Rhetoric as philosophy

Name: Rhetoric as philosophy
Author: Ernesto Grassi
ISBN: 0271002565

by Ernesto Grassi (1980)

Read Free Sample Buy on Amazon Audible Free Trial

About this book

"By going back to the Italian humanist tradition and aspects of earlier Greek and Latin thought, Ernesto Grassi develops a conception of rhetoric as the basis of philosophy. Grassi explores the sense in which the first principles of rational thought come from the metaphorical power of the word. He finds the basis for his conception in the last great thinker of the Italian humanist tradition, Giambattista Vico (1668-1744). He concentrates on Vico's understanding of imagination and the sense of human ingenuity contained in metaphor. For Grassi, rhetorical activity is the essence and inner life of thought when connected to the metaphorical power of the word.". "Originally published in English in 1980, Rhetoric as Philosophy has been out of print for some time. In his foreword to this reprint edition, Burke scholar Timothy W. Crusius rues the lack of concentrated attention to Grassi because "what he had to say about rhetoric is at least as significant as, for example, what Kenneth Burke taught us.""--BOOK JACKET.

Setting / LocationGlobal

Story EraModern Era

Protagonist / CoreRhetoric as philosophy Lead Character

Themes & Moods

Philosophy & Religion Philosophy History Rhetoric Humanism Humanists Modern Era

Readers who enjoyed this also loved

Poetry and humanism

M. M. Mahood

The strength of the seventeenth-century writers lies in their power to meet a challenge which later religious poets evaded. Donne and his followers are humanists, alive to all new discoveries about the physical world and the nature of man; but they are theocentric humanists, able to reconcile these discoveries with the central tenets of their faith as Christians. This book attempts to trace this reintegration in the work of the Metaphysical poets and of Milton, and suggests that in this reintegration lies the real affinity between seventeenth-century poetry and the Baroque mode in the visual arts.

Les mots et les choses

Michel Foucault

When one defines 'order' as a sorting of priorities, it becomes beautifully clear what Foucault is doing here. He weaves an intensely complex history of thought. He dips into literature, art, economics and even biology.

Barack Obama's America

John Kenneth White

The election of Barack Obama to the presidency marked a conclusive end to the Reagan era, writes John Kenneth White in Barack Obama's America. Reagan symbolized a 1950s and 1960s America, largely white and suburban, with married couples and kids at home, who attended church more often than not. Obama's election marked a new era, the author writes. Whites will be a minority by 2042. Marriage is at an all-time low. Cohabitation has increased from a half-million couples in 1960 to more than 5 million in 2000 to even more this year. Gay marriages and civil unions are redefining what it means to be a family. And organized religions are suffering, even as Americans continue to think of themselves as a religious people. Obama's inauguration was a defining moment in the political destiny of this country, based largely on demographic shifts, as described in Barack Obama's America.

African-American/Afro-Canadian schooling

Charles L. Glenn

"An overview of efforts to provide formal schooling to Black children and youth in North America, from the Colonial period to the present, both in the South and in the North and Canada The account includes the damaging racial assumptions of the White majority, the often-heroic efforts of Black parents and teachers to provide education, the contributions of Black churches and White missionary organizations during Reconstruction and long after, formal and informal mechanisms of segregation in the North as well as the South, resistance to desegregation in recent decades, and new approaches to education that reduce the racial achievement gap"--