In this collection edited by Alan G. Gross and Arthur E. Walzer, scholars in communication, rhetoric and composition, and philosophy seek to “reread” Aristotle’s Rhetoric from a purely rhetorical perspective.

Explanations of the cause of the Challenger disaster by the Presidential Commission and by communication scholars are flawed. These explanations are characterized by a common tendency to emphasize the technical and procedural aspects of organizational life at the expense of the cognitive and ethical. Rightly construed, the Challenger disaster illustrates both the need for a revived art of rhetoric and the importance of putting in place the political and social conditions that make this art efficacious in furthering cognitive understanding and (...) ethical conduct. (shrink)