Speech as Human Science and Rhetorical Art

Abstract

This paper pays tribute to Thomas Jennings Pace, whose teaching and scholarship in the philosophy of communication left a lasting mark on those fortunate enough to study with him. Drawing on the intellectual traditions Pace transmitted across decades of teaching, the paper explores three interlocking philosophical frameworks central to his work: the General Semantics tradition of Elwood Murray, with its concern for self-reflexiveness and the dangers of runaway feedback loops in human thinking; the phenomenological philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, particularly his embodied account of perception and language; and the largely underappreciated Continental philosophy of speech of Georges Gusdorf, whose Speaking positioned authentic human communication as an ontological and ethical act. Together, these traditions illuminate a distinctly “Pacean” vision of speech as simultaneously human science and rhetorical art.