Augustine, Preach

I got confused with the schedule last week I thought we have didn't have to do a blog because i was working on my paper.

The reading on Augustine was one that finally started to put the pieces of rhetoric in place for me.  The word of the day was a major help in me understanding this reading and finally discovering some modern day examples of rhetoric. Hermeneutics according to Augustine is the connection between languages, when involving scripture you should have a deeper understanding of a sense of self. This is Augustine’s universal claim on hermeneutics and he is mostly talking about religion so when thinking about this claim I think of a preacher. I have been around religion most of my life. I went to Christian middle school and then a Catholic high school. Trough out this period I sat trough way more than a bearable amount of religious speakers and preachers. I can’t necessarily think of just one religious speaker that stood out but I can say as a whole the speakers who have actually lived and sinned, are the ones who can hole the attention of the audience best.  There are many examples of preachers that used to be hooked on drugs or years out of jail. The fact that they lived like normal people and can bring real life examples into the speeches and sermons makes it easy to relate to but at the same time sets it apart from other speeches. In Augustine’s time the harmonics he is trying to teach is mostly to use wisdom and eloquence as expressive persuasiveness to convey social order and divine principle.  Augustine argues in his writings that rhetoric is necessary “ rhetoric must be employed for people’s own good,” (Bizzell and Herzberg 450). The way rhetoric controls the masses and puts a moral order on society is party trough preachers. A small modern example that I can think of is a Baptist preacher.  The way the Baptist preacher yells and sings relates to the lives and culture of his congregation. The hermeneutics that he is spreading is in his message witch is a lot of the time about sin and forgiveness. If you give you life to the lord you will live forever in the glory of God if you live you life in the shadow of evil then you will burn in damnation forever.  This technique of hermeneutics can only be brought forth with the relation and culture to the audience. The main goal of the use of the harmonics is for peoples own good. In this case peoples own good, societies own good, is for the people the are listing to the preacher to live moral life’s without murder, stealing etc….  In these essay by Augustine I can see rhetoric shinning trough and this is essay is how I understood it.