The Review of Metaphysics

Richard Boulton thoughtfully walks a narrow ridge between the order and clarity of method and the revelatory. In his introduction, he states, “The method purposively abstains from being used as a way to prove things as indisputably true or false, and works towards a metaphysics able to encompass all meanings including all truth and fallacy in the same universe whilst not flattening meaning out into a monism.” This sentence [End Page 138] frames the ongoing project that Boulton undertakes with measured consideration.

In the first chapter, Boulton articulates his model. The textured manner in which he does so yields a connection between a model and an impressionistic map. As an interpreter engages a text, it is impossible to separate the intentionality of text and interpreter. In the words of Hans-Georg Gadamer, each interpreter brings a bias or prejudice to the engagement of a given text. What Boulton provides is a public display of bias that presents perceptual clarity and simultaneously perceptual limits. The articulation of the model offers a public admission of fallibility and a sense of trust between and among researchers. He discloses the perceptual manner in which he engages a text, permitting the reader to understand interpretive findings as dialogic revelation open for public inspection due to the clarity of methodological rigor.

This project illuminates Charles Sanders Peirce’s insistence on semiosis: One sign finds its identity via another, which yields identity for another. Boulton frames this orientation within the interplay of dialogue, which engages the revelatory; dialectic, which disrupts temporal meaning; and rhetoric, which yields a persuasive new path. This sequence of dialogue, dialectic, and rhetoric continues, making new insights possible. This perspective is akin to Gadamer’s assertion that new meaning comes from mistakes and differing perspectives. As Boulton poses this trinity of performative terms, the disruptive nature of dialectic makes revelatory insight possible when meaning becomes unduly solidified. This perspective concurs with the insights of Emmanuel Levinas and his explication of the Saying and the Said. In every Saying, which is a revelatory outburst of insight, there is a Said waiting to be solidified, and in each Said, there is a kernel of Saying waiting once again to move forth differently and in a disruptive manner. The interplay of Saying and Said is the manner in which human insight emerges. Boulton’s use of the trinity of dialogue, dialectic, and rhetoric further clarifies this perspective, which perhaps offers greater illumination on this process of knowledge acquisition and disruption.

Boulton discusses the ongoing importance of opposition for the discovery of meaning, stating that perhaps a definition of intelligence involves the ability to organize opposition together into a coherent narrative. Again, he seeks order without imposing artificial and undue rigor. His understanding of narrative is like a Navajo rug; in each rug, there is an intentional flaw, permitting the release of evil spirits. Perhaps in philosophy, the greatest of evil spirits is undue certainty. Even in his discussion of meaning as a cyclical pattern extending into the infinite, Boulton disrupts the infinite, recognizing it as having finite moments. The dialectic of infinite and finite work with one another, with infinity tied to idealism and the finite to temporal clarity. Again, he alludes to Levinas and his notion of “totality and infinity,” one of his famous works. Levinas’s philosophy never falls prey totally to the seduction of infinity, recognizing the dialectic between the two major movements in the lifeworld. [End Page 139]

The title of the book is Dialectic, Rhetoric and Contrast: The Infinite Middle of Meaning. This reader understands Boulton’s work as dialectic, rhetoric, and dialogic contrast, for the subtitle points to that dialogical sphere—the “between.” Without the revelatory, new insights are impossible. Without disruption of a solidified revelatory, they are removed into ideological presuppositions. Contrast evokes an image of lack: What is missing? Dialogic contrast evokes the revelatory engagement of the unity of contraries. Boulton references this position in his conclusion, stating, “Contrast can...