Essays on Aristotle's Rhetoric - (Philosophical Traditions) by Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Essays on Aristotle's Rhetoric offers a fresh and comprehensive assessment of a classic work. Aristotle's influence on the practice and theory of rhetoric, as it affects political and legal argumentation, has been continuous and far-reaching. This anthology presents Aristotle's Rhetoric in its original context, providing examples of the kind of oratory whose success Aristotle explains and analyzes.

The contributors--eminent philosophers, classicists, and critics--assess the role and the techniques of rhetorical persuasion in philosophic discourse and in the public sphere. They connect Aristotle's Rhetoric to his other work on ethics and politics, as well as to his ideas on logic, psychology, and philosophy of language. The collection as a whole invites us to reassess the place of rhetoric in intellectual and political life.

From the Back Cover

It is time to reclaim the Rhetoric as a philosophic work, to analyze its relation to Arstotle's ethics, politics, and poetics; his psychology and logic; his account of practical reasoning; his views on how styles of language affect persuasive arguments.

About the Author

Amèlie Oksenberg Rorty is Professor of the Humanities and the History of Ideas at Brandeis University. Among the numerous other volumes she has edited are Essays on Descartes' Meditations (California, 1986), Perspectives on Self-Deception (California, 1988), and (with Martha Nussbaum), Essays on Aristotle'sDe Anima (1992).