mason-I don't know if I have a copy of his article here or not. He has applied, has attemptedto apply I kairos to literature. thinkthatthere are many things such as why such and such an authorwas popularin this period, and why Spencer is not as populartoday as he was thought to be a hundred years ago, and so on. I think conceptsjudgments like that-can be helped by a concept like kairos. What was the current situation, what were the currentvalues, what were the current ethical situations,whatwere the current political, and so on values of the time. Thompson: Whatwould require,I would imagine, a lot of historicalresearch? Kinneavy: They would need to, yes. Thompson: As you've mentioned, a few articles have attemptedto introduce kairos into literary analysis-how would you integrate kairos into, say, a discussion of a particular literary work? How would you use kairos as a heuristic to understanding literature? Kinneavy: I would say, yes, you could take a piece-a curious thing that you for ask this just now. I was just finishing a letter of recommendation somebody from Queens College, and she wrote a very interestingarticle on the early Yeats, the mid-periodYeats, and the late Yeats. Her concern was that the early Yeats had an attitudetoward the refrain,you know, the different stanza at the end of which you always repeatedthe same refrain.And Yeats does that in one of his early poems, at the end of the first stanza"Fal de ral fal de ral"at the end of the second stanza"Fal de ral fal de ral,"and the same thing in the thirdstanza,but it meant something different in each case. At the time, though, it was not, or rather, critical perspectives on the refrainwere that this type of device was too simplistic and it shouldn't be used. But Yeats used it in a much more sophisticated way. Then there was a period during which he didn't use it, and then there was a thirdperiod which he used it in a much more sophisticatedway to make a philosophical statement, three different types of philosophical statements,at the end of differentstanzas.
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Thompson: All in one poem? Kinneavy: All in one poem, yes. And so, I would say that's a kind of use of kairos, you know; he's viewing it in a perspective of the early concept of the time, and he's changing it, adapting it, to another concept which he wants to which I think is push. That's a kind of a use of kairos in literaryinterpretation, useful. very Thompson: Very interesting.So there seems to be also a kairos for the critic when he's looking at it, how he composed it? Kinneavy: Oh yes, right.That's it, the poet and the critic too. Thompson: Do you see kairos as importantto or working in everyday life? How does it play into our daily lives? Kinneavy: Let me tell you a situation to which it applies. Baseball's very importantright now, and one time I heard a pitcher, I think it was Bob Lanier, I'm not sure, say "battingis timing, and pitching is disturbingtiming." That sounds reductionistic,but it's not, it's very true in many ways. In batting you have to time the bat and the ball, and the pitcher is trying to disruptthat timing, so that you can't hit it. It applies to football, it applies to all sports. Timing is very importantto all sports;you know, a half-second later, the guy's gone for a touchdown. It applies to, uh-I don't see any area of life it doesn't apply. It applies to love. You approachthis girl and ask her to marryyou at the right time. My daughteris in a relationshipwith someone right now, and she says "I don't know if it's the right time, Daddy." She talks about that all the time without realizing it. In our professionyou can send the book away to be published at the wrong time, or the wrong place. By the way, a second meaning of kairos was "theright place" in additionto the right time. It is not as stronga meaning as the right time, but it was a second meaning. So, I don't really know if-it is difficult to find an area in which timing is not important.So you say, tell me where kairos is important,and I say to you, tell me where it's not important.I've it's always liked thatbaseballstatement; very interesting,and it's very true. Thompson: And you can see propermeasureKinneavy: And propermeasureoperatingin there too. That's right. Thompson: Whichpitch and that sort of thing?
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Kinneavy: Right, or you can swing too far and that's too much measure or the timing isn't right-There it goes, over there, in the stands. Yes, the timing is important,but also the measure. So I don't know any area in which it doesn't apply. Thompson: I know that one of your currentprojects is work on a neutralmoral code. Does kairos have a place in that code, and, perhapsmore importantly,is today the kairos for the code you are suggesting? Kinneavy: Yes, I think kairos has an importantplace in that code. I'll give you an example. My code is based upon five principles: respect for life, respect for family, respect for property,respect for truth,and respect for liberty. Those five. Then, those can be enlarged, and I enlarge them to thirty principles of rights, humanrights, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN. Now, each of those rights-take the right to life-that's not absolute-none of these rights is absolute. It can always alter. For instance, if a person attacks me, and it's going to be death one way or the other, somebody's right to life is going to disappear. So I have to choose my right to life versus his right to life. Or, if somebody's attackingmy children,my family or something,there it's maybe his life versus their life. And so, it's not a totally absolute-it's not absolutes. It has to be judged by the situation. A situation in which someone would be attacking my children, I'd choose to make a decision that their lives are more important than his life. The same thing happenswith regardto truth.How many times may I have to tell a lie to protect my family, or myself, or something like that. And so, these five basic principles and their applications to 30 of the Universal Declarationof HumanRights are all subject to the situation.And, certainrights take priorityover other rights. Generally speaking, I'll sacrifice my propertyto save my life. There may be occasions where I might not, but I can't thinkof any right now. So, the situationis very important,but is not totally divorced from all rights. Usually some rights are going to be subordinateto other rights, and I'll make up my mind in terms of the situation, you see. I'm going to normally choose life over nearly all the rest of them, but not always. I may sacrifice my life for my family, and many people say that's dignified and worthyand so on. I normally will sacrifice truth to save my life. So this applies very much to this neutralmoralcode. Thompson: So your judgment in relation to these codes is dependent on the situation,and that's how you see kairos?
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Kinneavy: Yes, very much so, right. Thompson: So is today the kairos for the code? Kinneavy: In a certain sense, yes. As a matterof fact, I'm curious that you put the question that way because the way that I'm presentingthe code is that there is a lot of evidence that morality is-well, we have certain moral problems which we didn't have. Divorce, for instance, has broken up half the families of this country, or actually half the marriagesof this countryend up in divorce. As a result of that, many children are living without a parent, sometimes without either parent. Consequently, we need some kind of moral trainingbecause it's clear we're having problems. I ask my students to write an ethical paper and they [shrug];I ask them to write a historical paper and they make a lot of sense. Or a political paper. I ask them to write an ethical paper, and they sound like they're thirdgraders.They don't have any way to write one because they've not been taught ethics. Our educational system in this country,and many others too, has not included enough ethics, so if you don't go to church,and only about 30 percent of the people go to churchregularlymore or less, you don't get training. So the time is now, yes, we need it more now than in the last hundredyears, maybe much more than that. In any case, the time is right for something like a neutralmoral code with which we can talk to people who have religion or not. And I always say since, well, about 80 percent of the people in the world do have some religious affiliation, there has to be a way in which people of those different persuasions can talk to the other 20 percent, and even talk to one anotherbecause their religious affiliations are different.Given the concept of the United Nations and of thirty basic rights, which nearly all peoples have agreed to, we could use these to forge out a neutralmoral code that we can talk on and agree with at the very least, then religious people can add others to it, but it remainscompatiblewith the basic principles. Yes, I thinkthat this is a good time to try somethinglike that. Thompson: So you're seeing the ethical as kind of a social responsibilitythat society at large instills in individuals? Kinneavy: These five rights are basic-if I can't have life or if I can't have propertyin some sense, if I can't have a family, if I can't have truth, if I can't have some basic liberties, I cannot develop. And so these five rights are necessary to the survival and the development of the individual.Ethics consists in I myself having those rights for myself, but in my respectingthose rights for you and everybody else. So there's a dual aspect to ethics: There's an aspect of
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rights and there's an aspect of duties. Traditionally,ethics has always been thou shall not, thou shall presented in terms of, say, the Ten Commandments: not, thou shall not. That's a duty, but it assumes a right. Why shouldn't you kill somebody else? Because he has a right to life. And so I am asserting very stronglyboth the rights and the duties, and that's what makes up an ethical code to me. Thompson: And so the reason you see the kairos for it now is because somehow those kinds of ethical codes aren'tbeing absorbedby the populace? Kinneavy: Yes, basically. Seventy percent of the populace does not get anything like a systematic or intelligent training in ethics. Those that go to churchoften do, yes. That's about30 percentof the population.Now many more say they go to church than that, but actually go to churchregularly,I mean not somethinglike once a year or so. Seventy percentof the populace is not getting an educationin thatrespect. Thompson: Lastly, your impact on the discipline has been tremendous, and your work has provided fuel for many new scholarly fires-do you have any advice for the discipline, any hope for it? And do you have any advice for new scholarswho want to make a differencein the field? Kinneavy: Oh, I have hope for the discipline. You mean the discipline of rhetoricand composition? Thompson: Yes. Kinneavy: Oh, I think writing and reading and things that they imply are going to be with us-I don't know-I hope thousands and thousands of years. Whatevershape that's going to take, you know. And so I have hope for it. One but thing you might say, "is it all going to be replacedby computers," computers are just writing all the time. And so I'm not terribly worried about that. It's a different medium in which the writing is occurring, but I think that there is considerable hope for the discipline, and I'm happy to see certain aspects of classical rhetoric being revived too, and one of them is the concept of kairos. A concept of kairos asks us to respect each new time that arrives, to change our concepts, because the kairos may be different from thirty years ago, or yesterday,and so on. So I have greathope, actually,for rhetoricas a discipline. I think that one interestingthing about this is that rhetoric is more importantin this country than almost in any other country. The revival of classical rhetoric,
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especially to teach people every day in classes in high schools and all is important,and not just a revival of classical rhetoric but movements of new rhetorics is, I think, now beginning to be taken up again. In the US it already has, in France it is beginningto some extent, and in Germanytoo, but there not as strongly. Now, on the other hand, they have for a long time held to the importance of composition at the elementary school or the high school or whatevercorrespondsto that too. But not so much at the university,and I think that they're beginning to see that now. I belong to the InternationalSociety for the History of Rhetoric, and I see this in the different countries where these meetings are held, France, Germany,Italy-I gave a talk at Italy about three years ago-and Spain, and so on, and Canada. Thompson: So you're seeing the revival? Kinneavy: No, not just the revival, but a concern aboutnew rhetoric.Yes, right. Thompson: And your advice? Kinneavy: I would say have a respect for history,but don't be boundby it. That, by the way, is perfectly consistent with a concept of kairos, because the times, our ages, are different. But I think we can learn from history, sometimes we haven't learned enough from history. That is true of rhetoric;it is true of other fields too. And I think sometimes true of ethics. So that would be one of my pieces of advice, which I would certainlymake to people. I would also say that hard work is important:The inches sometimes don't come easily, we have to work at them. Consequently,don't necessarily be satisfied with the first quick answer that might come up, especially in our moder time when we want instant something (instant replays and so forth). Take a little time to review-even if you have an answer, look at it carefullybefore you publish it. Or, even after you have published it, you may change your mind, and so on. So, that would be anotherthing that I would say. And let me put anotherthing too-this is true of American scholarshipespecially: Have not only respect for history, but respect for other cultures too, respect for other languages. I don't think that-some of our rhetoricians,for instance, practicallyspeak only English-I don't think that that's good. I think that we have a lot to learn from other languages. And that includes even Easternlanguages. Thompson: Which in some ways are only now beginning to filter in [to our scholarship].
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Kinneavy: Yes right. That's it. We need that kind of respect.

Notes I would like to thank both Janice Lauer and Winifred Homer, RR peer reviewers, for their thoughtful and careful reading of the interview, as well as Fred Erisman, Rich Enos, and Rob McDonald for their suggestions at various stages of my work. 2 Philip Sipiora and James Baumlin have edited a forthcoming book on Kairos. The book will contain new articles on the concept of kairos as well as an extensive bibliography. Bibliography Kinneavy's work on kairos: "Kairos: A Neglected Concept in Classical Rhetoric." Delivered at the Conference of Classical Rhetoricand the Teachingof English, October7, 1983. Unpublished. "Kairos: A Neglected Concept in Classical Rhetoric."Rhetoric and Praxis: The Contribution of Classical Rhetoric to Practical Reasoning. Ed. Jean Dietz Moss. Washington,DC: The Catholic U of America P, 1986. 79-105. Rpt. in LandmarkEssays on Rhetorical Invention in Writing. Vol. 8. Ed. RichardYoung and Yameng Liu. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1994. 221-39. "Kairos in Aristotle's Rhetoric."Abstracts. InternationalSociety for the History of Rhetoric, Ninth Biennial Conference.TurinItaly:Casa di Risparmiodi Torino, 1993. 73. (with CatherineR. Eskin). "KairosIn Aristotle'sRhetoric." WrittenCommunication11 (Jan. 1994): 131-42. (with CatherineR. Eskin). "Kairos."Historisches Worterbuchder Rhetorik. Ed. Gert Ueding. Vol. 4: Hu-K. Tubingen, Germany:Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1998. 836-43.
Roger Thompsonteaches at Virginia MilitaryInstitute.His researchis primarilyin nineteenthcentury American literatureand rhetoricaltheory, and he has an article on Ralph Waldo Emerson and kairos forthcoming in a collection of essays edited by Philip Sipiora and James Baumlin. His current work includes an investigation of nineteenth-centuryAmerican literacy reform and its intersectionwith gender roles, an analysis of the conflation of rhetoric and poetics in eco-poetry, as well as the assembling of a collection of essays on the rhetoricof St. Augustine.

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Kairos Revisited: An Interview with James Kinneavy Author(s): Roger Thompson Reviewed work(s): Source: Rhetoric Review, Vol.

ROGER THOMPSON Virginia Military Institute

Kairos Revisited: An Interview with James Kinneavy

RhetoricReview, Vol. 19, No's. 1/2, Fall 2000

KairosRevisited:An Interviewwith James Kinneavy

Kairos Revisited: Interview JamesKinneavy An with

KairosRevisited:An InterviewwithJames Kinneavy

KairosRevisited:An Interview with James Kinneavy

KairosRevisited:An InterviewwithJames Kinneavy

KairosRevisited:An Interviewwith James Kinneavy

Kairos Revisited:An InterviewwithJames Kinneavy

Kinneavy: Yes right. That's it. We need that kind of respect.

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