What is the role of rhetoric in a civil society? In this
thought-provoking book, James L. Kastely examines works by writers
from Plato to Jane Austen and locates a line of thinking that
values rhetoric but also raises questions about the viability of
rhetorical practice. While dealing principally with literary
theory, rhetoric, and philosophy, the author's arguments extend to
practical concerns and open up the way to deeper thinking about
individual responsibility for existing injustices, for
inadvertently injuring others, and for silencing those without
power.
Challenging the traditional claim that Plato is the chief
opponent of rhetoric, Kastely contends that he was its most
sophisticated theorist. Plato, Sophocles, and Euripides, the author
asserts, recognized an essential paradox: while urgently believing
in the need for rhetoric in a world where injustice cannot be
eliminated, they nevertheless regarded the possibilities of
rhetoric with skepticism. Tracing the modern recovery of a
skeptical rhetorical tradition to Jane Austen, the author argues
that Sartre's work displays the incoherence within modernist
thought on discourse and reveals the tensions between two strains
of postmodern thought -- deconstructionism and Marxism. Kastely
concludes by showing how the rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke has
returned to the insights of classical rhetoric in order to balance
a skeptical stance toward persuasion with a commitment to act in a
world with persistent injustice.
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