Abstract

This dissertation examines kairos, the Greek word for timeliness. This study argues that kairos plays a reconciling role between seemingly disparate rhetorical and philosophical systems of thought. Chapter I begins with the Sophists' idea that kairos emerges out of an effective harnessing of all available means of persuasion. Thus moments described as kairotic are reserved for those containing this reconciling feature. Chapter II, "The Political Shape of Kairos," reads Derrida's Specters of Marx as one such example of kairos. In his attempt to reconcile deconstruction and Marxism, Derrida makes kairos visible in the act of re-interpreting Marx himself. Chapter III, "Paulo Freire: A Life of Kairos," examines the pedagogy of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in terms of his attempt to overcome the student/teacher contradiction. It is argued that kairos is visible in Freire's life as he reconciles the common dialectic of power between educator and student. Chapter IV, "The Rhetoric of Social Action: Kairos and Liberationist Theologies," concludes that Liberation Theologies of the 1960's were kairotic because they worked for a reconciliation between Marxism and Christianity. One result of this combination was a Church that responded to the needs of the poor in a more direct manner. Chapter V concludes with the suggestion that kairos may occupy a middle space between dialectic and deconstruction