Pragmatism Democracy And The Necessity Of Rhetoric

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Pragmatism, Democracy, and the Necessity of Rhetoric

Author : Robert Danisch
Publisher : Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 9781570036903
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (369 download)

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Book Synopsis Pragmatism, Democracy, and the Necessity of Rhetoric by : Robert Danisch

Download or read book Pragmatism, Democracy, and the Necessity of Rhetoric written by Robert Danisch and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Pragmatism, Democracy, and the Necessity of Rhetoric, Robert Danisch examines the search by America's first generation of pragmatists for a unique set of rhetorics that would serve the needs of a developing democracy. Digging deep into pragmatism's historical development, Danisch sheds light on its association with an alternative but significant and often overlooked tradition. He draws parallels between the rhetorics of such American pragmatists as John Dewey and Jane Addams and those of the ancient Greek tradition. Danisch contends that, while building upon a classical foundation, pragmatism sought to determine rhetorical responses to contemporary irresolutions. rhetoric, including pragmatism's rejection of philosophy with its traditional assumptions and practices. Grounding his argument on an

William James and the Art of Popular Statement

Author : Paul Stob
Publisher : MSU Press
ISBN 13 : 162895048X
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (289 download)

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Book Synopsis William James and the Art of Popular Statement by : Paul Stob

Download or read book William James and the Art of Popular Statement written by Paul Stob and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the turn of the twentieth century, no other public intellectual was as celebrated in America as the influential philosopher and psychologist William James. Sought after around the country, James developed his ideas in lecture halls and via essays and books intended for general audiences. Reaching out to and connecting with these audiences was crucial to James—so crucial that in 1903 he identified “popular statement,” or speaking and writing in a way that animated the thought of popular audiences, as the “highest form of art.” Paul Stob’s thought-provoking history traces James’s art of popular statement through pivotal lectures, essays, and books, including his 1878 lectures in Baltimore and Boston, “Talks to Teachers on Psychology,” “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” and “Pragmatism.” The book explores James’s unique approach to public address, which involved crafting lectures in science, religion, and philosophy around ordinary people and their experiences. With democratic bravado, James confronted those who had accumulated power through various systems of academic and professional authority, and argued that intellectual power should be returned to the people. Stob argues that James gave those he addressed a central role in the pursuit of knowledge and fostered in them a new intellectual curiosity unlike few scholars before or since.

The Rhetorical Surface of Democracy

Author : Scott Welsh
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 0739150642
Total Pages : 195 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rhetorical Surface of Democracy by : Scott Welsh

Download or read book The Rhetorical Surface of Democracy written by Scott Welsh and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012-10-18 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Citizens, political theorists, and politicians alike insist that political or partisan motives get in the way of real democracy. Real democracy, we are convinced, is embodied by an ability to form collective judgments in the interest of the whole. The Rhetorical Surface of Democracy: How Deliberative Ideals Undermine Democratic Politics, by Scott Welsh, argues instead that it is our easy rejection of political motives, individual interests, and the rhetorical pursuit of power that poses the greatest danger to democracy. Our rejection of politics understood as a rhetorical contest for power is dangerous because democracy ultimately rests upon the perceived public legitimacy of public, political challenges to authority and the subsequent reconstitution of authority amid the impossibility of collective judgment. Hence, rather than searching for allegedly more authentic democracy, rooted in the pursuit of ever-illusive collective judgments, we must find ways to come to terms with the persistence of rhetorical, political contests for power as the essence of democracy itself. Welsh argues that the impossibility of any kind of public judgment is the fact that democracy must face. Given the impossibility of public judgment, rhetorical competitions for political power are not merely poor substitutes for an allegedly more authentic democratic practice, but constitute the essence of democracy itself. The Rhetorical Surface of Democracy is an iconoclastic investigation of the democratic process and public discourse.

Reengaging the Prospect(s) of Rhetoric

Author : Mark J. Porrovecchio
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135167745
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (351 download)

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Book Synopsis Reengaging the Prospect(s) of Rhetoric by : Mark J. Porrovecchio

Download or read book Reengaging the Prospect(s) of Rhetoric written by Mark J. Porrovecchio and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-02-25 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reengaging the Prospects of Rhetoric reanimates the debate over the function and scope of rhetoric. Providing a contemporary response to the volume The Prospect of Rhetoric (1971), this volume reconceptualizes that classic work to address the challenges facing the study of rhetoric today. As a standalone text or a supplemental resource for undergraduate and graduate courses in the history, theory, and criticism of rhetoric or contemporary rhetorical theory, it will help to shape rhetoric’s future role in communication studies and will foster interdisciplinary dialogues about the topic.

Democracy and Rhetoric

Author : Nathan Crick
Publisher : Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 1611172357
Total Pages : 231 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (111 download)

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Book Synopsis Democracy and Rhetoric by : Nathan Crick

Download or read book Democracy and Rhetoric written by Nathan Crick and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2012-08-24 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative approach to Dewey's view of rhetoric as art, revealing an "ontology of becoming" In Democracy and Rhetoric, Nathan Crick articulates from John Dewey's body of work a philosophy of rhetoric that reveals the necessity for bringing forth a democratic life infused with the spirit of ethics, a method of inquiry, and a sense of beauty. Crick relies on rhetorical theory as well interdisciplinary insights from philosophy, history, sociology, aesthetics, and political science as he demonstrates that significant engagement with issues of rhetoric and communication are central to Dewey's political philosophy. In his rhetorical reading of Dewey, Crick examines the sophistical underpinnings of Dewey's philosophy and finds it much informed by notions of radical individuality, aesthetic experience, creative intelligence, and persuasive advocacy as essential to the formation of communities of judgment. Crick illustrates that for Dewey rhetoric is an art situated within a complex and challenging social and natural environment, wielding influence and authority for those well versed in its methods and capable of experimenting with its practice. From this standpoint the unique and necessary function of rhetoric in a democracy is to advance minority views in such a way that they might have the opportunity to transform overarching public opinion through persuasion in an egalitarian public arena. The truest power of rhetoric in a democracy then is the liberty for one to influence the many through free, full, and fluid communication. Ultimately Crick argues that Dewey's sophistical rhetorical values and techniques form a naturalistic "ontology of becoming" in which discourse is valued for its capacity to guide a self, a public, and a world in flux toward some improved incarnation. Appreciation of this ontology of becoming—of democracy as a communication-driven work in progress—gives greater social breadth and historical scope to Dewey's philosophy while solidifying his lasting contributions to rhetoric in an active and democratic public sphere.

Rhetorical Democracy

Author : Robert Danisch
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1666961949
Total Pages : 189 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (669 download)

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Book Synopsis Rhetorical Democracy by : Robert Danisch

Download or read book Rhetorical Democracy written by Robert Danisch and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-10-15 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rhetorical Democracy: How Communication Shapes Political Culture offers an explanation and diagnosis of the current state of American democracy rooted in the American pragmatist tradition. Robert Danisch analyzes the characteristics of communication systems and communication practices that inhibit or enhance democratic life. In doing so, this book provides a detailed explanation of the ways in which the communication systems and practices that constitute democratic life are currently fostering polarization and how they might be made to foster cooperation. Scholars of communication, rhetorical studies, political science, and media studies will find this book of particular interest.

Pragmatic Fashions

Author : John J. Stuhr
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253018978
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis Pragmatic Fashions by : John J. Stuhr

Download or read book Pragmatic Fashions written by John J. Stuhr and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John J. Stuhr, a leading voice in American philosophy, sets forth a view of pragmatism as a personal work of art or fashion. Stuhr develops his pragmatism by putting pluralism forward, setting aside absolutism and nihilism, opening new perspectives on democracy, and focusing on love. He creates a space for a philosophy that is liable to failure and that is experimental, pluralist, relativist, radically empirical, radically democratic, and absurd. Full color illustrations enhance this lyrical commitment to a new version of pragmatism.

Building a Social Democracy

Author : Robert Danisch
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1498517781
Total Pages : 343 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

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Book Synopsis Building a Social Democracy by : Robert Danisch

Download or read book Building a Social Democracy written by Robert Danisch and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building a Social Democracy offers an alternative intellectual history of American pragmatism, one that tries to reclaim the middle of the twentieth century in order to push neo-pragmatism beyond its philosophical limitations. Danisch argues that the major entailment of the invention of American pragmatism at the beginning of the twentieth century is that rhetorical practices are the rightful object of study and means of improving democratic life. Pragmatism entails a commitment to rhetoric. Rhetorical pragmatism is intended to be more faithful to the project of first generation pragmatism, to offer insight into the ways in which rhetoric operates in contemporary democratic cultures, to recommend practices, methods, and modes of action for improving contemporary democratic cultures, and to subordinate philosophy to rhetoric by reimagining appropriate ways for pragmatist scholarship and social research to advance.

Reinventing Rhetoric Scholarship

Author : Dave Tell
Publisher : Parlor Press LLC
ISBN 13 : 1643171003
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (431 download)

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Book Synopsis Reinventing Rhetoric Scholarship by : Dave Tell

Download or read book Reinventing Rhetoric Scholarship written by Dave Tell and published by Parlor Press LLC. This book was released on 2020-06-17 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reinventing Rhetoric Scholarship: Fifty Years of the Rhetoric Society of America collects essays reflecting on the history of the Rhetoric Society of America and the organization’s 18th Biennial Conference theme, “Reinventing Rhetoric: Celebrating the Past, Building the Future,” on the occasion of the Society’s 50th anniversary. The opening section, “Looking Back: RSA at Fifty” describes the establishment of the organization and includes remembrances from some of the founders. These historical essays consider the transdisciplinary nature of RSA scholarship and pedagogy and offer critical reviews of trends in some of its subfields. The essays in the second section, “Reinventing the Field: Looking Forward,” focus on the future of scholarship and pedagogy in the field, from reinventing scholarship on major figures such as Vico, Burke, and Toulmin, to reconsidering future work on rhetoric and democracy, rhetoric and religion, and rhetoric from both sides of the Atlantic. The authors in the last section, “Rhetorical Interventions,” offer critical interventions on contemporary issues, including food justice, fat studies, indigenous protest, biopolitics, Chinese feminism, and anti-establishment ethos. Together, the essays in Reinventing Rhetoric Scholarship offer a Janus-faced portrait of a discipline on the occasion of its golden anniversary: a loving and critical remembrance as well as a robust exploration of possible futures. Contributors include Kristian Bjørkdahl, David Blakesley, Leah Ceccarelli, Catherine Chaput, Rachel Chapman Daugherty, Richard Leo Enos, Joseph Good, Heidi Hamilton, Michelle Iten, Jacob W. Justice, Zornitsa Keremidchieva, Jens E. Kjeldsen, Abby Knoblauch, Laura Leavitt, Andrea A. Lunsford, Paul Lynch, Carolyn R. Miller, James J. Murphy, Shelley Sizemore, Ryan Skinnell, David Stock, Joonna Smitherman Trapp, Victor J. Vitanza, Ron Von Burg, Scott Welsh, Ben Wetherbee, Elizabethada A. Wright, Hui Wu, Richard E. Young, and David Zarefsky.

John Dewey and the Artful Life

Author : Scott R. Stroud
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271056878
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis John Dewey and the Artful Life by : Scott R. Stroud

Download or read book John Dewey and the Artful Life written by Scott R. Stroud and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-09-10 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aesthetic experience has had a long and contentious history in the Western intellectual tradition. Following Kant and Hegel, a human’s interaction with nature or art frequently has been conceptualized as separate from issues of practical activity or moral value. This book examines how art can be seen as a way of moral cultivation. Scott Stroud uses the thought of the American pragmatist John Dewey to argue that art and the aesthetic have a close connection to morality. Dewey gives us a way to reconceptualize our ideas of ends, means, and experience so as to locate the moral value of aesthetic experience in the experience of absorption itself, as well as in the experience of reflective attention evoked by an art object.

Recovering Overlooked Pragmatists in Communication

Author : Robert Danisch
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3030143430
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (31 download)

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Book Synopsis Recovering Overlooked Pragmatists in Communication by : Robert Danisch

Download or read book Recovering Overlooked Pragmatists in Communication written by Robert Danisch and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-03-16 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays engages with the current resurgence of interest in the relationship between American pragmatism and communication studies. The topics engaged in this collection of essays is necessarily diverse, with some of the figures discussed within often viewed as “minor” or ancillary to the main tradition of pragmatism. However, each essay attempts to show the value of reading these minor figures for philosophy and rhetorical studies. The diversity of the pragmatist tradition is evident in the ways in which unlikely figures like Hu Shi, Ambedkar, and Alice Dewey leverage some of the original commitments of pragmatism to do important intellectual, social, and political work within the circumstances that they find themselves. This collection of essays also serves as a reminder for how we might reimagine and reuse pragmatism for our own social and political projects and challenges.

Rhetoric’s Pragmatism

Author : Steven Mailloux
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271079991
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Rhetoric’s Pragmatism by : Steven Mailloux

Download or read book Rhetoric’s Pragmatism written by Steven Mailloux and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2017-05-26 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over thirty years, Steven Mailloux has championed and advanced the field of rhetorical hermeneutics, a historically and theoretically informed approach to textual interpretation. This volume collects fourteen of his most recent influential essays on the methodology, plus an interview. Following from the proposition that rhetorical hermeneutics uses rhetoric to practice theory by doing history, this book examines a diverse range of texts from literature, history, law, religion, and cultural studies. Through four sections, Mailloux explores the theoretical writings of Heidegger, Burke, and Rorty, among others; Jesuit educational treatises; and products of popular culture such as Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran and Star Trek: The Next Generation. In doing so, he shows how rhetorical perspectives and pragmatist traditions work together as two mutually supportive modes of understanding, and he demonstrates how the combination of rhetoric and interpretation works both in theory and in practice. Theoretically, rhetorical hermeneutics can be understood as a form of neopragmatism. Practically, it focuses on the production, circulation, and reception of written and performed communication. A thought-provoking collection from a preeminent literary critic and rhetorician, Rhetoric’s Pragmatism assesses the practice and value of rhetorical hermeneutics today and the directions in which it might head. Scholars and students of rhetoric and communication studies, critical theory, literature, law, religion, and American studies will find Mailloux’s arguments enlightening and essential.

An Alternate Pragmatism for Going Public

Author : Jim Webber
Publisher : University Press of Colorado
ISBN 13 : 160732654X
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis An Alternate Pragmatism for Going Public by : Jim Webber

Download or read book An Alternate Pragmatism for Going Public written by Jim Webber and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Alternate Pragmatism for Going Public interrogates composition’s most prominent responses to contemporary K–16 education reform. By “going public,” teachers, scholars, and administrators rightfully reassert their expertise against corporate-political standards and assessments like the Common Core, Complete College America, and the Collegiate Learning Assessment. However, author Jim Webber shows that composition’s professional imperative for self-defense only partly fulfils the broader aims of “going public,” which include fostering public participation that can assess and potentially affirm the public good of professional judgment. Drawing on the pragmatic/democratic tradition, Webber envisions an alternate rhetoric of professionalism, one that not only reasserts compositionists’ expertise but also expands opportunities for publics to authorize this expertise. While this public inquiry and engagement may not safeguard professional standing against neoliberal reform, it reorients composition toward an equally important goal, enabling publics to gauge the adequacy of the educational standardization so often advocated by contemporary reform. An Alternate Pragmatism for Going Public shows how public engagement can serve composition’s efforts related to “going public.”

Culture, Catastrophe, and Rhetoric

Author : Robert Hariman
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 1782387471
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (823 download)

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Book Synopsis Culture, Catastrophe, and Rhetoric by : Robert Hariman

Download or read book Culture, Catastrophe, and Rhetoric written by Robert Hariman and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores political culture, especially the catastrophic elements of the global social order emerging in the twenty-first century. By emphasizing the texture of political action, the book theorizes how social context becomes evident on the surface of events and analyzes the performative dimensions of political experience. The attention to catastrophe allows for an understanding of how ordinary people contend with normal system operation once it is indistinguishable from system breakdown. Through an array of case studies, the book provides an account of change as it is experienced, negotiated, and resisted in specific settings that define a society’s capacity for political action.

The Problematic Public

Author : Kristian Bjørkdahl
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271097043
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis The Problematic Public by : Kristian Bjørkdahl

Download or read book The Problematic Public written by Kristian Bjørkdahl and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Almost one hundred years have passed since Walter Lippmann and John Dewey published their famous reflections on the “problems of the public,” but their thoughts remain surprisingly relevant as resources for thinking through our current crisis-plagued predicament. This book takes stock of the reception history of Lippmann’s and Dewey’s ideas about publics, communication, and political decision-making and shows how their ideas can inspire a way forward. Lippmann and Dewey were only two of many twentieth-century thinkers trying to imagine how a modern industrial democracy might (or might not) come to pass, but despite that, the “Lippmann/Dewey debate” became a symbol of the two alleged options: an epistocracy, on the one hand, and grassroots participation, on the other. In this book, distinguished scholars from rhetoric, communication, sociology, and media and journalism studies reconsider this debate in order to assess its contemporary relevance for our time, which, in some respects, bears a striking resemblance to the 1920s. In this way, the book explains how and why Lippmann and Dewey are indispensable resources for anyone concerned with the future of democratic deliberation and decision-making. In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume include Nathan Crick, Robert Danisch, Steve Fuller, William Keith, Bruno Latour, John Durham Peters, Patricia Roberts-Miller, Michael Schudson, Anna Shechtman, Slavko Splichal, Lisa S. Villadsen, and Scott Welsh.

Trained Capacities

Author : Brian Jackson
Publisher : Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 1611173191
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (111 download)

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Book Synopsis Trained Capacities by : Brian Jackson

Download or read book Trained Capacities written by Brian Jackson and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection examining Dewey's influence on effective communication in a healthy democratic practice The essays in this collection, written by sixteen scholars in rhetoric and communications studies, demonstrate American philosopher John Dewey's wide-ranging influence on rhetoric in an intellectual tradition that addresses the national culture's fundamental conflicts between self and society, freedom and responsibility, and individual advancement and the common good. Editors Brian Jackson and Gregory Clark propose that this influence is at work both in theoretical foundations, such as science, pragmatism, and religion, and in Dewey's debates with other public intellectuals, such as Jane Addams, Walter Lippmann, James Baldwin, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Jackson and Clark seek to establish Dewey as an essential source for those engaged in teaching others how to compose timely, appropriate, useful, and eloquent responses to the diverse and often-contentious rhetorical situations that develop in a democratic culture. They contend that there is more at stake than instruction in traditional modes of public discourse because democratic culture encompasses a variety of situations, private or public, civic or professional, where people must cooperate in the work of advancing a common project. What prepares people to intervene constructively in such situations is instruction in those rhetorical practices of democratic interaction that is implicit throughout Dewey's work. Dewey's writing provides a rich framework on which a distinctly American tradition of a democratic rhetorical practice can be built—a tradition that combines the most useful concepts of classical rhetoric with those of modern progressive civic engagement. Jackson and Clark believe Dewey's practice takes rhetoric beyond the traditional emphasis on political democracy to provide connections to rich veins of American thought such as individualism, liberalism, progressive education, collectivism, pragmatism, and postindustrial science and communication. They frame Dewey's voluminous work as constituting a modern expression of continuing education for the "trained capacities" required to participate in democratic culture. For Dewey human potential is best realized in the free flow of artful communication among the individuals who together constitute society. The book concludes with an afterword by Gerard A. Hauser, College Professor of Distinction in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Rhetoric, Sophistry, Pragmatism

Author : Steven Mailloux
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521467803
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (678 download)

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Book Synopsis Rhetoric, Sophistry, Pragmatism by : Steven Mailloux

Download or read book Rhetoric, Sophistry, Pragmatism written by Steven Mailloux and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-05-18 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The anti-sceptical relativism and self-conscious rhetoric of the pragmatist tradition, which began with the Older Sophists of Ancient Greece and developed through an American tradition including William James and John Dewey has attracted new attention in the context of late twentieth-century postmodernist thought. At the same time there has been a more general renewal of interest across a wide range of humanistic and social science disciplines in rhetoric itself: language use, writing and speaking, persuasion, figurative language, and the effect of texts. This book, written by leading scholars, explores the various ways in which rhetoric, sophistry and pragmatism overlap in their current theoretical and political implications, and demonstrates how they contribute both to a rethinking of the human sciences within the academy and to larger debates over cultural politics.