Abstract
The classical conception of rhetoric as the method of reasoned political judgment survived into the Renaissance but was reduced to academic critiques of style and "empty" public rhetoric with the rise of modern science and its representationalist theories of language. Recently, however, rhetoric, textuality, and the "linguistic turn" generally, have become central metaphors in the human sciences. This renewed rhetorical perspective not only fosters a critique of positive philosophy and of scientism in public discourse, it also offers affirmative methods by which persons can construct their civic lives.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Agger, Ben: 1989, Fast Capitalism: A Critical Theory of Significance, University of Illinois Press, Urbana.
Aristotle: 1991, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, George A. Kennedy, trans. Oxford University Press, New York.
Ashmore, Malcolm: 1989, The Reflexive Thesis. Wrighting Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Beer, Stafford: 1974, Designing Freedom, Wiley, New York.
Bitzer, Lloyd: 1968, ‘The Rhetorical Situation’, Philosophy and Rhetoric 1, 1–14.
Blumenberg, Hans: 1987, ‘An Anthropological Approach to the Contemporary Significance of Rhetoric’, Robert M. Wallace, trans., in Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman, and Thomas McCarthy (eds.), After Philosophy: End of Transformation? MIT Press, Cambridge MA.
Booth, Wayne: 1974, Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Brown, Richard Harvey: 1987, Society as Text: Essays on Reason, Rhetoric, and Reality, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Brown, Richard Harvey: 1989a, A Poetic for Sociology: Toward a Logic of Discovery for the Human Sciences, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Brown, Richard Harvey: 1989b, Social Science as Civic Discourse: Essays on the Invention, Legitimation and Use of Social Theory, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Brown, Richard Harvey: 1996, Science as Narration: Public Knowledge and Civic Communication in a Democratic Society, Yale University Press, New Haven CT.
Burke, Kenneth: 1973, Langage as Symbolic Action, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Cavell, Stanley: 1979, The Claim of Reason, Oxford University of Press, New York.
Dahl, Robert: 1961, Controlling Nuclear Weapons: Democracy versus Guardianship, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse.
Derrida, Jacques: 1976, Of Grammatology, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Descartes, René: 1993 [1637], Discourse on Method, and Meditations on First Philosophy, 3rd edition, D. Cress, translator, Hackett, Indianapolis IN.
Dewey, John: 1954, The Public and Its Problems, Swallow Press, Chicago.
Falzer, Paul R.: 1991, ‘On Behalf of Sketpical Rhetoric’, Philosophy and Rhetoric 24(3), 238–255.
Farrell, Thomas B.: 1976, ‘Knowledge, Consensus, and Rhetorical Theory’, Quarterly Journal of Speech 62, 1–14.
Feyerabend, Paul K.: 1975, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, Huamnities Press, Atlantic Heights NJ.
Feyerabend, Paul K.: 1979, Science in a Free Society, New Left Books, London.
Fuller, Steve: 1993, Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the End of Knowledge: The Coming of Science and Technology Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Fuller, Steve: 1991, ‘The Proprietary Grounds of Knowledge’, Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 6, 105–128.
Goodman, Nelson: 1978, Ways of Worldmaking, Hackett, Indianapolis IN.
Gross, Bartram: 1980, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America, M. Evans, New York.
Habermas, Jurgen: 1975, Legitimation Crisis, Beacon, Boston.
Hartman, Joan, and Ellen Messer-Davidow, eds.: 1991, (En)gendering Knowledge, University of Tennessee Press, Knxville.
Hittinger, John P.: 1989, ‘The Moral Status of the Expert in Contemporary Society’, The World and I, 561–585.
Jost, Walter: 1991, Review of Eugene Garver's Machiavelli and the History of Prudence in Philosophy and Rhetoric 24(1), 73–76.
Kuhn, Thomas: 1970, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Latour, Bruno: 1981, ‘Insiders and Outsiders in the Sociology of Science; or, How Can We Foster Agnosticism?’, Knowledge and Society 3, 199–216.
Lazlo, Ervom: 1971, ‘Human Dignity and the Promise of Technology’, Philosophy Forum 9(1/2) (June).
Levine, Donald N.: 1983, ‘Review Essay, Sociology after MacIntyre’, American Journal of Sociology 89(3), 700–707.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois: 1986, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester University Press, Manchester UK.
Machiavelli, Niccolo: 1965, Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, Allan Cilbert, trans. 3 vols. Duke University Press, Durham NC.
Merton, Robert: 1973, The Sociology of Science, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Miller, Carolyn R.: 1989, ‘The Rhetoric of Decision Science, or Herbert A. Simon Says’, Science, Technology, and Human Values 14(1) (Winter) 43–46.
Murphy, John W.: 1989, Postmodern Social Analysis and Criticism, Greenwood Press, New York.
Narveson, Jan: 1967, Morality and Utility, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Nelson, John S.: 1990, ‘Political Foundations for the Rhetoric of Inquiry’, in Herbert W. Simons (ed.), The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Chapter 10, 258–292.
Nelson, John S., Allan Megill, and Donald N. McCloskey, eds.: 1987, The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences: Language and Argument in Scholarship and Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.
Perleman, Chaim: 1982, The Realm of Rhetoric, William Kluback, trans. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame IN.
Perelman, Chiam and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca: 1969, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver, trans. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame IN.
Proctor, Robert: 1991, Value-Free Science? Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA.
Quine, Willard van Orman: 1960, Word and Object, MIT Press, Cambridge MA.
Quine, Willard van Orman: 1953, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, in Quine (ed.), From a Logical Point of View, Harpert and Row, New York.
Ravetz, Jerome R.: 1979, Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems, Oxford University Press, New York.
Rawls, John: 1972, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA.
Rorty, Richard: 1979, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ.
Rosenberg, Shawn: 1988, Reason, Ideology, and Politics, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ.
Roth, Paul: 1991, ‘The Bureaucratic Turn: Weber contra Hempel in Fuller's Social Epistemology’, Inquiry 34, 365–376.
Schrag, Calvin O.: 1980, Radical Reflection and the Origin of the Human Sciences, Purdue University Press, Purdue IN.
Schrag, Calvin O.: 1986, Communicative Praxis and the Space of Subjectivity, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Scult, Allen: 1988, ‘What Is Friendship: A Hermeneutical Quibble’, Manuscript, Department of Rhetoric, Drake University, Des Moines IA.
Simon, Herbert A.: 1983, Reason in Human Affairs, Stanford University Press, Stanford CA.
Sprat, 1959 [1667]: The History of the Royal Society, J. I. Cope and N. W. Jones, eds. Washington University Press, St. Louis.
Stanley, Manfred: 1987, The Technological Conscience: Survival and Dignity in an Age of Expertise, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Thernstrom, James C.: 1969, Poverty, Planning, and Politics in the New Boston, Basic Books, New York.
Valesio, Paolo: 1980, Novantiqua: Rhetorics as a Contemporary Theory, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Willard, Charles: 1991, ‘Authority’, Informal Logic 12, 11–22.
Willard, Charles: 1990, ‘The Problem of the Public Sphere: Three Diagnoses’, in David Williams and Michael Hazen (eds.), Argumentation Theory and the Rhetoric of Assent, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloca.
Wood, Elizabeth: 1989, ‘Rhetoric and Mystification’, Manuscript. Program in Comparative Literature, University of Maryland. College Park.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Brown, R.H. New Roles for Rhetoric: From Academic Critique to Civic Affirmation. Argumentation 11, 9–22 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1017978410588
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1017978410588