Burke, Nietzsche, Lacan: Three perspectives on the rhetoric of order

Abstract

This essay examines the complex relationship between rhetoric and order in the works of Kenneth Burke, Friedrich Nietzche and Jacques Lacan. It argues for three differing, yet complementary, views of rhetoric and order, each having a corresponding epistemology and axiology, and concludes with an analysis of the construction of order in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, illustrating the convergence of the three perspectives as well as how each theory might be used to understand more fully the social construction of order through supernatural, social‐political and natural appeals.