Erotema (e-ro-tem’-a): The rhetorical question. To affirm or deny a point strongly by asking it as a question. Generally, as Melanchthon has noted, the rhetorical question includes an emotional dimension, expressing wonder, indignation, sarcasm, etc.
“How many fingers do I have on my left hand?” The students sat there, staring at me. I had my hand behind my back. I’d been lecturing them for three weeks in my course “Baloney, Baloney, Plato.” It was a course in the overall futility of philosophy and the trouble it has caused throughout history. If not for philosophy, we’d be living in peace and harmony under the rule of beneficent tyrants, striving every day to induce our happiness. Instead, we have a raucous dog-eat-dog world, run by lunatics, elected by lunatics. People who believe in trial by jury and freedom of speech. It is a catastrophe—a breach of natural order.
“So, how many roads must a man walk down before he buys a car?“ This was a metaphor—a rhetorical question. I did not expect an answer. It was a stepping stone to 30 minutes of pontification I was about to launch. A student raised her hand and said “Three?” Oh good! It was berate the student time. One of my favorite things about teaching. “Do you know what an idiot is?” “Yes,” she said. I said “Good, you know what you are.” I said. I looked for the signs of humiliation so I could take it up a notch. None. I figured I might as well ask her how she came up with three roads. She said “The Holy Trinity and the trivium, the tria via—the three roads to truth—grammar, logic, and rhetoric, subsequently named ‘trivial’ and disparaged by philistines, like you Professor who are devoted to giving truth a bad name.” The students began booing me, a couple of them threw their textbooks at me. The students sat smugly. Next, all hell broke loose. They lit their desks on fire. They chanted “Professor Ginko is Satan’s lapdog.!” I smiled and barked and sat on a student’s lap. I was promptly pushed to the floor and kicked by a half-dozen jackbooted students. Eventually, paramedics arrived and took me off to “Have Mercy Hospital.”
What had happened beyond the bloodshed and the rude cat-calling?
I had been ambushed by a Truther. They were showing up more and more in my classes. My ethics class is overrun. I just sit there while they trade “truths” like they were baseball cards, with no consideration of circumstances. Like the old example: it is wrong to lie. therefore, it is morally wrong to lie to Nazis about your daughter’s whereabouts. End of story: always tell the truth, even if it gets your daughter killed. Truth is comfortable, but it may lead to catastrophic consequences. It may be a vice in certain circumstances. Truth is easy to summon, and it has a glow, but sometimes lying preferable.
My combative, recalcitrant, strident teaching has finally earned me a sabbatical—one step away from being censured and dismissed. My sabbatical project is to “calm down and unburden” myself “of my wild and disruptive ideas.” Maybe I gave too much license to my radical beliefs. Maybe I was tormented by my colleagues and students because I’ve become blinded by the light—like the Ever Ready Bunny marching to the beat of a different drummer—looking too long into life’s high beams or the halogen lights in my garage door opener. So, I’m writing a book: “Makeup, Shakeup, Wake-up: Stuck in the River.” It chronicles the risks and rewards of going off your medication. There is paranoia, anger, streaming TV, and loneliness. In the words of Jimmy Buffet, roughly, “Have I lost my shaker of salt?”
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.
The Daily Trope 