La question de ce petit livre est simple : peut-on aller au-delà du constat de crise et d'impuissance dont le philosophe se fait le prophète depuis plus d'un siècle? Peut-on parler de la science sans complexe d'infériorité, de Dieu sans obscurantisme, d'existence sans tomber dans la banalité du café du commerce, de politique sans consacrer le cynisme, de morale sans faire dans le sermon? Bref, la philosophie peut-elle aider à faire comprendre et à dépasser les apories du temps présent qu'elle (...) a fait siennes, comme un malade ressasse sa propre maladie pour se donner le sentiment qu'ainsi il peut la mettre à distance à défaut de la vaincre? Toutes ces questions sont aujourd'hui les nôtres, et il ne faut pas avoir peur de parler des grands problèmes qui agitent les hommes depuis l'aube des temps, car si la philosophie a un sens, c'est bien en ce qu'elle envisage les questions ultimes dans une plus ou moins grande systématicité selon les époques. (shrink)

_Rhetoric_ is the sixth volume in The New Hackett Aristotle series, a series featuring translations, with Introductions and Notes, by C. D. C. Reeve, Delta Kappa Epsilon Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The series will eventually include all of Aristotle's works.

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.

Although it is well known in other fields, the concept of “resilience” has not been addressed explicitly by feminist rhetoricians. This collection develops it in readings of rhetorical situations across a range of social contexts and national cultures. Contributors demonstrate that resilience offers an important new conceptual frame for feminist rhetoric, with emphasis on agency, change, and hope in the daily lives of individuals or groups of individuals disempowered by social or material forces. Collectively, these chapters create a robust conception (...) of resilience as a complex rhetorical process, redeeming it from its popular association with individual heroism through an important focus on relationality, community, and an ethics of connection. Resilience, in this volume, is a specifically rhetorical response to complicated forces in individual lives. Through it, Feminist Rhetorical Resilience widens the interpretive space within which rhetoricians can work. (shrink)

This work approaches texts in the history of philosophy as the repository of a kind of literature that brings together rational thought and rhetorical principles.

This paper is a response to recent student protests at South African universities, and the essentialising rhetoric and practices that characterise South African public debates. I explore the likely responses of white South Africans to views that seem to make their whiteness inescapable and necessarily morally bad.

ABSTRACT The phrase “Enlightenment rhetoric” typically denotes discourses bent on rejecting classical oratorical styles in favor of purportedly scientific ones. Likewise, scholars often associate Enlightenment rhetorical styles with the scientific epistemologies that emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This article reconsiders Enlightenment rhetoric by analyzing David Hume’s 1742 essay “Of Eloquence.” More specifically, the article argues that the Scottish Enlightenment context necessitated a rhetoric that compensated for the discursive limitations of new scientific worldviews. In so doing, the article argues (...) that Hume verbalizes the transcendent dimension of classical eloquence in ways commensurate with the emphasis on perspicuity emerging in English culture, a rhetorical maneuver that the author calls discursive transcendence. Hume’s “Of Eloquence” thus serves as a case study demonstrating how an Enlightenment writer advanced a rhetoric that both rejects and pulls from prior rhetorical traditions, constituting a new understanding of Enlightenment rhetoric. (shrink)

A Rhetoric of Ruins combines conceptual and theoretical frameworks to explore ghost towns, disaster sites, and environmental badlands as remnants of modernity. Methods of analysis include Jeremiadic, hauntological, psychogeographic, and heterotopian ways of reading U.S. and international sites.

ABSTRACT This article builds on the scholarship on violence at the nexus of rhetoric, philosophy, decoloniality, and human rights discourse to theorize what it calls a rhetoric of everyday violence. Moving beyond the focus on the politics of representation in slow violence, it brings a transnational feminist rhetorical analytic and a focus on the politics of recognition to illegible temporal violence, arguing that a rhetoric of everyday violence can help recalibrate human rights discourse to recognize temporal and gendered violence as (...) human rights violations. (shrink)

This book aims to help readers interpret, and reflect on, their reading more effectively. It presents doctrines of ancient and renaissance rhetoric (an education in how to write well) as questions or categories for interpreting one's reading. The first chapter presents the questions. Later chapters use rhetorical theory to bring out the implications of, and suggest possible answers to, the questions: about occasion and audience (chapter 2), structure and disposition (3), narrative (4), argument (5), further elements of content, such as (...) descriptions, comparisons, proverbs and moral axioms, dialogue, and examples (6), and style (7). Chapter eight describes ways of gathering material, formulating arguments and writing about the texts one reads. The conclusion considers the wider implications of taking a rhetorical approach to reading. The investigation of rhetoric's questions is interspersed with analyses of texts by Chaucer, Sidney, Shakespeare, Fielding and Rushdie, using the questions. The text is intended for university students of literature, especially English literature, and rhetoric, and their teachers. (shrink)

Called the “greatest philosophical essayist of his time,” Rorty is both famous and notorious in academic philosophy for his uniquely engaging writing style. While his fellow analytic philosophers look askance at his flamboyant prose, suspicious that it lacks the care and precision that their discipline demands, literary intellectuals who champion the essay genre can have their qualms about Rorty as well: his work is too professional and specialized to be properly called essays. I argue not only that Rorty's work fits (...) into the essay genre, but also that his use of the essay form is integral to his rhetorical project of advancing his ideal of pragmatic liberalism. Rorty writes essays because the essay is a pragmatic literary genre: it is anti‐essentialist, conversational, and experimentalist and provocatively aims at “breaking the crust of convention,” in Dewey's phrase. Using the essay, Rorty “joshes” us to becoming more pragmatic and, therefore, better liberals. (shrink)

While John Dewey is an icon of American education and his work object of comprehensive studies, this book ventures to fill gaps that have been neglected by previous research. In particular, it opens new perspectives on Dewey's theory of curriculum, his concept of democratic education, his role as an administrator and the extent to which his philosophy of education coincided with the practice of the Laboratory School teachers. Thus, the author joins the ranks of those who strive to historicize Dewey's (...) pragmatist pedagogy and contextualize his celebrated school experiment. Drawing on new archival research and dozens of overlooked sources, Knoll offers numerous insights into what was and was not original in Dewey's pedagogy, and to what degree Dewey and his associates were successful in faithfully implementing his complicated vision. This is Dewey scholarship at its very best! Thomas Fallace, author of Dewey and the Dilemma of Race "While many historians have chronicled the growth of John Dewey's educational philosophy, very few have traced in detail its application by Dewey in the real world. In this superb critical study of Deweyan educational reform, Michael Knoll does both. At once a tour de force and a cautionary tale." Andrew Feffer, author of The Chicago Pragmatists and American Progressivism "Michael Knoll's meticulous archival research places Dewey's work both in the long sweep of the history of educational ideas and in the context of Dewey's historical moment. Knoll highlights significant transatlantic currents in the New Education, illuminates misunderstood or overlooked episodes in Dewey's lifework, and humanizes Dewey. Knoll's findings and interpretations will challenge scholars to reassess prevailing perspectives not only on Dewey's work, but also on early 20th century education reform in the US." William G. Wraga, author of Progressive Pioneer: Alexander James Inglis and American Secondary Education. (shrink)

How is it possible that modern scholars have labeled Maximus of Tyre, a second-century CE performer of philosophical orations as a sophist or a 'half-philosopher', while his own self-presentation is that of a genuinme philosopher? If we take Maximus' claim to phislophical authority seriously, his case can deepen our understanding of the dynamic nature of Imperial philosophy. Through a discursive analysis of twelve Imperial intellectuals alongside Maximus' dialexies, the author proposes an interpretative framework to assess the purpose behind the representation (...) of philosophy, rhetoric, and sophistry in Maximus' oeuvre. This is thus as yet the first book-length attempt at situating the historical communication process implicit in the surviving Maximean texts in the concurrent context of the Imperial intellectual world. (shrink)

Alan Gross applies the principles of rhetoric to the interpretation of classical and contemporary scientific texts to show how they persuade both author and audience. This invigorating consideration of the ways in which scientists--from Copernicus to Darwin to Newton to James Watson--establish authority and convince one another and us of the truth they describe may very well lead to a remodeling of our understanding of science and its place in society.

Perhaps no other critical label has been made to cover more ground than "irony," and in our time irony has come to have so many meanings that by itself it means almost nothing. In this work, Wayne C. Booth cuts through the resulting confusions by analyzing how we manage to share quite specific ironies—and why we often fail when we try to do so. How does a reader or listener recognize the kind of statement which requires him to reject its (...) "clear" and "obvious" meaning? And how does any reader know where to stop, once he has embarked on the hazardous and exhilarating path of rejecting "what the words say" and reconstructing "what the author means"? In the first and longer part of his work, Booth deals with the workings of what he calls "stable irony," irony with a clear rhetorical intent. He then turns to intended instabilities—ironies that resist interpretation and finally lead to the "infinite absolute negativities" that have obsessed criticism since the Romantic period. Professor Booth is always ironically aware that no one can fathom the unfathomable. But by looking closely at unstable ironists like Samuel Becket, he shows that at least some of our commonplaces about meaninglessness require revision. Finally, he explores—with the help of Plato—the wry paradoxes that threaten any uncompromising assertion that all assertion can be undermined by the spirit of irony. (shrink)

The first edition of The Rhetoric of Fiction transformed the criticism of fiction and soon became a classic in the field. One of the most widely used texts in fiction courses, it is a standard reference point in advanced discussions of how fictional form works, how authors make novels accessible, and how readers recreate texts, and its concepts and terms—such as "the implied author," "the postulated reader," and "the unreliable narrator"—have become part of the standard critical lexicon. For this new (...) edition, Wayne C. Booth has written an extensive Afterword in which he clarifies misunderstandings, corrects what he now views as errors, and sets forth his own recent thinking about the rhetoric of fiction. The other new feature is a Supplementary Bibliography, prepared by James Phelan in consultation with the author, which lists the important critical works of the past twenty years—two decades that Booth describes as "the richest in the history of the subject.". (shrink)

The combination of rhetoric and philosophy appeared in the ancient world through Cicero, and revived as an ideal in the Renaissance. By a careful and precise analysis of the views of four major humanists-Petrarch, Salutati, Bruni, and Valla—Professor Seigel seeks to establish that they were first of all professional rhetoricians, completely committed to the relation between philosophy and rhetoric. He then explores the broader problem of the "external history" of humanism, and reopens basic questions about Renaissance culture. He departs from (...) the views held by such scholars as Hans Baron and Lauro Martines and expands the conclusions suggested by Paul Oskar Kristeller. The result is a stimulating, controversial study that rejects some of the claims made for the humanists and indicates achievements and limitations. Originally published in 1968. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

The growing capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) word processing models have demonstrated exceptional potential to impact language related tasks and functions. Their fast pace of adoption and probable effect has also given rise to controversy within certain fields. Models, such as GPT-3, are a particular concern for professionals engaged in writing, particularly as their engagement with these technologies is limited due to lack of ability to control their output. Most efforts to maximize and control output rely on a process known (...) as prompt engineering, the construction and modification of the inputted prompt with expectation for certain outputted or desired text. Consequently, prompt engineering has emerged as an important consideration for research and practice. Previous conceptions of prompt engineering have largely focused on technical and logistic modifications to the back-end processing, remaining inaccessible and, still, limited for most users. In this paper, we look to the technical communication field and its methods of text generation—the rhetorical situation—to conceptualize prompt engineering in a more comprehensible way for its users by considering the context and rhetoric. We introduce a framework, consisting of a formula, to prompt engineering, which demands all components of the rhetorical situation be present in the inputted prompt. We present discussions on the future of AI writing models and their use in both professional and educational settings. Ultimately, this discussion and its findings aim to provide a means of integrating agency and writer-centric methods to AI writing tools to advance a more human-in-the-loop approach. As the use of generative AI and especially NLP-based technologies become common across societal functions, the use of prompt engineering will play a crucial role not just in adoption of the technology, but also its productive and responsible use. (shrink)

In recent years, misogyny has become a central concept in philosophy as well as an established concept in public discourse and political policy. But where is misogyny’s supposed counterpart, namely, misandry? In this paper I argue for an ameliorative analysis of "misandry", arguing that it can be reformulated in an effort to reclaim it from its misogynistic weaponisation. The term "misandry" is used almost exclusively as a misogynistic rhetorical device for attributing unjust anger, hatred, or other similar emotions to a (...) speaker, thereby undermining their epistemic authority. Rather than dismissing the term as conceptually flawed and politically problematic, I argue that we ought to ameliorate misandry to instead refer to a felt anger, hostility, or fear toward the patriarchal social order and its valorisation and/or expression in misogynistic and machismo behaviour. To support these claims, I begin with a discussion of Kate Manne's analysis of misogyny before reflecting on how this can inform our understanding of misandry. I then demonstrate the various ways in which misandry is rhetorically deployed as a means of silencing speakers that express dissent against the patriarchy. Following this, I argue that we should ameliorate the term, not only to undermine these misogynistic practices, but also to articulate a legitimate affective and reactive attitude against the patriarchal imposition of a hierarchical gender binary. (shrink)

The Rhetorical Invention of Man examines how the category "Man" has dominated Western thinking since the sixteenth century. This category, a historical anomaly according to Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, has produced distortions in our ability to understand reality that do great harm to our health, morals, and environment.

Flirtations: Rhetoric and Aesthetics This Side of Seduction, opens by asking a fundamental first question: What is flirtation, and how does it differ from seduction? The essays thereby address the under-theorized terrain of flirtation not as a subgenre of seduction but rather as a phenomenon in its own right.

The rhetorical attitude -- Emotions and their moments -- Identity and emotions in dialogue -- The dialogic of madness: quantum theory, mirror neurons, and emotions -- Identity and the dialogic of reading, looking, and watching -- Revels and raptures.

The essays in Rhetorical Spaces grow out of Lorraine Code's ongoing commitment to engaging philosophical issues as they figure in people's everyday lives. The arguements in this book are informed at once by the moral-political implications of how knowledge is produced and circulated and by issues of gendered subjectivity. In their critical dimension, these lucid essays engage with the incapacity of the philosophical mainstream's dominant epistemologies to offer regulative principles that guide people in the epistemic projects that figure centrally in (...) their lives. In its constructive dimension, Rhetorical Spaces focuses on developing productive, case-by-case analyses of knowing other people in situations where social-political inequalities create asymmetrical patterns of epistemic power and privilege. Framing all of the essays is the conception of rhetorical spaces which shows that prevailing intellectual-political climates can work to enhance or to thwart possibilities of establishing cognitive authority for the members of a society who belong to groups other than the dominant ones. Finally, bridging the gap between theory and practice, Lorraine Code shows how the issue of reconfiguring structures of authority and expertise are not just matters of individual responsibility, but require a radical restructuring of the communities and social orders in which people know and act. (shrink)

As critic, Kenneth Burke's preoccupations were at the beginning purely esthetic and literary; but afterCounter-Statement(1931), he began to discriminate a ...

By compiling an experimental method combining both dialectic and rhetoric, 'Dialectic, Rhetoric and Contrast: The Infinite Middle of Meaning' demonstrates how singular meanings can be rendered in a spectrum of 12 repeating concepts that are in a continuum, gradated and symmetrical. The ability to arrange meaning into this pattern opens enquiry into its ontology, and presents meaning as closer to the sensation of colours or musical notes than the bivalent oppositions depicted in classical logic. However, the experiment does not assert (...) that this pattern suggests some sort of constant or absolute principle; instead, it theorises on the ways in which meaning can be considered to be recursive. To explain this, the book explores the concept of contrast itself. No exactitude on the precise existence of contrast can ever be struck because the answer varies infinitely depending upon the scale of measurement used to gauge the meeting point. This characteristic of contrast helps to define a whole new dimension from which sensation, meaning, cognition and consciousness can be analogised to the infinite forms between forms. At a time when the widest consensus in philosophy is the exhaustion of its central themes, the significance of such a hypothesis provides fresh impetus to revise some of the key meanings and concepts underpinning contemporary thought. To do this, the method explores the opposing themes of idealism and realism that run throughout western philosophy from Plato to the Speculative turn. This book will be of interest to professional academic audiences in the humanities and social sciences, from graduates to senior scholars. It will also be an interesting read to anyone wishing to keep abreast of developments in continental philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, and the sociology of knowledge. (shrink)

For many economists, including those who have made the most marked contribution to the development of the discipline, their work has to be understood in the context of the rhetorical strategy they were pursuing – what they wanted to persuade us of and how they wanted to do it. The paper identifies two fundamental rhetorical strategies of laissez-faire resting on entirely distinct ontological foundations. What distinguishes these two strategies is the way they articulate the individual with the general interest, how (...) they relate the micro to the macro. The two strategies discussed in the paper are characterised by the stance they take on a fundamental ontological issue, the way in which the things which appear to us in the world are related to the things or matters which compose them. A reductionist approach suggests that we can understand an entity at one level as a congeries. An entity in this view is just an aggregate of entities at a lower, substrate level – a purely external unity. The properties and behaviour of an entity can then be understood in terms of the properties and behaviour of the constituent lower-level components, taken in isolation. In this approach, phenomena at some level are regarded as having just the qualities enjoyed by its lower-level, substrate elements, writ large. The contrary, holistic, stance is to view the qualities of phenomena at one level as emergent at that level, and to assert that an entity can be understood as a product of the inter-relations between its component parts. We have, then, a pair of contrasted approaches: a polarity which is productive in the study of schools of thought, of competing methodologies, and of rhetorical strategies in economics. The paper applies this approach to the work of Smith, Keynes, Hayek, Lucas and Friedman. (shrink)

This book focuses on how 'cult rhetoric' affects our perceptions of new religious movements (NRMs). 'Cult' Rhetoric in the 21st Century explores contemporary understandings of the term 'cult' by bringing together a range of scholars from multiple disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, psychology, and religious studies. The book provides a renewed discussion of 'new religious movements', whilst also considering recent approaches toward a nuanced study of contemporary religion. Topics explored include online religions, political 'cults', 'apostate' testimony and the current 'othered' position (...) of the study of minority religions. (shrink)

Normative pragmatics can bridge the differences between dialectical and rhetorical theories in a way that saves the central insights of both. Normative pragmatics calls attention to how the manifest strategic design of a message produces interpretive effects and interactional consequences. Argumentative analysis of messages should begin with the manifest persuasive rationale they communicate. But not all persuasive inducements should be treated as arguments. Arguments express with a special pragmatic force propositions where those propositions stand in particular inferential relations to one (...) another. Normative pragmatics provides a framework within which varieties of propositional inference and pragmatic force may be kept straight. Normative pragmatics conceptualizes argumentative effectiveness in a way that integrates notions of rhetorical strategy and rhetorical situation with dialectical norms and procedures for reasonable deliberation. Strategic effectiveness should be seen in terms of maximizing the chances that claims and arguments will be reasonably evaluated, whether or not they are accepted. Procedural rationality should be seen in terms of adjustment to the demands of concrete circumstances. Two types of adjustment are illustrated: rhetorical strategies for framing the conditions for dialectical deliberation and rhetorical strategies for making do with limitations to dialectical deliberation. (shrink)

The combination of rhetoric and philosophy appeared in the ancient world through Cicero, and revived as an ideal in the Renaissance. By a careful and precise analysis of the views of four major humanists-Petrarch, Salutati, Bruni, and Valla—Professor Seigel seeks to establish that they were first of all professional rhetoricians, completely committed to the relation between philosophy and rhetoric. He then explores the broader problem of the "external history" of humanism, and reopens basic questions about Renaissance culture. He departs from (...) the views held by such scholars as Hans Baron and Lauro Martines and expands the conclusions suggested by Paul Oskar Kristeller. The result is a stimulating, controversial study that rejects some of the claims made for the humanists and indicates achievements and limitations. Originally published in 1968. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Developments in the democratic theory of representation and deliberation enable renewed consideration of the ancient controversy over the proper place of rhetoric in politics. Rhetoric facilitates the making and hearing of representation claims spanning subjects and audiences divided in their commitments and dispositions. Deliberative democracy requires a deliberative system with multiple components whose linkage often needs rhetoric. Appreciation of these aspects of democracy exposes the limitations of categorical tests for the admissibility of particular sorts of rhetoric. Prioritization of bridging over (...) bonding rhetoric is a step in the right direction, while sometimes producing misleading results. A better systemic test asks whether or not rhetoric promotes an effective deliberative system linking competent and reflective actors. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes claimed to have founded the discipline of civil philosophy. This book offers a new reading of his intellectual development, arguing that he was dubious about the place of rhetoric in civil society and came to see it as a pernicious presence within philosophy - a position from which he did not retreat.

_Discusses philosophers Mencius and Aristotle as socio-ecological thinkers._ Mencius (385–303/302 BCE) and Aristotle (384–322 BCE) were contemporaries, but are often understood to represent opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum. Mencius is associated with the ecological, emergent, flowing, and connected; Artistotle with the rational, static, abstract, and binary. Douglas Robinson argues that in their conceptions of rhetoric, at least, Mencius and Aristotle are much more similar than different: both are powerfully socio-ecological, espousing and exploring collectivist thinking about the circulation of energy (...) and social value through groups. The agent performing the actions of _pistis_, “persuading-and-being-persuaded,” in Aristotle and _zhi_, “governing-and-being-governed,” in Mencius is, Robinson demonstrates, not so much the rhetor as an individual as it is the whole group. Robinson tracks this collectivistic thinking through a series of comparative considerations using a theory that draws impetus from Arne Naess’s “ecosophical” deep ecology and from work on rhetoric powered by affective ecologies, but with details of the theory drawn equally from Mencius and Aristotle. (shrink)

Archimedes of Syracuse has long provided a touchstone for considering how we make and acquire knowledge. Since the early Roman chroniclers of Archimedes’ life, and especially intensively since Descartes, scholars have described, sought, or derided the Archimedean point, defining and redefining its epistemic role. “Knowledge,” at least within modernity, is rhetorically tied to the figure of the Archimedean point, a place somewhere outside a regular and constrained world of experience. If this figure still leads to useful ways of thinking about (...) knowing, we are left with the question of how different modes of making knowledge approach their “Archimedean” points. The question is especially important today as a renewed .. (shrink)

The description for this book, The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation, will be forthcoming.

‘Tool of Empowerment’: The Rhetorical Vision of Title Nine This study of the mail order catalog Title Nine, a California-based women's athletic clothing company, employs symbolic convergence theory and fantasy theme analysis through the context of third wave feminism. The catalog, named after the federal law in the United States that was intended to equalize opportunities between men's and women's participation in sports, creates a distinct social reality in an effort to empower readers. Similar studies have analyzed stereotypical representations of (...) women in magazines and advertising. However, this study offers insight into a newly emerging phenomenon in a niche market, the mail-order catalog, and in the artifact under study, it offers a medium where creators intend to do more than sell women's clothing. Within fantasy theme analysis is the fantasy type, a moral or social more that repeats itself through various actors or settings within the artifact. Four fantasy types put forth by Title Nine have been identified by the researcher, including a.) "I am superwoman," b.) "I am a mom," c.) "I am an advocate for women," and d.) "I can be anything.". (shrink)

Introduction: Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are an important source of justification for clinical decisions in modern evidence-based practice. Yet, we have given little attention to how they argue their evidence. In particular, how do CPGs argue for treatment with long-term medications that are increasingly prescribed to older patients? Approach and rationale: I selected six disease-specific guidelines recommending treatment with five of the medication classes most commonly prescribed for seniors in Ontario, Canada. I considered the stated aims of these CPGs and (...) the techniques employed towards those aims. Finally, I reconstructed and logically analysed the arguments supporting recommendations for pharmacotherapy. Analysis: The primary function of CPGs is rhetorical, or persuasive, and their means of persuasion include both a display of their credibility and their argumentation. Arguments supporting pharmacotherapy recommendations for the target population follow a common inductive pattern: statistical generalization from randomized controlled trial (RCT) and meta-analysis evidence. Two of the CPGs also argue their treatment recommendations for older patients in this style, while three fail to justify pharmacotherapy specifically for the older population. Discussion: The arguments analysed lack the auxiliary assumptions that would warrant making a generalization about the clinical effectiveness of medications for the older population. Guidelines reason using simple induction, while ignoring important inferential gaps. Future guidelines should aspire to be well-reasoned rather than simply evidence-based; argue from a plurality of evidence; be wary of hasty inductions; appropriately limit the scope of their recommendations; and avoid making law-like, prescriptive generalizations. (shrink)

If rhetoric is the art of speaking, who is listening? In Being-Moved, Daniel M. Gross provides an answer, showing when and where the art of speaking parted ways with the art of listening-and what happens when they intersect once again. Much in the history of rhetoric must be rethought along the way. And much of this rethinking pivots around Martin Heidegger's early lectures on Aristotle's Rhetoric, where his famous topic, Being, gives way to being-moved. The results, Gross goes on to (...) show, are profound. Listening to the gods, listening to the world around us, and even listening to one another in the classroom-all of these experiences become different when rhetoric is reoriented from the voice to the ear. (shrink)