Calling Fouls

"Rhetoric is an open palm, dialectic a closed fist" - Zeno 

(For more information on Zeno, watch this video)

This aphorism by Zeno opens chapter fifteen. To understand it, we must first understand what rhetoric and dialectic are. Rhetoric, as we know, is "the art of influence, friendship, and eloquence, of ready wit and irrefutable logic" (4). Dialectic, however, is a new one. Dialectic is "the mannerly dialogue of formal logic... Precise, self-contained, and boring" (155).

So, rhetoric keeps the argument open. Dialectic on the other hand commits the foul of "turning an argument into a fight" (155). Dialectic, with its closed and uninviting fist, blocks the argument or "argues the inarguable" (158). Rhetoric is the open discussion where dialectic is the fight. The fight can be many things, yet it always keeps the discussion or argument from moving forward and being productive.

This closed fist could be a fallacy, the use of an incorrect tense, humiliation, innuendo, the use of threats, or refusing to consider the other side. These are Heinrichs' fouls. He insists that there are no rules in rhetoric, so these things bring the argument "out of bounds," hence the name fouls instead of errors or sins (170).