Daniel Coffeen is the author of the Zero Books title "Reading the Way of Things" and a frequent guest on this podcast and many others including the Partially Examined Life.

In this episode we discuss his essay: "On the Radical Empiricism of Rhetoric."

Here's an excerpt:

"A rhetorical reckoning riles many people up as it doesn't try to ground itself or its going in anything outside itself — in a truth or axiom or universal claim. It is indifferent to such things except in as much as such things are arguments, things to reckon. And so rather than ever being tethered or even seeking a tether, the rhetorician begins to enjoy all the different ways different things can go. It reads multiple ways to reckon a puppy or ballet or chair. Rather than stake a single claim, she — our rhetorician — takes delight in the going of things, in the possible ways of things. Which can be infuriating to someone who's adamant in a single belief. This is what ballet is!"