Rhetorical Style and Bourgeois Virtue: Capitalism and Civil Society in the British Enlightenment

During the British Enlightenment, the correlation between effective communication and moral excellence was undisputed—so much so that rhetoric was taught as a means of instilling desirable values in students. In Rhetorical Style and Bourgeois Virtue, Mark Garrett Longaker explores the connections between rhetoric and ethics in the context of the history of capitalism.

Longaker’s study lingers on four British intellectuals from the late seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century: philosopher ...