Contemplative Action/Actionable Contemplation

By consulting argumentative schema from Chaïm Perleman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s The New Rhetoric and applying it to twenty-first century Roman Catholic spiritual guidebooks, this article traces the symbiotic relationship between reasonable spirituality and contemplative action. First, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s associative schemes are analyzed within contemporary contemplative texts to trace the rhetorical reasonability. The article then reciprocally outlines how spirituality can inform rhetorical communication and social action through the Ignatian concepts of discernment and “contemplatives in action.” Ultimately, it concludes that rhetorical argumentation can guide audiences toward spiritual contemplation and, simultaneously, spiritual contemplation can guide discerning rhetorical action and foster socially responsible communication

Contemplation · Dialectic · Discernment · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Spirituality · Catholicism and Religious Studies · Karl Barth and Christian Theology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies