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BURKE IN LD DEBATEMost of Burke’s work can be found as highly useful in developing the criteria debate, but not so much for values. He doesn’t suggest many terms as concrete values, and is rather vague on the few that he does advocate for the sake of interpretation and criticism. First, I might look at the pentad as a potential criteria. Burke examines rhetorical work in terms of the dramatic pentad: act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. He takes two parts of the pentad and examines the relationship between the parts that he refers to as a ratio. For example, we might do an act-scene ratio. This would compare the elements that are part of an purposive act versus the parts that are caused by the surrounding scene. How could that possibly be useful to a LD debater? The pentadic elements help pick apart the extreme over-estimations of parts of the dramatic act. For example, a debater might be claiming that society is largely equal right now and because of that people should be largely responsible for themselves without the aid of others. In terms of the pentad, this act of being responsible for the self is being viewed as in domination of the scene, the potential that society might make the actor disadvantaged in some way. You have to argue that your opponent is discounting too much of an element of the pentad. The discounting of an element of the pentad is due to an extreme over-estimation of the importance of one of the elements, in this case the act. This is especially important if you are able to argue that the favoring of your opponent’s idea could create trained incapacities that endanger your own. The critique that you are now making of your opponent’s case position is that it’s core ideology is monolithic in scope and will block out the sun for opposing perspectives. Consider, for example, the implications of glossing over the definition of justice by calling it fairness or equality, etc. The cult of justice in value debate does not do ‘justice’ to the ideal of academic or educational debate by avoiding what justice is as a value. Glossing over such discussion is a way of avoiding meaningful debate on the issue and not of creating interpretations that lead to better understanding. Another possibility for a good argument is making use of the pathetic fallacy. I think that this might work best as a critique of the idea of progress. Watch for an attempt by an opponent to elevate principles, such as the scientific, over the humanistic or the cultural. Recall that the idea of the pathetic fallacy was one in which action was confused with motion. An opponent’s pathetic fallacy is an act of dehumanizing the will. It reduces human motive and purpose to physical causality. The progress of which they speak is actually a death of the human soul. Perhaps the best choice for arguments in using Burke comes out of his idea of the creation of morality by the use of the negative. He thinks that the creation of hierarchies is a consequence of the use of symbols, and more specifically, the use of language. These hierarchies are both good and bad. On one hand, they do create desire and greed for those things commonly found at the top of the hierarchy. On the other, they are also responsible for hierarchies that place the good, the moral, and the just at the top. It is only the construction of these hierarchies that makes the moral possible. The value debate round is a good example of this line of thinking. When your opponent establishes a case with a value and criteria, your opponent is choosing one hierarchy over another. Some hierarchies place the idea of the common good at the top, while others place individual rights at the top. The choice of one hierarchy over another displays motive, and motives may be analyzed in forming a story about your opponent’s case. The terms that come to dominate as the top of a hierarchy are referred to as ultimate terms by Burke. Ultimate terms are terms that carry with them an almost religious worship. For example, think of the way science is sometimes thought of as a god of the twentieth century’s design. The same way we revere science’s ability to discover truth, we worship the justice of our democratic institutions and constitutions, we admire selflessness and self-sacrifice, is the same way we worship may of the ultimate terms in our vocabulary. It might be said that all values are really just ultimate terms that are worshipped for different reasons or motives. Burke opens up the question of motive in the debate round. Who would really value this? Why would they value this idea or this set of positions? Although I think unequal application of goods or benefits is a common argument, I don’t often hear the premises or motives for creating the argument challenged. The value of ‘quality of life’ is a great example of a value that is begging for Burkean interpretation. Who’s quality of life is being referred to? What is a quality life? A debater usually responds to this with a cliché or trite answer concerning what is generally true about living well, but this is a view of living well from the perspective of who? Why does this single person create this particular conception of what a quality life is? Burke will always look for some sort of motive behind any piece of rhetoric, including the answers to questions given in a debate round. Since there exists a hierarchy of terms, Burke claims that there also exists a never-ending attempt to get closer to the ultimate that is at the hierarchy’s top. This is the pursuit of perfection. It is also the use of this desire that allows rhetoric to work. Rhetoric appeals to this desire within people in order to motivate action on their part. Appealing to the higher ideal or ultimate term allows the audience to identify with the position of the rhetor. When the rhetor is attempting to get the audience to ignore a distasteful idea by appealing to a higher one, it is referred to by Burke as courtship. Courtship is the base principle behind the LD debate: the transcendence of one value over another in the mind of the audience. 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