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February 28, 2007
A quote from Larval Subjects on rhetoric as a public reason:
Rhetoricians sometimes like to claim that we need to return to the rhetorical tradition preceding the Enlightenment. This, for instance, is one of Sharon Crowley’s theses in a book that I highly recommend. However, in my view Crowley fails to examine the Enlightenment thinkers in context or to analyze the relationship between these thinkers and the great Greek and Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism, Roman rhetoricians. Figures such as Cicero and Seneca were almost deified by thinkers like Hume and Diderot because of their great commitment to civic life and engagement with the public sphere. Indeed, Hume was extremely euridite where ancient philosophy was concerned, having encyclopedic familiarity with the Greek and Roman rhetoricians, and the Enlightenment thinkers modelled their own conception of philosophy on the Romans. Their philosophy was a very public practice, premised on social engagement, combatting superstition, and devotion to civic life. Each of the texts written by the Enlightenment thinkers was a rhetorical grenade designed to draw lines and open a space where new social formations might be possible.
An interesting interpretation of the Enlightenment thinkers.They adapted ancient rhetorical categories to address their contemporary rhetorical situations.
In Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism Crowley urges us to revisit and revise established interpretations of the concepts of classical rhetorical theory for a conceptual language which will “restore” emotion and affect to modern rhetorical practices.For instance, Crowley argues that “doxa,” reduced since the nineteenth-century to a synonym for “opinion,” has lost the rich meaning it had in ancient Greece. A recovered definition of doxa, which would “designate current and local beliefs that circulate communally,” would, Crowley argues, give postmodern rhetoric a powerful way to conceptualize civic discourse. She hopes, further, to revive appeals to pathos, which she claims have been shed in liberal rhetorical argumentation.
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