Kairos Revisited:

Needless to say, I was quickly disabused of my perception. Professor Kinneavy and I began a conversation on the complexities of kairos, and he carefully illustrated the significance of kairos to both rhetoric and literature. Most importantly Kinneavy asserted that kairos was transcendent in that it worked across culture lines and that it offered a subtle way of addressing the situations in which rhetoric is born. Indeed, kairos, he argued, actually explained how rhetoric was born. He felt the term expressed how certain cultural movements and conditions united with special moments to create ripe times for the rhetorical act. In this way, kairos was a cornerstone for rhetoric.

When Professor Kinneavy left TCU, he and I began a dialogue through email and phone that culminated in the interview printed here for the first time. The interview was conducted at his home in Austin, Texas, in August 1998 and was initially meant simply as background research for my dissertation and an article I was writing. My hope for the interview was that Professor Kinneavy would expand upon his idea of kairos and that he would clarify his position in relation to those of other theorists.

During one of our interchanges, Kinneavy stated that he did not think rhetoric was possible without a concept of kairos, and at that moment I realized that his argument moved significantly beyond the claims of his articles. In his article on "Kairos in Aristotle's Rhetoric" he states that early rhetorical theorists, such as Aristotle and Plato, "distinguish the general rules of the art of rhetoric from their situational application" (134), and in his "Neglected Concept" article he argues for the broad applicability of kairos through a composition curriculum, but nowhere had he so definitively set out the profound significance that a concept of kairos brings to our understanding of the power of language. Indeed, in the interview, Kinneavy makes it clear that kairos is central to understanding language’s persuasive force because it accounts for certain elements of the rhetorical act that are ultimately beyond the rhetor’s control. Part of what makes language persuasive at a particular time is not only the timing of the event, and not only the situational context of the rhetorical act, but also the intermingling, the unification, and the interdependence of the distinct aspects of timing and propriety.

This interdependence ultimately leads Kinneavy to return frequently to the topic of ethics. Often in our discussions (and present in the interview), Professor Kinneavy expressed the opinion that if an ethical education could be made to work in the university today, it would take place in the composition classroom and it would have at its center a concept of kairos. The reason, I think, is that kairos offers a way for students to examine their cultural situations and understand how their times might affect other times. Kinneavy believed that by unifying their times with their situations, students might begin to see how they could create change through a rhetorical act.

Professor Kinneavy and I continued our discussions through email throughout the fall of 1998 and into the spring of 1999. We discussed seeking publication for the interview and co-authoring an introduction, hoping to seek a venue in the fall 1999. Our last discussion about the work was in May 1999, when he attended my dissertation defense. There, during the ride between the airport and TCU, we discussed once again his position in relation to Tillich’s transcendental position. Ultimately, he was willing to grant Tillich’s position as a possible interpretation, but he remained unwilling to assign to kairos a divine dimension. He did, however, find the interpretation of kairos as a divine moment interesting and noted, as he had before, the personification of Kairos as a god. After he departed, we had two more email exchanges before I left for an extended trip over the summer. Professor Kinneavy and I agreed to resume correspondence upon my return, but in late August, Rich Enos contacted me to tell me of Professor Kinneavy’s death on August 10, 1999.

With his passing, the discipline has lost one of its giants, and what I hope this interview offers is a continuation of the many significant contributions Kinneavy made to the discipline. I have tried to capture his voice throughout, leaving in many of his asides and embolalia in an attempt to replicate the way that he argued and explained his points. He was a profound thinker and a refined arguer, as I hope is made apparent, and his resurrection of kairos in the field of rhetoric, now some 17 years old--(he first delivered a lecture on the topic at the Conference on Classical Rhetoric and the Teaching of Freshman Composition on October 7, 1983)--remains one of his most lasting contributions.

The Interview

Thompson: When you wrote your article, "Kairos: a Neglected Concept in Classical Rhetoric," did you foresee it having such a tremendous impact on the field of rhetoric?

Kinneavy: No, as a matter of fact I didn't. I know it was a worthwhile essay, but I didn't realize the impact it had and continues to have. I'm a little surprised by that to tell you the truth. Well, there are some reasons for that I think. The importance of situational context, and especially in postmodernism the importance of situational context, kairos is an aspect of that.

T: --of the situational context?

K: Yes, and of the change which can take place in ideas applied to a particular situation. So I think that's one reason for it. I think anthropologists like Malinowski and their emphasis on situational context that I adopted from them long before postmodernism is another reason for it. Then there are intangibles that I can't put my finger on.

T: So you think postmodernism's appeal to the situational context. . .

K: Has made kairos an appealing concept in the postmodern situation, yes.

T: How do you define kairos?

K: I've given about a twenty-page definition in the article, but I would define it briefly as "the right time and due measure."

T: Exactly as you outlined in the article?

K: There's a double dimension that runs all through history I think. So I would say that kairos has a dimension of time to it, but it also has a dimension of measure, which is ethical and aesthetic and has different situations. So I would emphasize both dimensions; in fact, I don't think you can't. For that reason there is no adequate translation in any modern language. I have an article that is going to appear in a historical dictionary of classical rhetoric, and I give translations: Kairos: Latin: tempus speciale, occasio; German: Zeitpunkt, Gelegenheit; French: juste mesure, occasion; English: right measure and time; Italian: momento opportuno, giusta misura; and even the Hebrew, which only has one word, that one word doesn't account for the two dimensions of kairos.

T: Such a rich term.

K: It's a term that has no single translation in any major modern language. That's how I would define it.

T: So you want a historical definition in some sense?

K: Yes, and I don't think we can just take the right time as being the definition. It's a matter of timing at the right time in the right measure. It's rather complicated.

T: Very layered.

K: That's why I wouldn't say you could translate it with any single word.

T: Where did you re-discover this term—how did you come across it and decide that it needed attention and discussion?

K: I ran across it in [Paul] Tillich, the theologian, and as I indicated in my article, he has four or five major statements on it in different books, at least two or three of which have not yet been translated. And he said it was very important—well, it was a combination of his whole theology, and he points out how important it was in the New Testament. I've done some work on Biblical scholarship, so I was impressed by that and I said, "that's impressive, maybe I should look into it." Then I read Levi and others who had historical articles on it going back to the pre-Aristotelian and pre-Platonic philosophies in Greece.

T: Sophist philosophies?

K: Yes, right, but also even especially Plato. I reread the Phaedrus, and I was just amazed how important this word was. I had been teaching the Phaedrus for years, and I said "how could I overlook that?" So, basically, I got it from Tillich originally, and then what I have done is transfer his concept of its importance to theology to rhetoric and to other things too for that matter.

T: So for you the foundation of it has been kind of interdisciplinary—you found it in a theological field?

K: Right, yes.

T: Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that a ripe moment was needed for "true" rhetoric to occur—

K: That's interesting, that's very good.

T: Do you feel kairos is a necessary component of rhetoric; can there be rhetoric without kairos?

K: I don't really think so. I think that there can be rhetorical theory, but even rhetorical theory has to take into account something like a concept of right timing and due measure too. So I don't think that either in theory, but especially in practice can there be a rhetoric without a concept of timing. And as a matter of fact, I’ve tried to show that it is very important to Aristotle, and that has been neglected. I neglected that initially; I didn't know, and I'm an Aristotelian more or less. Also, as I have attempted to show, it's important in Cicero. He didn't use the word because the word didn't go into Latin completely. But, like the Greeks, they had a god they called Occasio, and occasio is not exactly the same thing as right timing. Occasio is a theological term as well: the occasion of sin, the time or situation where you can be led into sin. It comes to English in that way, which is kind of a backward way at that.

T: Do you believe kairos is beyond the rhetor's control, or can the rhetor manufacture or create kairos?

K: Well, I can see that a rhetor can choose the right time, and in that sense he can create it. He may realize this is not the right time to bring this up yet, but if he waits too long it's going to be too late. So timing, or the right time, is sometimes in the hands of the rhetorician, but not always. Sometimes a situation just arises, and if a rhetorician wants to persuade, he has to use the time, and so in that case what he can do is simply to adapt himself to that time. Or, sometimes, say these times are not very good or not very favorable to this idea, then he may show you back historically how this has been a very important idea, and we should not forget that. So, there are different things a rhetorician can do with regard to time. It is not totally in his control.

T: Would it be along the lines of carpe diem?

K: That's a part of it, but also if the diem is not right, then you can tell people, "you people nowadays don't think very much of the importance of this particular concept, but it is important"—you can create that kind of a timing.

T: So you create the feeling that there needs to be looking back?

K: That something needs to be done, yes. Or even looking forward too.

T: You've mentioned today and you mention in your article Paul Tillich—does his notion of kairos as "the eternal breaking into the temporal" fit within your understanding of kairos?

K: Let's say we can interpret it that way. I do say that I don't agree with Paul Tillich; I'm not really of the same theological persuasion as he is, but I can see his position, given that concept, yes. But, I don't think it needs the concept of an eternal, especially an eternal truth or something like that. It's still important that it is a truth, whether it's eternal or not, that you're trying to apply. So I'm not drawing as large, as grand as a picture as Tillich would. But you can take an idea which transcends this particular time, or maybe time in general, and you can apply it to a particular situation. Yes, I agree with that.

T: So it could be a situational truth?

K: Right.

T: What is the difference, if any, between kairos and Lloyd Bitzer's "rhetorical situation?"

K: Yes, I don't think that Bitzer included it in his conception of the rhetorical situation, and I'll expand this to include Malinowski’s concept of situational context also, or even Burke's concept of the Pentad. I don't think that any of these others, especially Bitzer's, has the richness of the concept of kairos, especially the concept of due measure, or a political or ethical dimension, or an aesthetic dimension. So, I don't see that that's quite the same thing at all, no. I think there are elements that are similar, but I don't see these other dimensions in Bitzer, or in Malinowski, or in Burke.

T: So the difference is largely in richness of the term?

K: Something like that, yes.

T: Discussions of transcendental or universal principles are absent in your article, even though you discuss Plato, Tillich, and a Biblical tradition of kairos—Do you see kairos as a universal or transcendental principle in any way?

K: As far as I can judge, I think the concept of timing is present in any civilization that I have examined. So, the answer is yes. It's disconcerting also, however, that all these different languages which I gave to you don't have a word for it; they have to have several words, which indicates that it's a complex idea. But I don't know any civilization or culture which I have looked at, and I've looked at them especially in the current book I'm working on and have read a two volume work on the development of the concept of morality in civilizations, and in all these there's a concept of time. But, not an explicit articulation of this particular principle as it has been so carefully articulated by the Greeks.

T: So it's universal as far as ranging across. . .

K: Every civilization, yes.

T: Would you call it transcendent in any way?

K: Well, it transcends an individual civilization as far as I can see, in that sense.

T: Is it a political principle? Is it inherently politicized?

K: In its origins it was. As a matter of fact, you may remember that the symbolic reference was to kairos as a God. He was a God in Greece, and he was represented as a young man, a student at the two-year, kind of junior college preparation they had for policing and for war. And then, when the idea transferred into Latin, Occasio, she also became a Goddess, and she had a political connection too. But the major emphasis of the effete, the effedia, of Greece was to prepare for political life by rhetoric. So it had a political dimension.

T: Do you feel it does now?

K: Well, I don't think it does now, that's the problem. Even with the emphasis I have given to that concept in the articles I have written, I see many people will adopt the word kairos and won't drag along a lot of the aesthetic and political and ethical implications which it has. I can obviously see how you could use kairos without, at a particular time, without its political dimensions, but it had basically a large political dimension to it. I'd have to say that.

T: And it would be difficult in many discussions to carry along all . . .

K: . . . All the dimensions, sure. Yes, I'm sure about that.

T: Do you feel there have been any misunderstandings of kairos—has the field adopted and utilized it in a way that is valid and productive?

K: I actually think there have only been two fields that have adopted it right now, maybe three. Obviously, theology has adopted it, and I think that by and large Tillich's interpretations of kairos have not done a whole lot of violence to the Greek concept. They put it into a particular religious framework, but I don't think that they have distorted the idea in any way that I can think of right now. I have not thought about that. Maybe I will disagree with what I'm saying, but at the moment I don't see that. The other two fields that have somewhat adopted it are rhetoric, current rhetoric right now, and I don't see any major misinterpretation of kairos so far. The people that write about it are American rhetoricians such as myself and others, and so I don't see any major distortions there. And the only other field which has adopted it ever so slightly is philosophy; there have been several philosophy articles, articles in the Philosophical Review and so on, and I don't see a misinterpretation there either. Some of these philosophy people have acknowledged my influence too, and it's kind of hard to read what I have to say and violently disagree with these same concepts. So, I'd have to say to that I don't see any major misinterpretations. But it has not been that universally adopted. I wish it were.

T: I think it will continue to expand.

K: Well, I think it will too, yes.

T: Would you like to see any new interpretations or understandings of kairos, or would you prefer that the term retain a specific, historically based meaning and application?

K: Well, I think the idea has to be adopted, adapted to our civilization, our media, radio and television, and speaking to a people at a distance and all that. Kairos has to adapt to that, and in that sense there are going to be dimensions to kairos which may be new, and that doesn't bother me, as long as the fundamental epistemological ethical and aesthetic and political dimensions remain.

T: So you can especially see it changing, at least in some respects, in relation to technology?

K: Right, certainly.

T: Do you see any applicability of a theory of kairos to fields other than rhetoric and composition?

K: Oh, I think it's very important in ethics, and I think that that's almost how the concept began with Protagoras and people like that. In other words, the just thing is that you work for five hours and I only work for two, therefore you should get more money than I do and so on. That's an ethical application. And, I don't know—there is currently, nowadays, you've probably heard of it, a thing called situational ethics, and situational ethics would be very close to a concept of kairic ethics. So I think that ethics is a field in which a concept such as kairos could apply. Composition is a part of education, but I think it applies more generally to education than just to composition.

T: So more broadly?

K: Oh yes, I think the concept of kairos is much larger than just composition. I frankly think that you could probably take a concept of kairos and apply it to practically almost anything. I think historically you could examine how a particular culture or period felt such and such a way in terms of a concept of kairos. So I think it can be applied to many other fields to which it has not yet been applied.

T: Is there any field which you feel in particular needs an understanding of kairos, a field which would be especially helped by such a discussion.

K: Ethics would be a field like that, and I think history also.

T: And how about literary analysis and literature?

K: There is a fellow by the name of George Mason, I don't know if I have a copy of his article here or not. He has applied, has attempted to apply kairos to literature. I think that there are many things such as why such and such an author was popular in this period, and why Spencer is not as popular today as he was thought to be a hundred years ago, and so on. I think concepts—judgments like that can be helped by a concept like kairos. What was the current situation, what were the current values, what were the current ethical situations, what were the current political and so on values of the time.

T: What would require, I would imagine, a lot of historical research?

K: They would need to, yes.

T: As you've mentioned, a few articles have attempted to introduce kairos into literary analysis—how would you integrate kairos into, say, a discussion a particular literary work? How would you use kairos as a heuristic to understanding literature?

K: I would say, yes, you could take a piece—a curious thing that you ask this just now. I was just finishing a letter of recommendation for somebody from Queens College, and she wrote a very interesting article on the early Yeats, the mid-period Yeats, and the late Yeats. Her concern was that the early Yeats had an attitude towards the refrain, you know, the different stanza at the end of which you always repeated the same refrain. And Yeats does that in one of his early poems, at the end of the first stanza "Fal de ral fal de ral" at the end of the second stanza "Fal de ral Fal de ral," and the same thing in the third stanza, but it meant something different in each case. At the time, though, it was not, or rather, critical perspectives on the refrain were that this type of device was too simplistic and it shouldn't be used. But Yeats used it in a much more sophisticated way. Then there was a period during which he didn't use it, and then there was a third period which he used it in a much more sophisticated way to make a philosophical statement, three different types of philosophical statements, at the end of different stanzas.

T: All in one poem?

K: All in one poem, yes. And so, I would say that's a kind of use of kairos, you know; he's viewing it in a perspective of the early concept of the time, and he's changing it, adapting it, to another concept which he wants to push. That's a kind of a use of kairos in literary interpretation, which I think is very useful.

T: Very interesting. So there seems to be also a kairos for the critic when he's looking at it, how he composed it?

K: Oh yes, right. That's it, the poet and the critic too.

T: Do you see kairos as important to or working in everyday life? How does it play into our daily lives?

K Let me tell you a situation to which it applies. Baseball's very important right now, and one time I heard a pitcher, I think it was Bob Lanier, I'm not sure, say "batting is timing, and pitching is disturbing timing." That sounds reductionistic, but it's not, it's very true in many ways. In batting you have to time the bat and the ball, and the pitcher is trying to disrupt that timing, so that you can't hit it. It applies to football, it applies to all sports. Timing is very important to all sports; you know, a half-second later, the guy's gone for a touchdown. It applies to, uh—I don't see any area of life it doesn't apply. It applies to love. You approach this girl and ask her to marry you at the right time. My daughter is in a relationship with someone right now, and she says "I don't know if it’s the right time daddy." She talks about that all the time without realizing it. In our profession, you can send the book away to be published at the wrong time, or the wrong place. By the way, a second meaning of kairos was "the right place" in addition to the right time. It is not as strong a meaning as the right time, but it was a second meaning. So, I don't really know if—it is difficult to find an area in which timing is not important. So you say, tell me where kairos is important, and I say to you, tell me where it's not important. I've always liked that baseball statement; it's very interesting, and it's very true.

T: And you can see proper measure—

K: And proper measure operating in there too. That's right.

T: Which pitch and that sort of thing?

K: Right, or you can swing too far and that's too much measure or the timing isn't right--- There it goes, over there, in the stands. Yes, the timing is important, but also the measure. So I don't know any area in which it doesn't apply.

T: I know that one of your current projects is work on a neutral moral code. Does kairos have a place in that code, and, perhaps more importantly, is today the kairos for the code you are suggesting?

K: Yes, I think kairos has an important place in that code. I'll give you an example. My code is based upon five principles: respect for life, respect for family, respect for property, respect for truth, and respect for liberty. Those five. Then, those can be enlarged, and I enlarge them to thirty principles of rights, human rights, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN. Now, each of those rights—take the right to life—that's not absolute—none of these rights is absolute. It can always alter. For instance, if a person attacks me, and it's going to be death one way or the other, somebody's right to life is going to disappear. So I have to choose my right to life versus his right to life. Or, if somebody's attacking my children, my family or something, there it's maybe his life versus their life. And so, it's not a totally absolute—it's not absolutes. It has to be judged by the situation. A situation in which someone would be attacking my children, I'd choose to make a decision that their lives are more important than his life. The same thing happens with regard to truth. How many times may I have to tell a lie to protect my family, or myself, or something like that. And so, these five basic principles and their applications to thirty of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are all subject to the situation. And, certain rights take priority over other rights. Generally speaking, I'll sacrifice my property to save my life. There may be occasions where I might not, but I can't think of any right now. So, the situation is very important, but is not totally divorced from all rights. Usually some rights are going to be subordinate to other rights, and I'll make up my mind in terms of the situation, you see. I'm going to normally choose life over nearly all the rest of them, but not always. I may sacrifice my life for my family, and many people say that’s dignified and worthy and so on. I normally will sacrifice truth to save my life. So this applies very much to this neutral moral code.

T: So your judgment in relation to these codes is dependent on the situation, and that's how you see kairos?

K: Yes, very much so, right.

T: So is today the kairos for the code?

K: In a certain sense, yes. As a matter of fact, I'm curious that you put the question that way because the way that I'm presenting the code is that there is a lot of evidence that morality is—well, we have certain moral problems which we didn't have. Divorce, for instance, has broken up half the families of this country, or actually half the marriages of this country end up in divorce. As a result of that, many children are living without a parent, sometimes without either parent. Consequently, we need some kind of moral training because it's clear we're having problems. I ask my students to write an ethical paper and they [shrug]; I ask them to write a historical paper and they make a lot of sense. Or a political paper. I ask them to write an ethical paper, and they sound like they're third graders. They don't have any way to write one because they've not been taught ethics. Our educational system in this country, and many others too, has not included enough ethics, so if you don't go to church, and only about 30% of the people go to church regularly more or less, you don't get training. So the time is now, yes, we need it more now than in the last hundred years, maybe much more than that. In any case, the time is right for something like a neutral moral code with which we can talk to people who have religion or not. And I always say since, well, about 80% of the people in the world do have some religious affiliation, there has to be a way in which people of those different persuasions can talk to the other 20%, and even talk to one another because their religious affiliations are different. Given the concept of the United Nations and of thirty basic rights, which nearly all peoples have agreed to, we could use these to forge out a neutral moral code that we can talk on and agree with at the very least, then religious people can add others to it, but it remains compatible with the basic principles. Yes, I think that this is a good time to try something like that.

T: So you're seeing the ethical as kind of a social responsibility that society at large instills in individuals?

K: These five rights are basic, if I can't have life or if I can't have property in some sense, if I can't have a family, if I can't have truth, if I can't have some basic liberties, I cannot develop. And so these five rights are necessary to the survival and the development of the individual. Ethics consists in I myself having those rights for myself, but in my respecting those rights for you and everybody else. So there's a dual aspect to ethics: there's an aspect of rights and there's an aspect of duties. Traditionally, ethics has always been presented in terms of, say, the Ten Commandments: thou shall not, thou shall not, thou shall not. That's a duty, but it assumes a right. Why shouldn't you kill somebody else? Because he has a right to life. And so I am asserting very strongly both the rights and the duties, and that's what makes up an ethical code to me.

T: And so the reason you see the kairos for it now is because somehow those kinds of ethical codes aren't being absorbed by the populace?

K: Yes, basically. 70% of the populace does not get anything like a systematic or intelligent training in ethics. Those that go to church often do, yes. That's about 30 % of the population. Now many more say they go to church than that, but actually go to church regularly, I mean not something like once a year or so. 70% of the populace is not getting an education in that respect.

T: Lastly, your impact on the discipline has been tremendous, and your work has provided fuel for many new scholarly fires—do you have any advice for the discipline, any hope for it? And do you have any advice for new scholars who want to make a difference in the field?

K: Oh, I have hope for the discipline. You mean the discipline of rhetoric and composition?

T: Yes.

K: Oh, I think writing and reading and things that they imply are going to be with us I don't know, I hope thousands and thousands of years. Whatever shape that's going to take, you know. And so I have hope for it. One thing you might say, "is it all going to be replaced by computers," but computers are just writing all the time. And so I'm not terribly worried about that. It's a different medium in which the writing is occurring, but I think that there is considerable hope for the discipline, and I'm happy to see certain aspects of classical rhetoric being revived too, and one of them is the concept of kairos. A concept of kairos asks us to respect each new time that arrives, to change our concepts, because the kairos may be different from thirty years ago, or yesterday, and so on. So I have great hope, actually, for rhetoric as a discipline. I think that one interesting thing about this is that rhetoric is more important in this country than almost in any other country. The revival of classical rhetoric, especially to teach people every day in classes in high schools and all is important, and not just a revival of classical rhetoric but movements of new rhetorics is, I think, now beginning to be taken up again. In the U. S. it already has, in France it is beginning to some extent, and in Germany too, but there not as strongly. Now, on the other hand, they have for a long time held to the importance of composition at the elementary school or the high school or whatever corresponds to that too. But not so much at the university, and I think that they're beginning to see that now. I belong to the International Society for the History of Rhetoric, and I see this in the different countries where these meetings are held, France, Germany, Italy--I gave a talk at Italy about three years ago--and Spain, and so on, and Canada.

T: So you're seeing the revival?

K: No, not just the revival, but a concern about new rhetoric. Yes, right.

T: And your advice?

K: I would say have a respect for history, but don't be bound by it. That, by the way, is perfectly consistent with a concept of kairos, because the times, our ages, are different. But I think we can learn from history, sometimes we haven't learned enough from history. That is true of rhetoric; it is true of other fields too. And I think sometimes true of ethics. So that would be one of my pieces of advice, which I would certainly make to people. I would also say that hard work is important: the inches sometimes don't come easily, we have to work at them. Consequently, don’t necessarily be satisfied with the first quick answer that might come up, especially in our modern time when we want instant something, (instant replays and so forth). Take a little time to review—even if you have an answer look at it carefully before you publish it. Or, even after you have published it, you may change your mind, and so on. So, that would be another thing that I would say. And let me put another thing too; this is true of American scholarship especially. Have not only respect for history, but respect for other cultures too, respect for other languages. I don't think that--some of our rhetoricians, for instance, practically speak only English, and I don't think that that's good. I think that we have a lot to learn from other languages. And that includes even Eastern languages.

T: Which in some ways are only now beginning to filter in [to our scholarship].

Notes

1. I would like to thank both Janice Lauer and Winifred Horner for their thoughtful and careful reading of the interview, as well as Fred Erisman, Rich Enos, and Rob McDonald for their suggestions at various stages of my work.

2. Philip Sipiora and James Baumlin have edited a forthcoming book on Kairos. The book will contain new articles on the concept of kairos as well as an extensive bibliography.

Bibliography

Kinneavy's work on kairos:

"Kairos: A Neglected Concept in Classical Rhetoric."

Delivered at the Conference of Classical Rhetoric and the Teaching of English, October 7, 1983. Unpublished.

"Kairos: A Neglected Concept in Classical Rhetoric."

Rhetoric and Praxis: The Contribution of Classical Rhetoric to Practical Reasoning. Ed. Jean Dietz Moss. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986. 79-105.

Rpt. in Landmark Essays on Rhetorical Invention in

Writing. Vol. 8. Ed. Richard Young and Yameng Liu. Mahwah, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1994. 221-239.

"Kairos in Aristotle's Rhetoric." Abstracts. International

Society for the History of Rhetoric, Ninth Biennial Conference. Turin Italy: Casa di Risparmio di Torino, 1993. 73.

(with Catherine R. Eskin). "Kairos In Aristotle's

Rhetoric." Written Communication, XI, 1 (Jan. 1994), 131-142.

(with Catherine R. Eskin). "Kairos." Historisches