'This book makes a significant and needed contribution to post-structural philosophy and literary theory. In this impressive analysis that delicately weaves together philosophical and literary texts, Ewa Ziarek powerfully and persuasively demonstrates that the rhetoric of the failure of traditional subject-centered rationality does not lead to nihilism or nominalism.'-Kelly Oliver, University of Texas at Austin

A provocative look at how cowardice has been understood from ancient times to the present Coward. It's a grave insult, likely to provoke anger, shame, even violence. But what exactly is cowardice? When terrorists are called cowards, does it mean the same as when the term is applied to soldiers? And what, if anything, does cowardice have to do with the rest of us? Bringing together sources from court-martial cases to literary and film classics such as Dante's Inferno, The Red Badge of Courage, and The Thin Red Line, Cowardice recounts the great harm that both cowards and the fear of seeming cowardly have done, and traces the idea of cowardice’s power to its evolutionary roots. But Chris Walsh also shows that this power has faded, most dramatically on the battlefield. Misconduct that earlier might have been punished as cowardice has more recently often been treated medically, as an adverse reaction to trauma, and Walsh explores a parallel therapeutic shift that reaches beyond war, into the realms of politics, crime, philosophy, religion, and love. Yet, as Walsh indicates, the therapeutic has not altogether triumphed—contempt for cowardice endures, and he argues that such contempt can be a good thing. Courage attracts much more of our attention, but rigorously understanding cowardice may be more morally useful, for it requires us to think critically about our duties and our fears, and it helps us to act ethically when fear and duty conflict. Richly illustrated and filled with fascinating stories and insights, Cowardice is the first sustained analysis of a neglected but profound and pervasive feature of human experience.

Plato isn’t exactly thought of as a champion of democracy, and perhaps even less as an important rhetorical theorist. In this book, James L. Kastely recasts Plato in just these lights, offering a vivid new reading of one of Plato’s most important works: the Republic. At heart, Kastely demonstrates, the Republic is a democratic epic poem and pioneering work in rhetorical theory. Examining issues of justice, communication, persuasion, and audience, he uncovers a seedbed of theoretical ideas that resonate all the way up to our contemporary democratic practices. As Kastely shows, the Republic begins with two interrelated crises: one rhetorical, one philosophical. In the first, democracy is defended by a discourse of justice, but no one can take this discourse seriously because no one can see—in a world where the powerful dominate the weak—how justice is a value in itself. That value must be found philosophically, but philosophy, as Plato and Socrates understand it, can reach only the very few. In order to reach its larger political audience, it must become rhetoric; it must become a persuasive part of the larger culture—which, at that time, meant epic poetry. Tracing how Plato and Socrates formulate this transformation in the Republic, Kastely isolates a crucial theory of persuasion that is central to how we talk together about justice and organize ourselves according to democratic principles.

Assessing rhetorical principles of contemporary health issues Hypochondriacs are vulnerable to media hype, anorexics are susceptible to public scrutiny, and migraine sufferers are tainted with the history of the “migraine personality,” maintains rhetorical theorist Judy Z. Segal. All are influenced by the power of persuasion. Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine explores persistent health conditions that resist conventional medical solutions. Using a range of rhetorical principles, Segal analyzes how patients and their illnesses are formed within the physician/patient relationship. The intractable problem of a patient’s rejection of a doctor’s advice, says Segal, can be considered a rhetorical failure—a failure of persuasion. Examining the discourse of medicine through case studies, applications, and analyses, Segal illustrates how illnesses are described in ways that limit patients’ choices and satisfaction. She also illuminates psychiatric conditions, infectious diseases, genetic testing, and cosmetic surgeries through the lens of rhetorical theory. Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine bridges critical analysis for scholarly, professional, and lay audiences. Segal highlights the persuasive element in diagnosis, health policy, illness experience, and illness narratives. She also addresses questions of direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs, the role of health information in creating the “worried well” and problems of trust and expertise in physician/patient relationships. A useful resource for critical common sense in everyday life, the text provides an effective examination of a society increasingly influenced by the rhetoric of health and medicine.

The essays in this volume demonstrate how the performance of sincerity is culturally specific and is enacted in different ways in different media and disciplines, including law and the arts.

Responding to skeptics within higher education and critics without, James Crosswhite argues powerfully that the core of a college education should be learning to write a reasoned argument. A trained philosopher and director of a university-wide composition program, Crosswhite challenges his readers—teachers of writing and communication, philosophers, critical theorists, and educational administrators—to reestablish the traditional role of rhetoric in education. To those who have lost faith in the abilities of people to reach reasoned mutual agreements, and to others who have attacked the right-or-wrong model of formal logic, this book offers the reminder that the rhetorical tradition has always viewed argumentation as a dialogue, a response to changing situations, an exchange of persuading, listening, and understanding. Crosswhite’s aim is to give new purpose to writing instruction and to students’ writing, to reinvest both with the deep ethical interests of the rhetorical tradition. In laying out the elements of argumentation, for example, he shows that claiming, questioning, and giving reasons are not simple elements of formal logic, but communicative acts with complicated ethical features. Students must learn not only how to construct an argument, but the purposes, responsibilities, and consequences of engaging in one. Crosswhite supports his aims through a rhetorical reconstruction of reason, offering new interpretations of Plato and Aristotle and of the concepts of reflection and dialogue from early modernity through Hegel to Gadamer. And, in his conclusion, he ties these theoretical and historical underpinnings to current problems of higher education, the definition of the liberal arts, and, especially, the teaching of written communication.

The crash of an Amtrak train near Baltimore, the collapse of the Hyatt hotel in Kansas City, the incident at Three Mile Island, and other large-scale technological disasters have provided powerful examples of the ways that communication practices influence the events and decisions that precipitate a disaster. These examples have raised ethical questions about the responsibility of writers within agencies, epistemological questions about the nature of representation in science, and rhetorical questions about the nature of expertise and experience as grounds for judgments about risk. In The Rhetoric of Risk: Technical Documentation in Hazardous Environments, author Beverly Sauer examines how the dynamic uncertainty of the material environment affects communication in large regulatory industries. Sauer's analysis focuses specifically on mine safety, which provides a rich technical and historical context where problems of rhetorical agency, narrative, and the negotiation of meaning have visible and tragic outcomes. But the questions Sauer asks have larger implication for risk and safety: How does writing function in large regulatory industries? What can we learn from experience? Why is this experience so difficult to capture in writing? What information is lost when agencies rely on written documentation alone? Given the uncertainties, how can we work to improve communication in hazardous and uncertain environments? By exploring how individuals make sense of the material, technical, and institutional indeterminancies of their work in speech and gesture, The Rhetoric of Risk helps communicators rethink their frequently unquestioned assumptions about workplace discourse and the role of writers in hazardous worksites. It is intended for scholars and students in technical writing and communication, rhetoric, risk analysis and risk communication, as well as a wide range of engineering and technical fields concerned with risk, safety, and uncertainty.

"An analysis of truth claims in contemporary U.S. political rhetoric through a series of case studies--including the PolitiFact fact-checking project, the Planned Parenthood "selling baby parts" scandal, the Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden cases, Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmos, and the Black Lives Matter movement"--

A close look at the rhetoric of Operation Rescue. >

When should I change my mind? What can I believe and what must I doubt? In this new "philosophy of good reasons" Wayne C. Booth exposes five dogmas of modernism that have too often inhibited efforts to answer these questions. Modern dogmas teach that "you cannot reason about values" and that "the job of thought is to doubt whatever can be doubted," and they leave those who accept them crippled in their efforts to think and talk together about whatever concerns them most. They have willed upon us a "befouled rhetorical climate" in which people are driven to two self-destructive extremes—defenders of reason becoming confined to ever narrower notions of logical or experimental proof and defenders of "values" becoming more and more irresponsible in trying to defend the heart, the gut, or the gonads. Booth traces the consequences of modernist assumptions through a wide range of inquiry and action: in politics, art, music, literature, and in personal efforts to find "identity" or a "self." In casting doubt on systematic doubt, the author finds that the dogmas are being questioned in almost every modern discipline. Suggesting that they be replaced with a rhetoric of "systematic assent," Booth discovers a vast, neglected reservoir of "good reasons"—many of them known to classical students of rhetoric, some still to be explored. These "good reasons" are here restored to intellectual respectability, suggesting the possibility of widespread new inquiry, in all fields, into the question, "When should I change my mind?"