Republic of Rhetoric
Title | Republic of Rhetoric PDF eBook |
Author | Abhinav Chandrachud |
Publisher | Penguin Random House India Private Limited |
Pages | 345 |
Release | 2017-09-15 |
Genre | Literary Collections |
ISBN | 9386815311 |
Exploring socio-political as well as legal history of India, from the British period to the present, this book brings to light the idea of 'free speech' or what is popularly known as the freedom expression in the country. Analysing the present law relating to obscenity and free speech, this book will evaluate whether the enactment of the Constitution made a significant difference to the right to free speech in India. Deeply researched, authoritative and anecdotal, this book offers arguments that have not been substantially advanced before.
The Rhetoric of Plato's Republic
Title | The Rhetoric of Plato's Republic PDF eBook |
Author | James L. Kastely |
Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
Pages | 279 |
Release | 2015-08-25 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 022627876X |
Plato isn’t exactly thought of as a champion of democracy, and perhaps even less as an important rhetorical theorist. In this book, James L. Kastely recasts Plato in just these lights, offering a vivid new reading of one of Plato’s most important works: the Republic. At heart, Kastely demonstrates, the Republic is a democratic epic poem and pioneering work in rhetorical theory. Examining issues of justice, communication, persuasion, and audience, he uncovers a seedbed of theoretical ideas that resonate all the way up to our contemporary democratic practices. As Kastely shows, the Republic begins with two interrelated crises: one rhetorical, one philosophical. In the first, democracy is defended by a discourse of justice, but no one can take this discourse seriously because no one can see—in a world where the powerful dominate the weak—how justice is a value in itself. That value must be found philosophically, but philosophy, as Plato and Socrates understand it, can reach only the very few. In order to reach its larger political audience, it must become rhetoric; it must become a persuasive part of the larger culture—which, at that time, meant epic poetry. Tracing how Plato and Socrates formulate this transformation in the Republic, Kastely isolates a crucial theory of persuasion that is central to how we talk together about justice and organize ourselves according to democratic principles.
Rhetoric and the Republic
Title | Rhetoric and the Republic PDF eBook |
Author | Mark Garrett Longaker |
Publisher | University of Alabama Press |
Pages | 290 |
Release | 2007 |
Genre | Education |
ISBN | 0817315470 |
Casts a revealing light on modern cultural conflicts through the lens of rhetorical education. Contemporary efforts to revitalize the civic mission of higher education in America have revived an age-old republican tradition of teaching students to be responsible citizens, particularly through the study of rhetoric, composition, and oratory. This book examines the political, cultural, economic, and religious agendas that drove the various—and often conflicting—curricula and contrasting visions of what good citizenship entails. Mark Garrett Longaker argues that higher education more than 200 years ago allowed actors with differing political and economic interests to wrestle over the fate of American citizenship. Then, as today, there was widespread agreement that civic training was essential in higher education, but there were also sharp differences in the various visions of what proper republic citizenship entailed and how to prepare for it. Longaker studies in detail the specific trends in rhetorical education offered at various early institutions—such as Yale, Columbia, Pennsylvania, and William and Mary—with analyses of student lecture notes, classroom activities, disputation exercises, reading lists, lecture outlines, and literary society records. These documents reveal an extraordinary range of economic and philosophical interests and allegiances—agrarian, commercial, spiritual, communal, and belletristic—specific to each institution. The findings challenge and complicate a widely held belief that early-American civic education occurred in a halcyon era of united democratic republicanism. Recognition that there are multiple ways to practice democratic citizenship and to enact democratic discourse, historically as well as today, best serves the goal of civic education, Longaker argues. Rhetoric and the Republic illuminates an important historical moment in the history of American education and dramatically highlights rhetorical education as a key site in the construction of democracy.
Writing the English Republic
Title | Writing the English Republic PDF eBook |
Author | David Norbrook |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 532 |
Release | 1999 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 9780521785693 |
'[A] marvellously original, densely researched study of the English republican imagination.' Tom Paulin, The Independent
From Republic to Empire
Title | From Republic to Empire PDF eBook |
Author | John Pollini |
Publisher | University of Oklahoma Press |
Pages | 576 |
Release | 2012-11-20 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 0806188162 |
Political image-making—especially from the Age of Augustus, when the Roman Republic evolved into a system capable of governing a vast, culturally diverse empire—is the focus of this masterful study of Roman culture. Distinguished art historian and classical archaeologist John Pollini explores how various artistic and ideological symbols of religion and power, based on Roman Republican values and traditions, were taken over or refashioned to convey new ideological content in the constantly changing political world of imperial Rome. Religion, civic life, and politics went hand in hand and formed the very fabric of ancient Roman society. Visual rhetoric was a most effective way to communicate and commemorate the ideals, virtues, and political programs of the leaders of the Roman State in an empire where few people could read and many different languages were spoken. Public memorialization could keep Roman leaders and their achievements before the eyes of the populace, in Rome and in cities under Roman sway. A leader’s success demonstrated that he had the favor of the gods—a form of legitimation crucial for sustaining the Roman Principate, or government by a “First Citizen.” Pollini examines works and traditions ranging from coins to statues and reliefs. He considers the realistic tradition of sculptural portraiture and the ways Roman leaders from the late Republic through the Imperial period were represented in relation to the divine. In comparing visual and verbal expression, he likens sculptural imagery to the structure, syntax, and diction of the Latin language and to ancient rhetorical figures of speech. Throughout the book, Pollini’s vast knowledge of ancient history, religion, literature, and politics extends his analysis far beyond visual culture to every aspect of ancient Roman civilization, including the empire’s ultimate conversion to Christianity. Readers will gain a thorough understanding of the relationship between artistic developments and political change in ancient Rome.
Bending Spines
Title | Bending Spines PDF eBook |
Author | Randall L. Bytwerk |
Publisher | MSU Press |
Pages | 257 |
Release | 2012-01-01 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 0870138995 |
Why do totalitarian propaganda such as those created in Nazi Germany and the former German Democratic Republic initially succeed, and why do they ultimately fail? Outside observers often make two serious mistakes when they interpret the propaganda of this time. First, they assume the propaganda worked largely because they were supported by a police state, that people cheered Hitler and Honecker because they feared the consequences of not doing so. Second, they assume that propaganda really succeeded in persuading most of the citizenry that the Nuremberg rallies were a reflection of how most Germans thought, or that most East Germans were convinced Marxist-Leninists. Subsequently, World War II Allies feared that rooting out Nazism would be a very difficult task. No leading scholar or politician in the West expected East Germany to collapse nearly as rapidly as it did. Effective propaganda depends on a full range of persuasive methods, from the gentlest suggestion to overt violence, which the dictatorships of the twentieth century understood well. In many ways, modern totalitarian movements present worldviews that are religious in nature. Nazism and Marxism-Leninism presented themselves as explanations for all of life—culture, morality, science, history, and recreation. They provided people with reasons for accepting the status quo. Bending Spines examines the full range of persuasive techniques used by Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic, and concludes that both systems failed in part because they expected more of their propaganda than it was able to deliver.
The Rhetoric of Plato's Republic
Title | The Rhetoric of Plato's Republic PDF eBook |
Author | James L. Kastely |
Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
Pages | 279 |
Release | 2015-08-25 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 022627862X |
J. Kastely makes the case for Plato’s Republic as a self-consciously rhetorical work exploring a fundamental problem for philosophy. He argues that the Republic is a mimetic poem responding to a discursive crisis within democracy, namely, the absence of a genuinely persuasive defense of justice. Understanding the Republic as a work that raises persuasion as a key problem for philosophy requires us to rethink Plato’s understanding of the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric. This is a major and provocative reconsideration of the relationship of philosophy and rhetoric and raises issues central to a wide range of scholarly fields, from political theory to psychology to aesthetics.