Permanence and Change was written and first published in the depths of the Great Depression. Attitudes Toward History followed it two years later. These were revolutionary texts in the theory of communication, and, as classics, they retain their surcharge of energy. Permanence and Change treats human communication in terms of ideal cooperation, whereas Attitudes Towards History characterizes tactics and patterns of conflict typical of actual human associations. It is in Permanence and Change that Burke establishes in path-breaking fashion that form permeates society just as it does poetry and the arts. Hence, his master idea that forms of art are not exclusively aesthetic: the cycles of a storm, the gradations of a sunrise, the stages of an epidemic, the undoing of Prince Hamlet are all instances of progressive form. This new edition of Permanence and Change reprints Hugh Dalziel Duncan's long sociological introduction and includes a substantial new afterward in which Burke reexamines his early ideas in light of subsequent developments in his own thinking and in social theory.

Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION PROLOGUE PART I ON INTERPRETATION CHAPTER I: ORIENTATION All Living Things Are Critics Veblen's Concept of "Trained Incapacity" Training, Means-Selecting, and Escape The Pavlov, Watson, and Gestalt Experiments in Meaning The Scapegoat as an Error in Interpretation Connection between Rationalization and Orientation CHAPTER II: MOTIVES Motives Are Subdivisions in a Larger Frame of Meaning The Pleasure Principle in Orientation The Strategy of Motives Further Consideration of Motive as Part of a Larger Whole Motives Are Shorthand Terms for Situations CHAPTER III: OCCUPATIONAL PSYCHOSIS The Nature of Interest Occupational Psychoses of the Present The Technological Psychosis Effects upon Literature Occupational Psychosis as Trained Incapacity CHAPTER IV: STYLE The Essence of Stylistic Appeal Various Romantic Solutions The Need for Definition CHAPTER V: MAGIC, RELIGION, AND SCIENCE The Three Orders of Rationalization A Humanistic, or Poetic, Rationalization PART II PERSPECTIVE BY INCONGRUITY CHAPTER I: THE RANGE OF PIETY Magical and Utilitarian Meanings Piety As a System-builder CHAPTER II: NEW MEANINGS The Factor of Impiety in Evangelism Necessitous and Symbolic Labor Reservations Concerning Logic Piety-impiety Conflict in Nietzsche CHAPTER III: PERSPECTIVE AS METAPHOR Illustrations of Perspective by Incongruity Planned Incongruity in Bergson The Function of Metaphor CHAPTER IV: ARGUMENT BY ANALOGY Analogy and Proof Tests of Success Classification Dictated by Interest Interrelation of Analogy, Metaphor, Abstraction, Classification, Interest, Expectancy, and Intention The Search for Analogous Processes An Incongruous Assortment of Incongruities CHAPTER V: SECULAR CONVERSIONS The Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis McDougall's Modifications of Freudianism Exorcism by Misnomer Examination of a Case Described by Rivers Conversion and the Lex Continui CHAPTER VI: MEANING AND REGRESSION Pure, or Unmixed, Responses Conversion and Regression in Religion CONCLUSION A Historical Parallel Towards a Philosophy of Being PART III THE BASIS OF SIMPLIFICATION CHAPTER I: CAUSALITY AND COMMUNICATION Major Shifts in Perspective The Rock of Certainty Two Aspects of Speech CHAPTER II: PERMANENCE AND CHANGE Modern Parallels to Ancient Thought CHAPTER III: SECULAR MYSTICISM IN BENTHAM Bentham's "Table of the Springs of Action" CHAPTER IV: THE ETHICAL CONFUSION Recommending by Tragedy The Peace-war Conflict Critique of Veblen's Solution Egoistic-altruistic Merger Ethicizing of the Means of Support Variants of the Ethicizing Tendency The "Pathetic Fallacy" CHAPTER V: THE SEARCH FOR MOTIVES Magical and Scientific Interpretation Statistical Motives Where Scientists and Mystics Meet The Basis of Reference The Part and the Whole Outlines of a "Metabiology" CHAPTER VI: OCCUPATION AND PREOCCUPATION Extending the Concept of Occupation Ambivalence of Weakness and Prowess CHAPTER VII: THE POETRY OF ACTION The Mystic's Sterilization of Combat In Qualified Defense of Lawrence Recalcitrance CONCLUSIONS APPENDIX On Human Behavior, Considered "Dramatistically" AFTERWORD Permanence and Change: In Retrospective Prospect