terms of the pentad is much larger and open to exploration.

“Antinomies of Definition” brings out the paradox at the heart of trying to define any phenomenon. Definition requires seeing a subject in context but also differentiating that subject from its context. Burke invokes Spinoza to illustrate contextual definition, referring to the latter’s pantheistic concept of “God” or “nature” to represent the ultimate scene, as well as his assertion that all definition is negation. This means that we define something by seeing it in context and differentiating it by what it is not. Having begun with a consideration of how we view “substance,” he takes us to the paradox of purity wherein we hold ideas about God as the “pure” or “absolute” person and the “human person” as distinct from it. As he proceeds to examine “substance,” Burke introduces “Actus and Status,” referring to the act and the thing learned. Dialectics is an important element of his analysis, as he juxtaposes different points of view. He examines the “Intrinsic and Extrinsic” through the writings of Hegel and Marx, and in “The Centrality of Substance” concludes how language in fact confers a substantiality:

To call a man a friend or brother is to proclaim him consubstantial with oneself, one’s values or purposes.

“Scope and Reduction” looks at the construction of models or developing a terminology around a particular domain. It points out how measurements and metaphors, divisions and distinctions are all reductions. When such a terminology has been established, then a “scene” reflects elements that are a part of the reduction. Burke looks at the “Creation” as the ground or “scene” of human acts by examining a letter that American philosopher William James wrote to his father. Burke describes in dramatistic terms the pantheistic notion of God being the entire universe and the ontological concept of “being” as the “scene” and the “act,” respectively. In describing how after the industrial revolution, the notion of the environment was narrowed to focus on economic factors, and how “market law” has replaced “natural law,” Burke brings us face to face with how human freedom itself has begun to be seen through a “free market.” He points out the reduction by which “money is not a mere agency, in our civilization, but is a rationalizing ground of action.”

“Part II: The Philosophic Schools” examines the five terms of dramatism to look at their applications in various philosophies. Burke mentions in the introduction that relevant philosophies could be “any statements in which these grammatical resources are specifically utilized.” Consequently, part II focuses on materialism and how it features “scene,” idealism and how it features “agent,” pragmatism to look at “agency,” mysticism to look at “purpose” and realism for how it features “act.” Spinoza, Darwin, Aristotle, Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, and Marx are some of the philosophers whose works yield insights. An example of one such insight is Hobbes’s “reduction of the will itself to terms of a scene mechanically determined.” Burke presents the dialectical shift from Hegel’s idealism to Marx and Engels’ materialism in simpler terms:

Idealism had decided that knowledge was possible because Nature is of the same substance as Thought, hence Thought is able to think of it. Dialectical materialism reverses the relation by saying that thought is of the same substance as nature, hence can be a reflection of nature.

In discussing the concept of purpose, Burke considers both Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to look at elements of tragedy like plot, character, thought, melody, diction, and spectacle. This is also the portion of the book where he engages with the established criticism of well-known critic I. A. Richards, the work of social scientist George Herbert Mead, and the semanticist Alfred Korzybski in the analysis of poetry. It is from such analytical prose that Burke is considered the founder of New Criticism.

“Part III: On Dialectic” is the portion of the book that explores the theory of constitutions. This part is key for its validation of the methodology that Burke has taken pains to describe in part I and whose universal nature as an analytical tool has been shown in part II. Burke upholds the nature of dialectics as the discourse between two or more differing points of view in order to arrive at a transcendent unity. He considers a constitution in substance to be a set of motives that are deduced from the customs and values that have evolved from the way humans affect one other’s temperament or constitutions. When Burke presents the binary of “Merger-Division” and its transcendence creating a new unity, he is actually showing a model for how societies can achieve a resolution of different interests without resorting to the “scapegoat mechanism” of, for example, Germany during the Third Reich. Burke considers various elements of how this concept of constitution translates into life for Americans, looking at extra-constitutionality, judicial review, constitutional unity, and political diversity. He is able to make a case for debate leading to clear vision and good choices for action.

The appendix to A Grammar of Motives is in four parts. While the first three are concerned with poetry and its literary criticism, Appendix D looks at the “The Four Master Tropes.” Burke considers “metaphor” to be close to perspective, “metonymy” to be a form of reduction, “synecdoche” to be a device for representation, and “irony” to reflect the dialectic nature of discourse.