Rhetoric, Sophistry, Pragmatism (Literature, Culture, Theory, Series Number 15) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521467802 ISBN 13: 9780521467803

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1995

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Book Description

Exploring the ways in which rhetoric, sophistry, and pragmatism overlap in their current theoretical and political implications, this survey demonstrates how they contribute to a rethinking of academic human sciences as well as to larger debates over cultural politics.

Review

"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

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0521467802
• ISBN 13: 9780521467803
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264
• Editor: Mailloux Steven