Abstract

Kenneth Burke's Dramatism, and indeed the whole of his epistemological and ontological system, can be described as a reaction to what he views as a pervasive and pernicious scientism, an improper attitude that extends scientific methods to all aspects of life, that truncates human purpose, uses language as a means of mystification, and dominates nature to the point of ecological imbalance. This reductive perspective is also apparent in the ascendance of technologism, or the unremitting and unquestioned use of technology as an instrument of progress. ;This effort seeks to expand on this aspect of Burke's work, to explore the symbolic nature of our technological condition. Within this framework, Burke offers a symbolic perspective on the problems of scientism and technologism, which includes a vocabulary of this "Counter-Nature," a critical but not completely Marxist perspective on the Cult of Commodities, and an understanding of the perfecting nature of human symbolism as an entelechial striving for fulfillment. His idea of entelechy, the tracking down of implications within a particular vocabulary, is the principle that undergirds a fundamental part of his definition of human: the motivation for fulfillment that makes humans "rotten with perfection." Entelechy is illustrated, for Burke, in the scientific "perfection" of the vocabularies of genetic and atomic manipulation, and in the creative clutter of technology that now threatens our existence. ;Burke's system arrives at a deeper understanding of motivations driving this vast creativity by focusing on the common parlance of language. Centering on the possibility of attitude, rather than action to correct the imbalances of industrial excess, Burke's Neo-Stoic resignation embraces a pedagogical view of humans as both biological and symbolic, as entities constituted by the interaction of those two realms. Burke's satire, keeping the admonition alive, and his Logology, likewise vibrant with admonition, are advanced as correctives to the efficiency of the instrumental principle. Rife as they are with the implications of their own instrumentality, these approaches offer us some stunning possibilities for understanding and perhaps shaping human attitudes and motivations.