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Recent theorists have tended to deprecate the role of rhetoric in constructing public morality, and have resorted to “privatized” models of morality. This essay outlines weaknesses in the foundational metaphors of that position and offers a theory of the rhetorical crafting of public morality. Morality is described as humanly generated, objectively constrained, and contingent. The theory is illustrated and substantiated by a description of the public moral struggle over moral justice for Afro‐Americans.
Celeste M. Condit (Sun,) studied this question.