A Point in Time Filled with Significance: The Application of Kairos in Contemporary Rhetoric and Civic Pedagogy

This study examines how kairos continues to operate in contemporary discourses and disciplines despite its inadequate treatment as a normative principle in modern studies. Notwithstanding James Kinneavy’s revival of kairos encouraging many scholars to revisit the term in search of a complete definition, there is still an absence of conclusive application of the concept in contemporary pedagogy. I argue that, over time, the two versions of kairos have become entangled, contradictory, and thought of as too flexible to be taught in a modern setting because they have resisted concrete methodology. While the idea that kairos possesses two dimensions has already been observed, modern attempts to explain kairos have focused on only one version and there has been no thorough attempt to expand on their interdependence. Recent overviews of kairos’s employment in classical Greek pedagogies alongside the theories and arguments put forward by Kinneavy aid in developing a new understanding of the interdependence between these two versions of kairos. This renewed attention provides a space where it is possible to bring together these seemingly opposing concepts to not only highlight the role it plays within modern discourse but also identify the application of kairos within a contemporary example of civic pedagogy