What is rhetoric? Is it the capacity to persuade? Or is it 'mere' rhetoric: the ability to get others to do what the speaker wants, regardless of what they want? Robert Wardy uses Gorgias at the centre of this book and the debate.
In this book, Robert Wardy, a philosopher and classicist, turns his attention to the relation between language and thought. He explores this huge topic in an analysis of linguistic relativism, with specific reference to a reading of the ming li t'an ('The Investigation of the Theory of Names'), a seventeenth-century Chinese translation of Aristotle's Categories. Throughout his investigation, Wardy addresses important questions. Do the basis structures of language shape the major thought-patterns of its native speakers? Could philosophy be guided and constrained by the language in which it is done? What factors, from grammar and logic to cultural and religious expectations, influence translation? And does Aristotle survive rendition into Chinese intact? His answers will fascinate philosphers, Sinologists, classicists, linguists and anthropologists, and will make a major contribution to the existing literature.
The Chain of Change is the first full-scale philosophical commentary devoted to Aristotle's Physics VII, in which Aristotle argues for the existence of a first, unmoved cosmic mover. This study systematically considers the major issues of the book, and argues for the fundamental importance of Physics VII in our understanding of Aristotelian cosmology and natural science. Physics VII is extant in two versions, and therefore poses special editorial problems. For this reason one of the features of Dr. Wardy's study is the provision of an improved text and translation in both versions. The author's comprehensive comparison of their merits, philosophical and philological, has a significant bearing on our understanding of the nature and evolution of the Aristotelian corpus. The second part of the book is devoted to critical examination of the argument, including one of the most elaborate and challenging in the entire Aristotelian corpus. Throughout, the author concentrates on those points where Aristotle diverges most sharply and provocatively from contemporary presumptions in philosophy and natural science.
This lively and original guidebook offers an invitation to the study of Greek philosophy and signposts to lead the student deeper. The reader is drawn in to the questions the philosophers posed. Doing Greek Philosophy conveys a vital sense of the dynamism and continuity in the Greek philosophical tradition, and shows how interaction between the philosophers creates and sustains that tradition. It concentrates on a set of interrelated concepts and problems – contradiction, relativism, refutation and consistency – which appear in the tradition, and show how philosophers dealt with them. The author considers not just what the philosophers were doing, but also what they thought they were doing. The goal is not simply to inform readers about Greek philosophy, but also to equip them with an intellectual toolkit, and to encourage them to use it. The reader will come away from this book with a set of good questions and the means to probe them further. Accessibly written, the book will appeal to philosophers at every level, and its concision will make it the ideal starting point for the beginner in philosophy.
This lively and original guidebook offers an invitation to the study of Greek philosophy and signposts to lead the student deeper. The reader is drawn in to the questions the philosophers posed. Doing Greek Philosophy conveys a vital sense of the dynamism and continuity in the Greek philosophical tradition, and shows how interaction between the philosophers creates and sustains that tradition. It concentrates on a set of interrelated concepts and problems – contradiction, relativism, refutation and consistency – which appear in the tradition, and show how philosophers dealt with them. The author considers not just what the philosophers were doing, but also what they thought they were doing. The goal is not simply to inform readers about Greek philosophy, but also to equip them with an intellectual toolkit, and to encourage them to use it. The reader will come away from this book with a set of good questions and the means to probe them further. Accessibly written, the book will appeal to philosophers at every level, and its concision will make it the ideal starting point for the beginner in philosophy.
The Chain of Change is the first full-scale philosophical commentary devoted to Aristotle's Physics VII, in which Aristotle argues for the existence of a first, unmoved cosmic mover. This study systematically considers the major issues of the book, and argues for the fundamental importance of Physics VII in our understanding of Aristotelian cosmology and natural science. Physics VII is extant in two versions, and therefore poses special editorial problems. For this reason one of the features of Dr. Wardy's study is the provision of an improved text and translation in both versions. The author's comprehensive comparison of their merits, philosophical and philological, has a significant bearing on our understanding of the nature and evolution of the Aristotelian corpus. The second part of the book is devoted to critical examination of the argument, including one of the most elaborate and challenging in the entire Aristotelian corpus. Throughout, the author concentrates on those points where Aristotle diverges most sharply and provocatively from contemporary presumptions in philosophy and natural science.
What is rhetoric? Is it the capacity to persuade? Or is it 'mere' rhetoric: the ability to get others to do what the speaker wants, regardless of what they want? Robert Wardy uses Gorgias at the centre of this book and the debate.
For most of this century, Aristotelian scholarship was dominated by a single question: how might Aristotle's intellectual development be used to shed light on his philosophical doctrines? Opinions differed widely as to how this growth was to be charted; eventually, a reaction to the whole enterprise set in, and the past thirty years have seen the question lose its prominence. Recently, certain scholars have reopened the question. In this collection of new essays, sixteen distinguished scholars reconsider the promise and limitations of developmentalism, with contributions devoted to Aristotle's logic and epistemology, physics, biology and psychology, ethics and politics, and metaphysics. Also included are classic developmental studies by Anton-Hermann Chroust and Thomas Case. Contributors: Enrico Berti, Klaus Brinkmann, Thomas Case, Anton-Hermann Chroust, John Cleary, Alan Code, Russell Dancy, Cynthia Freeland, Daniel Graham, Jaako Hintikka, James Lennox, Deborah Modrak, Pierre Pellegrin, John M. Rist, William Wians, and Charlotte Witt
Anyone who has sat on a jury or followed a high-profile trial on television usually comes to the realization that a trial, particularly a criminal trial, is really a performance. Verdicts seem determined as much by which lawyer can best connect with the hearts and minds of the jurors as by what the evidence might suggest. In this celebration of the American trial as a great cultural achievement, Robert Burns, a trial lawyer and a trained philosopher, explores how these legal proceedings bring about justice. The trial, he reminds us, is not confined to the impartial application of legal rules to factual findings. Burns depicts the trial as an institution employing its own language and styles of performance that elevate the understanding of decision-makers, bringing them in contact with moral sources beyond the limits of law. Burns explores the rich narrative structure of the trial, beginning with the lawyers' opening statements, which establish opposing moral frameworks in which to interpret the evidence. In the succession of witnesses, stories compete and are held in tension. At some point during the performance, a sense of the right thing to do arises among the jurors. How this happens is at the core of Burns's investigation, which draws on careful descriptions of what trial lawyers do, the rules governing their actions, interpretations of actual trial material, social science findings, and a broad philosophical and political appreciation of the trial as a unique vehicle of American self-government.
The issue of coming into being in Greek philosophy is investigated mostly by specialists in language analysis and philological science. Plato versus Parmenides, Robert J. Roecklein brings to the fore Plato's refutation of Parmenides' argument in his famous dialogue by that name. Roecklein offers an unprecedented exposition of the dialogue the Parmenides, and seeks to illuminate a political dimension in Parmenides' early formulations of the challenges made to the reality of coming into being in nature.
Bringing us close to the complex history of the civil rights movement in the American South—the currents that involved thousands of communities and millions of individual lives—this book looks deeply into the experiences of a single Alabama town, Tuskegee, and its surrounding Macon County. It is based on interviews with the people—white and black, liberal and traditional—whose lives were caught up in the movement and altered forever. We see Tuskegee in the early 1940s, seat of America’s most venerable institute of high education for blacks, an important symbol of black progress—yet almost entirely controlled by a white power structure—and we see the emergence of a charismatic leader, Charles G. Gomillion, who defied Tuskegee Institutes’ apolitical traditions and inspired blacks to organize for their right to vote. Thus begins decades of struggle, which Robert J. Norrell re-creates for us through the testimony of the people who lived and shaped this history: the dramatic appearance before a U.S. congressional committee of local civil rights leaders and ordinary farmers bearing witness to the seemingly endless obstructions to block voter registration; the months-long boycott of white Tuskegee merchants that was sparked by the city council’s attempt to exclude black voters by gerrymandering; the fiercely controversial move to integrate the public schools that culminated in Governor George Wallace’s order to state troopers to prevent the opening of Tuskegee High; the anguish that accompanied efforts by blacks to penetrate all-white church congregations. Norrell describes how blacks enters—and won—local elections, including those for mayor and sheriff, and how, with the onset of heightened activism in the late 1960s, Gomillion and other established leaders of the civil rights movement heard angry youthful voices raised against their cautious approach. Reaping the Whirlwind carries us through the early 1970s to a community profoundly changed, proud to have shed its false air of harmony, gradually coming to terms with the disorder and dissension of the preceding years. It is a moving and significant chronicle that documents a critical era in the nation’s history.
Misanthropoetics explores the reemergence and appeal of the literary misanthrope in a number of key examples from Shakespeare, Jonson, Spenser, and the satirical milieu of Marston, to exemplify a seemingly unresolvable set of paradoxes of social life"--
Following the heyday of Lévi-Straussian structuralism in the 1970s-80s, little attention has been paid by scholars of religion to semiotics. Semiotics of Religion reassesses key semiotic theories in the light of religious data. Yelle examines the semiotics of religion from structural and historical perspectives, drawing on Peircean linguistic anthropology, Jakobsonian poetics, comparative religion and several theological traditions. This book pays particular attention to the transformation of religious symbolism under modernization and the rise of a culture of the printed book. Among the topics addressed are: - ritual repetition and the poetics of ritual performance - magic and the belief in a natural (iconic) language - Protestant literalism and iconoclasm - disenchantment and secularization - Holiness, arbitrariness, and agency Building from the legacy of structuralism while interrogating several key doctrines of that movement, Semiotics of Religion both introduces the field to a new generation and charts a course for future research.
This book investigates the influence of Epicurean physics on the argument developed in Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy. Towards this end, the full philosophical history and origins of atomist philosophy are investigated during the first three chapters. Plato’s critique of the atomist philosophy, from his dialogue the Parmenides, is a part of that investigation. In fact, Plato provides a refutation of the atomist philosophy in the Parmenides. A significant amount of scholarship has been accomplished that demonstrates the currents of Lucretian atomism in Machiavelli’s Florence. Evidence is supplied as to Machiavelli’s exposure to the Lucretian text, and the book then proceeds to investigate the transformational arguments of the Discourses On Livy itself. Machiavelli’s Discourses are saturated with terminology that is borrowed from physics: ‘materia’ (Matter), ‘corpo’ (body), ‘forma’ (form), ‘accidente’ (accident). English translators have usually employed some theory as to which tradition of physics Machiavelli is relying upon, in order to conduct their translations. By borrowing the terminology of Lucretian physics, Machiavelli becomes able to conceive of the people in a political society as something less than human: as ‘matter’ or materia without form. In my analysis of Machiavelli’s deployment of the concepts from Lucretian physics, it is attempted to unveil the brutality that is inherent in Machiavelli’s new definitions of the elements of politics, and the general hostility of his political science to the Aristotelian concept of the human being as political animal. The classical physics of Aristotle, which Machiavelli has rejected for a model, indicates the forward looking momentum of natural beings. For Aristotle, nature intends human political society as the arena for human fulfillment. In Aristotelian physics, nature aims at an end in generation, i.e. at a culmination of the natural being in its proper condition of excellence. For human beings, this is justice, the quality of relationships that makes happiness possible. In Machiavelli, a new politicized physics is revealed. In Machiavelli’s model, the human beings of formed matter are repeatedly sent, through new institutions and methods of government, ‘back to their beginnings’, i.e. to a condition of isolation, destitution, injury, and pain. The last chapter of the book concludes with an examination of the particular institutions and methods that Machiavelli holds out to us for employment, if his new vision of a republic is to be realized.
The Korean experience changed the way Americans viewed war. The lack of a clear-cut victory inspired filmmakers to try to make sense of fighting another country's civil war and risking American lives for an unpopular cause. This filmography details more than 90 English-language films. Each entry includes complete cast and credit listings, a plot synopsis, evaluation, review snippets, and notice of video availability. This book places each film in its historical context, assesses the essential truthfulness of each film and evaluates its entertainment value, and discusses how--and why--Korean War films differ from other Hollywood war genres. Four appendices list the films by chronology; production company and studio; level of historical accuracy; and subject and theme. Additional appendices list films with incidental references to the Korean War; documentaries on the Korean War; and South Korean films about the war. Photographs, a bibliography, and an index are included.
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