In classical rhetoric the terms 'commonplace' and 'ethos' are essential
factors that if well understood and handled shape the construction and
delivery of any message that is persuasive. It's never
enough to be just right, you have to communicate what is right in your
thinking in terms that "feel" right to the audience. Rhetoric is the art
of being persuasive, and persuasion is most challenging when you have
an audience that sees you as someone whose character is suspect–as someone who does not belong to your tribe. An audience, unconsciously immersed in commonplaces is very difficult to speak to about issues that are incommensurate with its commonplaces. Unless you work within the context of the basic assumptions that shape its ethos, they're not likely to afford you an ounce of credibility.
Western philosophy is the work of getting beyond the commonplaces to understand what makes them true or untrue, and this task is always resisted by the conservatives, for whom the commonplaces of one's society are its organizing principles. Once you start questioning these pieties, the whole fabric is vulnerable to be unraveled–and that must be resisted at all costs. This exercise in critical thinking is a terrible source of anxiety for this kind of commonplace-defending conservative, because he doesn't really believe there is anything beyond the commonplaces, no truth that undergirds them. There is the accepted formula, and there is nothing, really, behind it.
The form is everything, and so when you have a Socrates come along or a Jesus, you have get rid of them. Because for them the forms are not sacred, but rather the truth
that lies behind them is. For commonplace-defending conservatives it doesn't really matter that what they believe is true or not, or perhaps more accurately, the truth is dangerous or uninteresting. It only matters that you think and behave the way the the ancestors did. And so for this kind of conservative, intellectual activity is always at root a stultified apologetics. It has no concern to plum the creative depths out of which these forms first arose, and so produces a kind of static, dead thinking animated mainly by anxiety and resentment toward those who refuse to take their dead thinking seriously. It is therefore, not about being in touch with the truth and then attempting to work with its energy to articulate it in a fresh compelling way. It's about defending static formulae.
This kind of conservatism talks about the importance of belief, but it betrays a deeper kind of unbelief. Because for it if there are no forms, there is only the void. They cling to the forms for fear of being swallowed by chaos. They are like Dostoyevski's Grand Inquisitor, whether they realize it or not. For them there is no belief in the Logos behind the forms, behind the appearances. No belief that that there is a dynamic, creative, transcendent source for creative thought that has been there always and will always be there as an eternal spring for replenishment and for the development of new forms or the resurrection of old ones.
This kind of conservative doesn't understand that the forms matter only insofar as they point to the creative source from which they originate, and when they don't do that anymore, they become idols.
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