The rhetorical theory of argument, if held as a conclusion of an argument, is self-defeating. The rhetorical theory can be refined, but these refinements either make the theory subject to a second self- defeat problem or tacitly an epistemic theory of argument.

In this provocative book, Edward Schiappa argues that rhetorical theory did not originate with the Sophists in the fifth century B.C.E, as is commonly believed, but came into being a century later. Schiappa examines closely the terminology of the Sophists—such as Gorgias and Protagoras—and of their reporters and opponents—especially Plato and Aristotle—and contends that the terms and problems that make up what we think of as rhetorical theory had not yet formed in the era of the (...) early Sophists. His revision of rhetoric’s early history enables him to change the way we read both the Sophists and Aristotle and Plato. Schiappa contends, for example, that Plato probably coined the Greek word for rhetoric; that Gorgias is a “prose rhapsode” whose style does not deserve the criticism it has received; that Isocrates deliberately never uses the Greek work for "rhetoric" and that our habit of pitting him versus Plato as “rhetoric versus philosophy” is problematic; and that Aristotle "disciplined" the genre of epideictic in a way that robs the genre of its political importance. His book will be of great interest to students of classics, communications, philosophy, and rhetoric. (shrink)

The pragmatic theory of explanation is an attempt to see explanation as a linguistic response to a cognitive problem where the content of the response depends on the context of the scientific inquiry. The present paper draws on the rhetorical situation, as it is defined by Loyld Bitzer, in order to understand how the context may influence the content as well as the acceptability of the response.

Rhetorical ethos and dramatic theory -- Syntax, style, and ethos -- The worth of words -- Memory and ethos -- Shaw, ethos, and rhetorical wit -- Athol Fugard's dramatic rhetoric -- Rhetoric and silence in Holocaust drama.

The pragmatic theory of explanation is an attempt to see explanation as a linguistic response to a cognitive problem where the content of the response depends on the context of the scientific inquiry. The present paper draws on the rhetorical situation, as it is defined by Loyld Bitzer, in order to understand how the context may influence the content as well as the acceptability of the response.

In The Ethical Fantasy of Rhetorical Theory, Ira Allen does much more than give us a theory of rhetoric. He gives us a map of reality, of how we make the world real to ourselves, how we convince one another of its realness, even as what we so deem is constantly changing. This book is a primer on how the fact of radical contingency is not in and of itself fatal to the project of human life and (...) politics. On the contrary, for Allen, it is the source of human life and politics. In his careful and elegant way of thinking Allen shows us how out of the chaos and swirl of all that is, we manage nonetheless to continuously produce a tension between what we claim the world... (shrink)

ABSTRACT Google Ngram metadata reveal that the English phrase “rhetorical theory” is not that old, appearing on the scene in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and then picking up dramatically with critical and literary theory in the 1960s. How do we square this with familiar arguments that rhetorical theory is much, much older? In this forum contribution I argue that the long view applies to our contemporary rhetorical theory only if we (...) equivocate. Much of what currently falls under the heading “rhetorical theory” has little or nothing to do with the systematic conceptualization of persuasive discourse —general, posthuman, eco-, and materialist rhetorics are the most prominent counterexamples. Instead, around 1900, Gertrude Buck develops what I call the short and sharp view that prevails to this day: rhetorical theory offers reality figured by way of its alternatives. (shrink)

One might presume that elite educational environments, including colleges and universities, have been the exclusive venues for rhetorical theory. Rhetorical theory typically takes the form of published treatises, monographs, and essays. Thus, the status of theorist would have been denied to, among others, African Americans during the nineteenth century because they were not afforded opportunities to become literate or, even if literate, not admitted into realms of elite literacy. But there are the seeds of a competing (...) story, particularly regarding the narratives written by Frederick Douglass. Henry Louis Gates Jr., for example, has stated that Douglass used... (shrink)

This book discusses theories of legal reasoning and provides an overall view of the rhetoric of legal justification. It shows how and why lawyers arguments can be rationally persuasive even though rarely, if ever, logically conclusive or compelling. It examines the role of "legal syllogism" and universality of legal reasoning, looking at arguments of consequentialism and principle, and concludes by questioning the infallibility of judges as lawmakers.

We’re in the midst of a wave of efforts to historicize and localize theory. One stream, oriented toward a global social imaginary, has sought to “ provincialize Europe,” in Dipesh Chakrabarty’s resonant trope. This means provincializing Euro-American social theory and situating it within a particular geopolitical formation—a contextualizing project that opens space to center what the Comaroffs call “theory from the South” and other regional or indigenous loci of orientation. Another stream situates itself more comfortably within Western (...) traditions of theory but casts them in new historical lights—for instance a revisionist account of critical theory as the product of Hegel’s refiguration of medieval... (shrink)

This paper offers re-assessment of Scottish Common Sense rhetoric and its relationship to pluralist practice and philosophical method. It argues that the rhetorical texts of George Campbell, Hugh Blair, and Alexander Bain can be read as a practical application of Scottish Common Sense philosophy. This offers a novel means of examining the relationship that Scottish rhetoric has to the philosophy of David Hume and also its own innovative philosophy of language. Finally, I argue that Scottish rhetoric makes a unique (...) contribution to rhetorical methodology's key place in the creation of social and moral consensus. (shrink)

In 1967 Richard Rorty edited an anthology of philosophy papers called The Linguistic Turn. This book was supposed to "provide material for reflection on the most recent philosophical revolution, that of linguistic philosophy" (2). Rorty contends in the introduction that the "history of philosophy is punctuated by revolts against the practices of previous philosophers" (1). Thus The Linguistic Turn tries to highlight the ways in which philosophical methods and problems were being rethought in terms of language throughout the middle portion (...) of the twentieth century. In 1967 Rorty was not yet the iconoclastic, star philosopher and champion of American pragmatism that he became after the publication of Philosophy and .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Figures of Entanglement: Diffractive Readings of Barad, New Materialism, and Rhetorical Theory and Criticism ed. by Christopher N. Gamble and Joshua S. HananSavannah Greer DowningFigures of Entanglement: Diffractive Readings of Barad, New Materialism, and Rhetorical Theory and Criticism. Edited by Christopher N. Gamble and Joshua S. Hanan. Routledge, 2021. xvi + 122 pp. $168 (hardcover), $47.16 (electronic book). ISBN: 9780367903794.Rhetorical scholars have turned (...) to various new materialist frameworks to shift the discipline's historically anthropocentric focus and fully engage matter's rhetoricity. While all such frameworks attempt to challenge "the anthropocentric assumption that nonhuman matter is intrinsically passive or non-agential and thus external to or separable from (human) meaning," Figures of Entanglement enters this burgeoning conversation by centering the unique contributions of Karen Barad (xi, x). Readers may recognize this collection from a 2016 special issue of Review of Communication. Yet, with a new foreword by editors Christopher N. Gamble and Joshua S. Hanan and an afterword by Laurie Gries, this collection makes Barad's distinct approach to matter's rhetoricity even more apparent, underscoring its fruitful potential for new materialist rhetorics invested in ethical, political transformation.In the book's foreword Gamble and Hanan differentiate Barad's per-formative new materialism from "vital" as well as what they refer to as "negative" new materialisms to show the generative potential of Barad's framework and the notion of entanglement (x). Other new materialisms tend to be "inclusionary"—add matter and stir—and fail to complicate "the human" itself and its differences (xiv, xi). First, vital and negative new materialisms maintain a distinction between being and knowing, allowing humans to emerge with a unique capacity to "objectively observe and know the existence of something essential, determinate, and unchanging about [End Page 395] reality that precedes and remains unaffected by both its own activities and our observations of it" (xi). On the contrary, Barad's performative approach suggests that "no aspect of reality—including human thought, meaning, and observation—is in any sense external to matter or ever remains entirely unchanged by matter's ongoing performances" (x). Here, humans are not "outside" of observation, but all observation "human or otherwise" co-constitutes what is observed (xi). Second, failing to interrogate "the human" in an attempt to observe matter's vitality is an ethical flaw that makes other approaches less capable of grappling with difference: they have been charged with "erasing associations between race, gender, and matter" and (re)producing a homogenizing, "Western-colonialist notion of humanness" (xiv). In contrast, Barad's is a "thoroughly relational," performative new materialism (1).Barad's concept of "entanglement" draws attention to the indeterminacy of matter and meaning, but it is accompanied by an ethical imperative to examine how difference, human or otherwise, is produced and the implications of power imbalances that arise through these enactments. For Barad, the notion of entanglement does not dissolve difference; difference is what matters. Indeed, they give us a way of thinking about how performative intra-actions produce difference through material-discursive practices, or apparatuses—differences that may be expected but are not inevitable. Rhetorical scholars are therefore invited to interrogate the production of boundaries that cause harm and reconfigure them, rather than assume the discreteness of boundaries from the start. Gamble and Hanan thus make a convincing case for how Barad's work may contribute to important scholarship in decolonial and critical rhetorics for which vital and negative new materialisms are less equipped.Gamble and Hanan utilize the introduction to show how Barad's per-formative new materialism both "supports and affirms" rhetorical materialism, or rhetoric's materiality, and enriches it (5). Ushered in by Michael Calvin McGee, "standard" rhetorical materialism worked to challenge the centuries-old debate about rhetoric's secondary, supplementary status vis-à-vis philosophy by recognizing rhetoric as part of a "shifting and dynamic material history" (6). Building upon this view, Ronald Walter Greene utilizes Foucault's notion of the apparatus to demonstrate how even the "material history" McGee called our attention to is itself "produced by apparatuses"—history is not "outside" of meaning (6). Instead, rhetoric's materiality is a "publicity effect" produced through technologies of rhetoric and intersecting power... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.3 (2000) 243-258 [Access article in PDF] Poaching on Men's Philosophies of Rhetoric: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Rhetorical Theory by Women Jane Donawerth Although their discussions have often been ignored in histories of rhetoric, women did participate in the development of philosophies of rhetoric in the eighteenth century and nineteenth century. 1 Most, like Hannah More, left to men preaching, politics, and law (the traditional (...) genres of European rhetoric) and took as their territory conversation and letter writing (more domestic rhetorical forms). 2 But some "poached" on men's territory. In this essay, I examine the tactics that Maria Edgeworth, Eliza Farrar, and Frances Willard used to appropriate and respond to a tradition of rhetoric that by fiat excluded women from rhetorical education, public speaking, and persuasive writing. In order to analyze their poaching on men's territory, I borrow from Michel de Certeau's theory of everyday practices of consumption.In The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), de Certeau suggests that we should study the ways that culture is constituted not only by dominant ideology, but also by "the dominated element in society (a status that does not mean that they are either passive or docile)" (xi-xii). Culture, for de Certeau, is not simply consumed; rather, in everyday life, it is invented "by poaching in countless ways on the property of others" (xii). One must study not just consumers, but also how they consume, what they do and make with the cultural artifacts and constructs offered to them, how they manipulate ideology. For the weak, those lacking political power, de Certeau, like recent feminists, 3 claims sophistic rhetoric, since the Sophists privileged the art of making "the weak position seem the stronger" (xx). How do "users reappropriate the space organized by techniques of sociocultural production?" asks de Certeau (xvii). For the weak, as for the Sophist, "[a] tactic insinuates itself into the other's place, fragmentarily, without taking it over in its entirety, without being able to keep it at a distance" (xix). With these issues in play, de Certeau studies everyday practices--shopping, cooking, moving about, and, most important for our purposes, reading. [End Page 243]Although seemingly passive, reading, de Certeau points out, is an "activity" of "silent production" (xxi). The reader does not absorb what he or she reads, but, instead, reinvents it--misunderstands it, adapts it to his or her own interests and concerns, remembers pieces of it, but pieces mutated. "This mutation makes the text habitable" (xxi), argues de Certeau. Thus, the dominant in culture may offer a set of rules, but it is only a basis for improvisation for the multitude of others in society. Consumption is not the imposition of an ideology on a society; a group does not absorb what it consumes. Instead, the group makes what it consumes its own. "'Assimilating' does not mean 'becoming similar to,'" according to de Certeau; rather, it means "'making something similar'" (166). A reader is not, then, a passive consumer. A reader "wander[s] through an imposed system," modifying and inventing a meaning (169). De Certeau thus focuses on the reading practices of the many "others" of society, "the silent, transgressive, ironic or poetic activity of readers... in private" (172). Readers do not absorb what they read. They are "travelers" who move across and "poach" from the "fields" of others' writings (174).With this essay, I examine the ways in which three women poach on men's rhetorical theory. Maria Edgeworth uses parody, comically enlarging key words in Enlightenment rhetoric to make a place for women in it. She reinvents the demonic shrew as a clever sophistic rhetorician. Eliza Farrar uses performance: she places women in the role of disciple, admiring the great men who thought up rhetoric, but then taking over the role of rhetorician with the pretense of laudatory imitation. Frances Willard uses collage: she cuts and pastes her own and other women's ideas about women preaching in with those of the famous men of her society. She creates a republican, presbyterian... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 40.2 (2007) 216-237MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Who's Afraid of Fear Appeals? Contingency, Courage, and Deliberation in Rhetorical Theory and PracticeMichael William Pfau Department of Communication University of Minnesota—DuluthFear is an influential emotion whose history reveals its impacts not only on individuals, but on entire communities, economies, and political systems. Fear has been particularly important politically, and the history of republics reveals a political discourse (...) rife with appeals to fear. But the discourse of. (shrink)

This article introduces a rhetorical theory of narrative in reading Kierkegaard, comparing Kierkegaard’s praxis to Phelan’s definition of “somebody telling somebody else that something happened on some occasion and for some purpose(s).” Use of pseudonyms problematizes “the somebody” telling and makes apparent the differing purposes of author and narrator. In the early authorship, the purpose is usually a life-view. The “something happened” may seem irrelevant in Kierkegaard, but it evokes questions of lived experience and life-view. The “occasion” for (...) telling is textually mediated, and thus draws a novel connection to literary history. Finally, I examine Kierkegaard’s real and authorial readers. (shrink)

The Vagrant scholar -- Doxa -- Practical reasoning -- Epideictic -- The polis.

Conceptualization should not be founded on a theory of the object—the conceptualized object is not the single criterion of a good conceptualization. We have to know the historical conditions which motivate our conceptualization. We need a historical awareness of our present circumstance.The materialist doctrine focusing upon transformation in circumstances and thus in education forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that the educator must himself be educated. (translation modified)If we take Raymie McKerrow’s seminal essay “Critical Rhetoric: Theory (...) and Praxis” (1989) as the locus classicus of the attempt to establish a selfconsciously critical standpoint for rhetoric, it would be fair to say that this .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"A City of Brick":Visual Rhetoric in Roman Rhetorical Theory and PracticeKathleen S. LampPerhaps none of the words Augustus, the first sole ruler of Rome who reigned from 27 BCE to 14 CE, actually said are quite as memorable as the ones Cassius Dio has attributed to him: "I found Rome built of clay and I leave it to you in marble" (1987, 56.30).1 Suetonius too discusses Augustus's (...) building program, offering an alleged quote along with an explanation of his motivation: "Since the city was not adorned as the dignity of the empire demanded, and was exposed to flood and fire, he so beautified it that he could justly boast that he had found it built of brick and left it in marble" (1998, Aug.28.3). Though Suetonius's explanation is practical, Dio argues Augustus's "city of brick" had a more metaphoric or symbolic meaning: "In saying this he was not referring literally to the state of the buildings, but rather to the strength of the empire" (1987, 56.30).Both historians, then, perceive a connection between the physical appearance of the city and Rome's place at the head of the (Roman) world. Maecenas, Augustus's right-hand man who was essentially the minister of culture, explicitly draws attention to this strategy in a speech fabricated by Dio. Maecenas advises Augustus, "Make this capital beautiful, spare no expense in doing so, and enhance its magnificence with festivals of every kind. It is right for us who rule over so many peoples to excel all others in every field of endeavor, and even display of this kind tends to implant [End Page 171] respect for us in our allies and to strike terror into our enemies" (1987, 52.30). Here Dio suggests, albeit in hindsight, that Augustus's building program was a conscious "display" of Rome's supremacy meant to elicit a reaction, particularly from those who dwelled outside the city.Though from this passage of Dio's it is possible to argue that the physical appearance of the city of Rome was meant to persuade, or at least elicit some response, the passage does not provide support for the claim that architecture, monuments, and city planning functioned rhetorically in ancient Rome. After all, Quintilian reminds us that "many other things have the power of persuasion" (1970, 2.15.6-9). Nonetheless, this passage does generate questions about the relationship between the Augustan building program, or more broadly the Augustan cultural campaigns, and rhetoric in the principate—specifically about the way in which the cultural campaigns functioned rhetorically to help Augustus gain and maintain power.Recently, I have argued that the Ara pacis Augustae, an Augustan monument commissioned in 13 BCE, functioned as a visual example of a rhetorical text, meant not only to celebrate Augustus's successful campaigns is Spain and Gaul but also to garner public support for Augustus's heir and the process of dynastic succession. Because specific rhetorical techniques often associated with the epideictic genre clearly function on the altar, the Ara pacis demonstrates that Augustus and/or his ministers were thinking rhetorically when constructing at least some Augustan monuments (Lamp 2009). Similarly, architectural historian Diana Favro has argued that certain aspects of Augustan architecture made use of rhetorical techniques related to the canon of memory (1996). These findings are perhaps not surprising given that George Kennedy, writing nearly forty years ago, acknowledged that Augustus, a figure he called "the greatest rhetorician of antiquity, " "developed new techniques of verbal and visual persuasion which took over some of the functions and adapted some of the methods of traditional oratory" (1972, 378, 382).Still, very little attention has been paid to Augustus as a rhetorical figure, which is not to say that scholars of rhetoric have paid no attention to Roman rhetoric. While the classicist Theodore Mommsen, writing in the latter half of the nineteenth century, went as far as to refer to the principate as the "end to the entire discipline of rhetoric" (1992, 125), the decline narrative in regards to Roman rhetoric is shifting. Traditionally, this decline narrative suggested that following the assassination of Cicero, traditional oratory retreated into... (shrink)

During the past fifty years, utopian studies solidified a functional definition of utopia in the Marxist tradition, which has encouraged a broad focus on social process rather than on content. In the liberal-humanist tradition, however, utopia is often treated as strictly a matter of form and content, particularly genre. I argue that the key to a functional definition of utopia in the liberal-humanist tradition is the Western tradition of rhetoric. Since its beginnings in ancient culture, rhetoric has been concerned with (...) verbal or symbolic persuasion using values and ideals of the audience. I explain how the utopian impulse is inherent in rhetorical theory from ancient to modern times, including examples from Plato, Cicero, eighteenth-century rhetoricians Hugh Blair and George Campbell, and modern rhetorician Kenneth Burke. I give a rhetorical reading of Mannheim and Bloch and suggest other areas of cross-pollination between rhetoric and utopian studies. (shrink)

Rhetoric, like any other practice, is always to be used to serve the ends of justice, and for that alone.People will be responsible for the needs of others only when they are responsive to the feelings of need, anxiety, and desire in real other people who work in real material conditions. This direct response will take place only when people are fully responsive to, and fully responsible for, their own feelings. This responsibility for individual feeling, for full complexity and depth (...) of individual feeling, is thus of political not simply personal importance.To theorize justice rhetorically, this article reviews two major theories of rhetoric that address justice: the New Rhetoric of Chaïm Perelman and Lucie .. (shrink)

A careful analysis of the rhetorical thought of René Descartes and of a distinguished group of post-Cartesians. Covering a unique range of authors, including Bernard Lamy and Nicolas Malebranche, Carr attacks the idea, which has become commonplace in contemporary criticism, that the Cartesian system is incompatible with rhetoric. Carr analyzes the writings of Balzac, the Port-Royalists Arnauld and Nicole, Malebranche, and Lamy, exploring the evolution of Descartes’ thought into their different theories of rhetoric. He constructs his arguments, probing each (...) author’s writings on rhetoric, persuasion, and attention, to demonstrate the basis for rhetorical thought present in Descartes’ theory of persuasion when it is combined with his psychophysiology of attention. (shrink)

A careful analysis of the rhetorical thought of René Descartes and of a distinguished group of post-Cartesians. Covering a unique range of authors, including Bernard Lamy and Nicolas Malebranche, Carr attacks the idea, which has become commonplace in contemporary criticism, that the Cartesian system is incompatible with rhetoric. Carr analyzes the writings of Balzac, the Port-Royalists Arnauld and Nicole, Malebranche, and Lamy, exploring the evolution of Descartes’ thought into their different theories of rhetoric. He constructs his arguments, probing each (...) author’s writings on rhetoric, persuasion, and attention, to demonstrate the basis for rhetorical thought present in Descartes’ theory of persuasion when it is combined with his psychophysiology of attention. (shrink)

Głównym celem książki jest rekonstrukcja teorii retorycznej, wyłożonej przez Bartłomieja Keckermanna (1572–1609), profesora filozofii w Gdańskim Gimnazjum Akademickim, w obszernym traktacie pod tytułem System retoryki (Systema rhetoricae, Hanau 1608). Opierając się na przejrzystej metodzie, u której podstaw leżała zasada podziału dychotomicznego, wywiedziona wprost z pism logicznych Arystotelesa (Organonu), Keckermann przeprowadził systematyzację sztuki przemawiania. Dzięki twórczemu wykorzystaniu koncepcji Stagiryty, Cycerona i Kwintyliana, a także współczesnych sobie teoretyków wymowy, głównie Rudolfa Agricoli, Erazma z Rotterdamu, Filipa Melanchtona i Piotra Ramusa, stworzył on summę (...) renesansowej wiedzy o retoryce. Retoryka ujmowana paradoksalnie (oksymoronicznie) jako antystrofa dialektyki, ukazująca się nam w figuratywnym przebraniu wiernej służebnicy albo nieodłącznej, choć często niepożądanej, towarzyszki logiki (filozofii), została skrojona na miarę ludzkich zdolności i słabości. Jako względnie autonomiczna forma racjonalności (a więc zgodnie z intencją Arystotelesa) i model dyskursywności zbudowany wokół amplifikacji i figuratywności (czyli zgodnie z koncepcją Keckermanna) stanowi apologię niemal powszechnej niekonkluzywności dyskursu, sprzeciwu wobec supremacji intelektu w dziedzinie praktyk sensotwórczych i zgody na brak ostatecznego wyjaśnienia. Mimo tego ma być ona lekarstwem uśmierzającym chroniczną niepewność poznania i środkiem przynoszącym wytchnienie podczas gorączkowego poszukiwania sensu. Dlatego w zależności od potrzeb chwili i celu perswazji retoryka staje się lekarką serc i dusz ludzkich, twórczynią zmysłowych i wielobarwnych obrazów rzeczywistości, a także rewelatorką prawd doskonale już znanych. Za każdym razem zjawia się przed nami pod postacią figury przekształcającej prostą mowę litery w wieloznaczną sekwencję znaków, symboli i obrazów. Przemawiając we własnym imieniu na gruncie teorii wymowy (nawet tej najbardziej metodycznej i usystematyzowanej), retoryka nie może mówić inaczej, jak tylko retorycznie, ożywiając zastygłe w dyskursie toposy i budząc uśpione w języku figury. (shrink)

As we so often trip about and lose our breath over speaking precisely to "what is rhetoric?," it should come to no surprise that being asked what we want of rhetoric, of language, of an other moves us to fidget, even brings us to blush. But if we pause with these questions, lips parted without yet the words to answer, we may notice a peculiar craving that churns before the naming. We want of rhetoric—but what? We are compelled toward rhetoric—whereto? (...) We seek in rhetoric—for? If this desire, what Hannah Arendt calls an appetite for love for its own sake, refers to the will to "have and to hold," our love in/for/through rhetoric always seems to slip from capture. So much so that after a whirl of... (shrink)

Perhaps none of the words Augustus, the first sole ruler of Rome who reigned from 27 BCE to 14 CE, actually said are quite as memorable as the ones Cassius Dio has attributed to him: "I found Rome built of clay and I leave it to you in marble" .1 Suetonius too discusses Augustus's building program, offering an alleged quote along with an explanation of his motivation: "Since the city was not adorned as the dignity of the empire demanded, and (...) was exposed to flood and fire, he so beautified it that he could justly boast that he had found it built of brick and left it in marble" . Though Suetonius's explanation is practical, Dio argues Augustus's "city of brick" had a more metaphoric or . (shrink)

Se indaga la relación que se da en la República entre los dos significados de ousia: como propiedad en el sentido de posesiones y riqueza, o en el sentido de esencia o sustancia. Aparte de las relaciones económicas asociadas al préstamo, al intercambio y al interés, se examina la función que, respecto de la ousia, cumple la moneda en la economía como recurso para disociar la riqueza de las posesiones, con lo cual logra un nivel de universalidad y equivalencia equiparable (...) al del propio ser. The article inquires into the relation established in the Republic between the two meanings of ousia: property in the sense of possessions and wealth, and essence or substance. Besides the economic relations associated with loans, exchange, and interest, the paper examines the role of currency in the economy, with respect to ousia, as a means of dissociating wealth from possessions, thus achieving a degree of universality comparable to that of being itself. (shrink)

A revision of George Kennedy's translation of, introdution to, and commentary on Aristotle's On Rhetoric. His translation is most accurate, his general introduction is the most thorough and insightful, and his brief introductions to sections of the work, along with his explanatory footnotes, are the most useful available.

The article reviews the book "Paul Ricoeur: Tradition and Innovation in Rhetorical Theory," by Andreea Deciu Ritivoi.

Deliberative or discursive models of democracy have recently enjoyed a revival in both political theory and policy practice. Against the picture of democracy as a procedure for aggregating and effectively meeting the given preference of individuals, deliberative theory offers a model of democracy as a forum through which judgements and preferences are formed and altered through reasoned dialogue between free and equal citizens. Much in the recent revival of deliberative democracy, especially that which comes through Habermas and Rawls, (...) has Kantian roots. Deliberative institutions are embodiments of the free public use of reason that Kant takes to define the enlightenment project. Within the Kantian model the public use of reason is incompatible with the use of rhetoric. While this paper rejects strong rhetorical criticisms of deliberative democracy which render all communication strategic, it argues that rhetorical studies of deliberation have highlighted features of deliberation which point to significant weaknesses in Kantian approaches to it. Two features are of particular importance: the role of testimony and judgements of credibility in deliberation; and the role of appeal to emotions in public discourse. Both from the Kantian perspective are potential sources of heteronomy. However, the appeal to testimony and emotion are features of public deliberation that cannot and should not be eliminated. For those committed to the enlightenment values that underlie the deliberative model of democracy the question is whether these rhetorical features of deliberation are incompatible with those values. The paper argues that they are compatible. It does so by defending an Aristotelian account of rhetoric in public deliberation which denies the Platonic contrast between reasoned discourse and rhetoric which the Kantian model inherits. (shrink)

Although rhetoric is not a category of ancient Indian philosophy, this paper argues that Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla, 2 eighth-century Indian Buddhist philosophers, can nonetheless be seen to embrace a rhetorical conception of rationality. That is, while these thinkers are strong proponents of rational analysis and philosophical argumentation as tools for attaining certainty, they also uphold the contingent nature of all such processes. Drawing on the categories of the New Rhetoric, this paper argues that these Buddhist thinkers understand philosophical argumentation (...) to be directed at a universal audience of rational beings, where this universal audience is not an actual audience but a rhetorical one constructed through the author’s particular and historically contingent conception of what counts as rational. A reception theory of rationality is one that holds that the rationality of an argument depends upon its acceptance by a rational audience. When philosophers recognize the historically contingent nature of what counts as rational, they can embrace a reception theory of rationality that neither reduces the rational to mere opinion nor restricts it to a single, absolute, and timeless standard. (shrink)

In their book Commitment in Dialogue, Walton and Krabbe claim that formal dialogue systems for conversational argumentation are “not very realistic and not easy to apply”. This difficulty may make argumentation theory less well adapted to be employed to describe or analyse actual argumentation practice. On the other hand, the empirical study of real-life arguments may miss or ignore insights of more than the two millennia of the development of philosophy of language, rhetoric, and argumentation theory. In this (...) paper, we propose a novel methodology for adapting such theories to serve as applicable tools in the study of argumentation phenomena. Our approach is both theoretically-informed and empirically-grounded in large-scale corpus analysis. The area of interest are appeals to ethos, the character of the speaker, building upon Aristotle’s rhetoric. Ethotic techniques are used to influence the hearers through the communication, where speakers might establish, but also emphasise, weaken or undermine their own or others’ credibility and trustworthiness. Specifically, we apply our method to Aristotelian theory of ethos elements which identifies practical wisdom, moral virtue and goodwill as components of speakers’ character, which can be supported or attacked. The challenges we identified in this case and the solutions we proposed allow us to formulate general guidelines of how to exploit rich theoretical frameworks to the analysis of the practice of language use. (shrink)