Rhetoric, Sophistry, Pragmatism

by Steven Mailloux (Editor)

Overview

The skeptical relativism and self-conscious rhetoric of the pragmatist tradition, which began with the pre-Socratic Sophists and developed through an American tradition including William James and John Dewey, have attracted new attention in the context of postmodernist thought. At the same time there has been a more general renewal of interest in rhetoric itself. This book 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521462259
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/18/1995
Series:	Literature, Culture, Theory , #15
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.75(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction: sophistry and rhetorical pragmatism Steven Mailloux; 1. Isocrates' philosophia and contemporary pragmatism Edward Schiappa; 2. The degradation of rhetoric; or, dressing like a gentleman, speaking like a scholar Jasper Neel; 3. Antilogics, dialogics, and sophistic social psychology: Michael Billig's reinvention of Bakhtin from Protagorean rhetoric Don H. Bialostosky; 4. The 'genealogies' of pragmatism Tom Cohen; 5. Philosophy in the 'new' rhetoric, rhetoric in the 'new' philosophy Joseph Margolis; 6. Individual feeling and universal validity Charlene Haddock Seigfried and Hans Seigfried; 7. Pragmatism, rhetoric and The American Scene Giles Gunn; 8. The political consequences of pragmatism; or, cultural pragmatics for a cybernetic revolution David B. Downing; 9. In excess: radical extensions of neopragmatism Susan Jarratt; Selected bibliographies: Rhetoric and recent critical theory; Re-interpretations of the Greek sophists; Developments in the pragmatist tradition.

Editorial Reviews

"Steven Mailloux's lucid and thoughtful introduction explores relations among rhetoric, pragmitism, and sophistry which explains why all three are object of philosophical disapproval. This collection is more than the sum of its parts. Taken together, the essays promote and exemplify a Deweyan interdisciplinary project of compelling importance. They revise philosophy, intellectual history, an pedagogy to make rhetoric central and to revoke its ancient divorce from dialetic. This this rediscription of our intellectual heritage offers hope that modern rhetoric can both serve and shape the ever-mutating goals of a secular, democratic, and technologically innovative society without discarding the past." Lars Engle, Modern Philology

From the Publisher