Aristotle's Rhetoric: An Art of Character

Product Description In this major contribution to philosophy and rhetoric, Eugene Garver shows how Aristotle integrates logic and virtue in his great treatise, the Rhetoric. He raises and answers a central question: can there be a civic art of rhetoric, an art that forms the character of citizens? By demonstrating the importance of the Rhetoric for understanding current philosophical problems of practical reason, virtue, and character, Garver has written the first work to treat the Rhetoric as philosophy and to connect its themes with parallel problems in Aristotle's Ethics and Politics. Garver's study will help put rhetoric at the center of investigations of practice and practical reason. From Library Journal Garver (McNeely Chair in Thinking, St. John's Univ.) aims to show how Aristotle's Rhetoric has pertinence for the contemporary world. According to Garver, rhetoric-conceived of as the attempt to persuade in matters of civic concern-is a highly ethical activity in which the rhetorician gains agreement not through deception but as the result of character, emotion, and practical reason. This is a highly learned study, fully conversant with the Aristotelian corpus. Nevertheless, Garver fails to show that his extrapolation of Artistotle's thinking has contemporary application: his discussion throughout is highly abstract, using the language and concepts of ancient Greece and failing to translate into today's idiom and concerns. This study will be of use only to those with a specialist's knowledge of Aristotle and Greek philosophy; hence, only pertinent academic collections need consider it.Leon H. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel Mgt. Lib., Washington, D.C.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. About the Author Eugene Garver is the Regents Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Saint John's University and adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota. Among his earlier books are Aristotle's Rhetoric: An Art of Character and Confronting Aristotle's Ethics: Ancient and Modern Morality, both published by the University of Chicago Press. In 2008, he bicycled from Cairo to Cape Town.