For all that he's appropriated as a proto-postmodernist, Nietzsche is as profoundly anti-reductionist as he is anti-universalist. Rather than these extremes, he emphasizes the circumstantial. Christian values originate as an outgrowth and reversal of Jewish values (GM). Debilitating skepticism is sublimated by Frederick into a "dangerous freedom" that establishes German cultural hegemony across Europe (BGE). And of course, the same process is good or bad, life-affirming or life-denying depending on the time and culture that it works on. The Nietzschean question is never "what gave rise to this phenomenon," but always "how is this phenomenon expressing itself now" - how is it functioning?

Kairos provides the historical foundation of rhetorical theory and exigence is probably the contemporary label for the moment of rhetorical practice. Sometimes a speech act persuades because it tells a good story. Other times it persuades because its a good argument. Much of the time, unfortunately, it doesn't persuade at all - but it produces the effect of persuasion as the audience uses it as a pretext to "reach" foregone conclusions. Certainly after Gaonkar, any theory that proceeds by saying "everything is this" must be understood as openly opposed to rhetoric - or as parasitic upon it, if the theory obnoxiously insists upon rhetorical lineage and status.

We're actually tempted to put any sufficiently robust claim of over-determination - as in Baudrillard's sense of one level overwhelming another, not as used by Freud or Althusser - beyond the horizon of rhetorical theory. Monsieur Foucault would be invited to exit stage far left, and to take his anti-circumstantial, overly-discursive, nominalist theory of language with him (alas, we don't make the rules around here). Regardless - if Nietzsche was not a rhetorical theorist, he certainly approached philosophy with an almost incomparable rhetorical sensibility.

References:
* Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. Ed. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, 1989.
* Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo. Trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. Ed. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1969.
* Gaonkar, Dilip. "The Idea of Rhetoric in the Rhetoric of Science." Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science. Eds. Alan G. Gross and William M. Keith. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996.

Previously:
* "Nietzsche Was A Nihilist" And "Nietzsche Was An Anti-Semite" Had A Race To the Bottom. "Nietzsche Was A Nihilist" Won. [IIS]