George Cheney, Dan Lair, Dean Ritz, and Brenden Kendall
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195182774
- eISBN:
- 9780199871001
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195182774.001.0001
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Corporate Governance and Accountability
This book offers a fresh perspective on ethics at work, questioning the notions that doing ethics at work has to be work, and that work is somehow a sphere where a different set of rules applies. ...
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This book offers a fresh perspective on ethics at work, questioning the notions that doing ethics at work has to be work, and that work is somehow a sphere where a different set of rules applies. When we separate ethics from life, we put it beyond our daily reach, treating it as something that is meaningful only at certain moments. This problem permeates our everyday talk about ethics at work, in popular culture, in our textbooks, and even in our ethics codes. This book uses insights from the fields of communications and rhetoric to show how in the very framing of ethics—even before we get to specific decisions—we limit the potential roles of ethics in our work lives and in the pursuit of happiness. Sayings such as “It's just a job” and “Let the market decide” are two examples of demonstrating that our perspective on professional ethics is shaped and reinforced by everyday language. The standard “bad apples” approach to dealing with corporate and governmental wrongdoing is not surprising; few people are willing to consider how to cultivate “the good orchard.” The book argues that ethics is about more than behaviour regulation, spectacular scandals, and comprehensive codes. The authors offer a new take on virtue ethics, referencing Aristotle's practical ideal of eudaimonia, or flourishing, allowing us to tell new stories about the ordinary and to see the extraordinary aspects of professional integrity and success.Less
This book offers a fresh perspective on ethics at work, questioning the notions that doing ethics at work has to be work, and that work is somehow a sphere where a different set of rules applies. When we separate ethics from life, we put it beyond our daily reach, treating it as something that is meaningful only at certain moments. This problem permeates our everyday talk about ethics at work, in popular culture, in our textbooks, and even in our ethics codes. This book uses insights from the fields of communications and rhetoric to show how in the very framing of ethics—even before we get to specific decisions—we limit the potential roles of ethics in our work lives and in the pursuit of happiness. Sayings such as “It's just a job” and “Let the market decide” are two examples of demonstrating that our perspective on professional ethics is shaped and reinforced by everyday language. The standard “bad apples” approach to dealing with corporate and governmental wrongdoing is not surprising; few people are willing to consider how to cultivate “the good orchard.” The book argues that ethics is about more than behaviour regulation, spectacular scandals, and comprehensive codes. The authors offer a new take on virtue ethics, referencing Aristotle's practical ideal of eudaimonia, or flourishing, allowing us to tell new stories about the ordinary and to see the extraordinary aspects of professional integrity and success.
George Cheney, Daniel J. Lair, Dean Ritz, and Brenden E. Kendall
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195182774
- eISBN:
- 9780199871001
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195182774.003.0002
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Corporate Governance and Accountability
This chapter explores how we have limited our own understanding and application of ethics at work through our everyday talk about it. The chapter begins by arguing that how we frame ethics is as ...
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This chapter explores how we have limited our own understanding and application of ethics at work through our everyday talk about it. The chapter begins by arguing that how we frame ethics is as important, and sometimes more important, than the specific ethical decisions we make. The chapter explains how a perspective on ethics that is grounded in communication and rhetoric can illuminate how we unnecessarily restrain the influence of ethics at work. The chapter makes the case for examining popular culture and everyday talk for clues to how ethics is treated in our professional lives. Turning the saying “talk is cheap” on its head, the chapter urges a serious consideration of what it means to say, for example, that one's work is “just a job” or that we should “let the market decide.” Thus, the reader is urged to find ethical implications in diverse messages and cases, ranging from codes and handbooks, to television shows and Internet advertising, to everyday conversation, including sayings that become part of who we are.Less
This chapter explores how we have limited our own understanding and application of ethics at work through our everyday talk about it. The chapter begins by arguing that how we frame ethics is as important, and sometimes more important, than the specific ethical decisions we make. The chapter explains how a perspective on ethics that is grounded in communication and rhetoric can illuminate how we unnecessarily restrain the influence of ethics at work. The chapter makes the case for examining popular culture and everyday talk for clues to how ethics is treated in our professional lives. Turning the saying “talk is cheap” on its head, the chapter urges a serious consideration of what it means to say, for example, that one's work is “just a job” or that we should “let the market decide.” Thus, the reader is urged to find ethical implications in diverse messages and cases, ranging from codes and handbooks, to television shows and Internet advertising, to everyday conversation, including sayings that become part of who we are.
George Cheney, Daniel J. Lair, Dean Ritz, and Brenden E. Kendall
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195182774
- eISBN:
- 9780199871001
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195182774.003.0003
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Corporate Governance and Accountability
This chapter explores deeply how our common ways of speaking about ethics distract us from a more integrative vision of ethics in our lives. The chapter introduces three problems with how we ...
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This chapter explores deeply how our common ways of speaking about ethics distract us from a more integrative vision of ethics in our lives. The chapter introduces three problems with how we typically approach ethics, as revealed in our language: compartmentalization, or putting ethics in a box; “essentialization,” or trying to reduce or crystallize ethics in terms of one thing or simple answers; and abstraction, or creating distance (or alienation) between ethical concerns and everyday practices. The chapter then explains seven common dimensions cutting across various understandings of ethics, in order to illustrate just what we mean by “ethics” when we speak about it in a particular way. These dimensions include agency and autonomy, discrimination and choice, motive and purpose, responsibility and relationship, rationality and emotionality, role and identity, and scene and situation. The discussion invokes traditional ethical theories to show how they tend to emphasize certain features over others. This chapter concludes by arguing how Aristotle's idea of eudaimonia, or flourishing, helps bring together reframed notions of virtue with our most cherished life goals.Less
This chapter explores deeply how our common ways of speaking about ethics distract us from a more integrative vision of ethics in our lives. The chapter introduces three problems with how we typically approach ethics, as revealed in our language: compartmentalization, or putting ethics in a box; “essentialization,” or trying to reduce or crystallize ethics in terms of one thing or simple answers; and abstraction, or creating distance (or alienation) between ethical concerns and everyday practices. The chapter then explains seven common dimensions cutting across various understandings of ethics, in order to illustrate just what we mean by “ethics” when we speak about it in a particular way. These dimensions include agency and autonomy, discrimination and choice, motive and purpose, responsibility and relationship, rationality and emotionality, role and identity, and scene and situation. The discussion invokes traditional ethical theories to show how they tend to emphasize certain features over others. This chapter concludes by arguing how Aristotle's idea of eudaimonia, or flourishing, helps bring together reframed notions of virtue with our most cherished life goals.
George Cheney, Daniel J. Lair, Dean Ritz, and Brenden E. Kendall
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195182774
- eISBN:
- 9780199871001
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195182774.003.0006
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Corporate Governance and Accountability
This chapter focuses on the modern organization as a unit of life experience that is taken for granted yet little understood, showing how organizational culture shapes and sustains integrity (or ...
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This chapter focuses on the modern organization as a unit of life experience that is taken for granted yet little understood, showing how organizational culture shapes and sustains integrity (or doesn't). Considering a number of root metaphors for the organization, including machine, organism, person, and family, the chapter looks at the various ways ethics are cast in each case. Reviewing the typical ways that organizations engage ethics, including through codes of ethics, ethics officers, and the movement toward corporate social responsibility, the chapter concludes that all of them are valuable yet limited in scope. By showing how ethics can be woven into the entire fabric of messages and interactions in an organization, the chapter advances a wider perspective on virtue and culture in organizational life.Less
This chapter focuses on the modern organization as a unit of life experience that is taken for granted yet little understood, showing how organizational culture shapes and sustains integrity (or doesn't). Considering a number of root metaphors for the organization, including machine, organism, person, and family, the chapter looks at the various ways ethics are cast in each case. Reviewing the typical ways that organizations engage ethics, including through codes of ethics, ethics officers, and the movement toward corporate social responsibility, the chapter concludes that all of them are valuable yet limited in scope. By showing how ethics can be woven into the entire fabric of messages and interactions in an organization, the chapter advances a wider perspective on virtue and culture in organizational life.
Robert S. Lehman
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780804799041
- eISBN:
- 9781503600140
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804799041.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Impossible Modernism reveals in the modernism of T.S. Eliot and Walter Benjamin a shared project: both authors sought to resist the forms of narrating events that had been codified by academic ...
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Impossible Modernism reveals in the modernism of T.S. Eliot and Walter Benjamin a shared project: both authors sought to resist the forms of narrating events that had been codified by academic historians during the nineteenth century; and both sought to re-envision the possibilities of historical representation by turning to specifically literary devices. Tracing the fraught relationship between poetry and history back to Aristotle’s Poetics and forward to Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations, the book begins by establishing the coordinates of the intellectual-historical problem that Eliot and Benjamin would inherit. Turning to Eliot and Benjamin, it discovers in their major works—Eliot’s poetic experiments from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to The Waste Land, and Benjamin’s critical writings from “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy” to The Arcades Project—alternative models for imagining the shape of historical time and the possibility of historical change, models derived from literary forms such as lyric, satire, anecdote, allegory, and myth. The book thus cuts across debates over the autonomy of the aesthetic, the political investment of modernism, and the relative merits of formalist or historicist reading practices so as to develop an original understanding of the familiar incitement to “make it new.”Less
Impossible Modernism reveals in the modernism of T.S. Eliot and Walter Benjamin a shared project: both authors sought to resist the forms of narrating events that had been codified by academic historians during the nineteenth century; and both sought to re-envision the possibilities of historical representation by turning to specifically literary devices. Tracing the fraught relationship between poetry and history back to Aristotle’s Poetics and forward to Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations, the book begins by establishing the coordinates of the intellectual-historical problem that Eliot and Benjamin would inherit. Turning to Eliot and Benjamin, it discovers in their major works—Eliot’s poetic experiments from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to The Waste Land, and Benjamin’s critical writings from “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy” to The Arcades Project—alternative models for imagining the shape of historical time and the possibility of historical change, models derived from literary forms such as lyric, satire, anecdote, allegory, and myth. The book thus cuts across debates over the autonomy of the aesthetic, the political investment of modernism, and the relative merits of formalist or historicist reading practices so as to develop an original understanding of the familiar incitement to “make it new.”
Cinnamon Piñon Carlarne
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199553419
- eISBN:
- 9780191594984
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199553419.003.0009
- Subject:
- Law, Environmental and Energy Law, Private International Law
The pathways and the perils evident in US and EU climate policy are microcosms of larger international efforts to address climate change. The pushes, pulls, successes, and failures of transatlantic ...
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The pathways and the perils evident in US and EU climate policy are microcosms of larger international efforts to address climate change. The pushes, pulls, successes, and failures of transatlantic climate policy reflect the sheer difficulties inherent first, in international policymaking generally and second, in the context of climate change. This chapter suggests that the experiences of US and EU climate policy over the last two decades offer instructive lessons to developed and developing countries alike as they seek to avoid political and regulatory pitfalls in structuring domestic climate change regimes.Less
The pathways and the perils evident in US and EU climate policy are microcosms of larger international efforts to address climate change. The pushes, pulls, successes, and failures of transatlantic climate policy reflect the sheer difficulties inherent first, in international policymaking generally and second, in the context of climate change. This chapter suggests that the experiences of US and EU climate policy over the last two decades offer instructive lessons to developed and developing countries alike as they seek to avoid political and regulatory pitfalls in structuring domestic climate change regimes.
Alison E. Martin
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474439329
- eISBN:
- 9781474453844
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474439329.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Alexander von Humboldt was one of the most important scientists of the nineteenth century. He transformed understandings of the earth and space by rethinking nature as the interconnection of global ...
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Alexander von Humboldt was one of the most important scientists of the nineteenth century. He transformed understandings of the earth and space by rethinking nature as the interconnection of global forces. His vibrant, lyrical prose captivated British readers. This book offers the first extensive analysis of the translation, publication and critical reception of his works in Britain. It argues that style was key to the success of these translations and shows how Humboldt’s British translators, now largely forgotten figures, were pivotal in moulding his prose and his public persona as they reconfigured his works for readers in Britain and beyond.Less
Alexander von Humboldt was one of the most important scientists of the nineteenth century. He transformed understandings of the earth and space by rethinking nature as the interconnection of global forces. His vibrant, lyrical prose captivated British readers. This book offers the first extensive analysis of the translation, publication and critical reception of his works in Britain. It argues that style was key to the success of these translations and shows how Humboldt’s British translators, now largely forgotten figures, were pivotal in moulding his prose and his public persona as they reconfigured his works for readers in Britain and beyond.
Ashli Quesinberry Stokes and Wendy Atkins-Sayre
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496809186
- eISBN:
- 9781496809223
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496809186.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Many Southerners enjoy conversations about food, quickly jumping in with likes and dislikes, regional preferences, and food-related stories. The subject of food often crosses lines of race, class, ...
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Many Southerners enjoy conversations about food, quickly jumping in with likes and dislikes, regional preferences, and food-related stories. The subject of food often crosses lines of race, class, gender, and region, and provides an opportunity for a common discussion point. This book explores the types of identities, allegiances, and bonds that are made possible and are strengthened through Southern foods and foodways. It adds to the growing list examining Southern food, but its focus on the cuisine’s rhetorical nature and the communicative effect that the food can have on Southern culture makes a significant contribution to that important conversation.
The book tells the stories of Southern food that speak to the identity of the region, explaining how food helps to build individual identities, and exploring the possibilities of how food opens up dialogue. The authors show how food acts rhetorically, with the kinds of food that we choose to eat and serve sending messages about how we view ourselves and others. Food serves an identity-building function, factoring heavily into the understanding of who we are. The stories surrounding food are so important to Southern culture, they provide a significant and meaningful way to open up dialogue in the region. By sharing and celebrating the stories and actual food of Southern foodways, Southerners are able to focus on similar histories and traditions, despite the division that has plagued and continues to plague the South. Taken together, the book shows how Southern food provides a significant starting point for understanding food’s rhetorical potential.Less
Many Southerners enjoy conversations about food, quickly jumping in with likes and dislikes, regional preferences, and food-related stories. The subject of food often crosses lines of race, class, gender, and region, and provides an opportunity for a common discussion point. This book explores the types of identities, allegiances, and bonds that are made possible and are strengthened through Southern foods and foodways. It adds to the growing list examining Southern food, but its focus on the cuisine’s rhetorical nature and the communicative effect that the food can have on Southern culture makes a significant contribution to that important conversation.
The book tells the stories of Southern food that speak to the identity of the region, explaining how food helps to build individual identities, and exploring the possibilities of how food opens up dialogue. The authors show how food acts rhetorically, with the kinds of food that we choose to eat and serve sending messages about how we view ourselves and others. Food serves an identity-building function, factoring heavily into the understanding of who we are. The stories surrounding food are so important to Southern culture, they provide a significant and meaningful way to open up dialogue in the region. By sharing and celebrating the stories and actual food of Southern foodways, Southerners are able to focus on similar histories and traditions, despite the division that has plagued and continues to plague the South. Taken together, the book shows how Southern food provides a significant starting point for understanding food’s rhetorical potential.
Lisa M. Corrigan
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496809070
- eISBN:
- 9781496809117
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496809070.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Prison Power centers imprisonment in the history of black liberation as a rhetorical, theoretical, physical, and media resource as activists developed movement tactics and ideology to counter white ...
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Prison Power centers imprisonment in the history of black liberation as a rhetorical, theoretical, physical, and media resource as activists developed movement tactics and ideology to counter white supremacy. In highlighting imprisonment as a site for both political and personal transformation, Prison Power underscores how imprisonment shaped movement leaders by influencing their political analysis and organizational strategies. The book suggests that prison became the critical space for the transformation from civil rights to Black Power, especially as southern civil rights activists faced setbacks in achieving equality. In centering the prison as a locus of political inquiry, Black Power activists produced autobiographical writings, essays, and letters about and from prison beginning with the early sit-in movement. Prison Power introduces the critical optic of the “Black Power vernacular” to describe how Black Power activists deployed rhetorical forms in their writings that invented new forms of black identification and encouraged support for black liberation from prison. In using Black Power vernacular forms, imprisoned activists improved their visibility while simultaneously documenting the racist abuses of the judicial system. This new vernacular emerged to force various publics to acknowledge and end the massive brutality perpetrated against black people in prison and in the streets in the name of law and order thereby helping to shore up support for Black Power organizations and initiatives.Less
Prison Power centers imprisonment in the history of black liberation as a rhetorical, theoretical, physical, and media resource as activists developed movement tactics and ideology to counter white supremacy. In highlighting imprisonment as a site for both political and personal transformation, Prison Power underscores how imprisonment shaped movement leaders by influencing their political analysis and organizational strategies. The book suggests that prison became the critical space for the transformation from civil rights to Black Power, especially as southern civil rights activists faced setbacks in achieving equality. In centering the prison as a locus of political inquiry, Black Power activists produced autobiographical writings, essays, and letters about and from prison beginning with the early sit-in movement. Prison Power introduces the critical optic of the “Black Power vernacular” to describe how Black Power activists deployed rhetorical forms in their writings that invented new forms of black identification and encouraged support for black liberation from prison. In using Black Power vernacular forms, imprisoned activists improved their visibility while simultaneously documenting the racist abuses of the judicial system. This new vernacular emerged to force various publics to acknowledge and end the massive brutality perpetrated against black people in prison and in the streets in the name of law and order thereby helping to shore up support for Black Power organizations and initiatives.
Demetrios S. Katos
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199696963
- eISBN:
- 9780191731969
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199696963.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies, Church History
This chapter argues that the Dialogue on the Life of St. John Chrysostom should be understood as a legal argument in defense of John composed in accordance with the principles of late antique ...
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This chapter argues that the Dialogue on the Life of St. John Chrysostom should be understood as a legal argument in defense of John composed in accordance with the principles of late antique judicial rhetoric found in the Art of Political Speech (Anonymous Seguerianus) and Art of Rhetoric, attributed to Apsines of Gadara. This chapter analyzes the Dialogue in terms of its four constitutive parts, namely, the introduction [proemion], narration [diegesis], argumentation [kataskeue or pistis], and conclusion [epilogos] and explains the purpose and historical value of each. This chapter reveals that Palladius used the dialogue form to mimic courtroom debate and that he subordinated all narrative elements to the argumentation. It is the argumentation that is at the very heart of the Dialogue, even though its significance has been ignored or even dismissed by most scholarship which has long viewed the dialogue as a historical or biographical narrative.Less
This chapter argues that the Dialogue on the Life of St. John Chrysostom should be understood as a legal argument in defense of John composed in accordance with the principles of late antique judicial rhetoric found in the Art of Political Speech (Anonymous Seguerianus) and Art of Rhetoric, attributed to Apsines of Gadara. This chapter analyzes the Dialogue in terms of its four constitutive parts, namely, the introduction [proemion], narration [diegesis], argumentation [kataskeue or pistis], and conclusion [epilogos] and explains the purpose and historical value of each. This chapter reveals that Palladius used the dialogue form to mimic courtroom debate and that he subordinated all narrative elements to the argumentation. It is the argumentation that is at the very heart of the Dialogue, even though its significance has been ignored or even dismissed by most scholarship which has long viewed the dialogue as a historical or biographical narrative.
Andrew Stewart Skinner
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198233343
- eISBN:
- 9780191678974
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198233343.003.0003
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Economic History
The Lectures on Rhetoric clearly illustrate Smith's interest in the principles of human nature and the emphasis that he placed upon the faculties of reason and imagination, together with man's ...
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The Lectures on Rhetoric clearly illustrate Smith's interest in the principles of human nature and the emphasis that he placed upon the faculties of reason and imagination, together with man's propensity to discover patterns of causality or to classify phenomena. While these faculties and propensities are illustrated by reference to a wide range of literary works, they are further illustrated by writings of a more philosophical or scientific kind. It is probable that Smith's essay on the ‘External Senses’ dates from the early 1750s, and it is known that at least part of his study of the ‘Imitative Arts’ was read to a society in Glasgow. However, Smith had a very wide knowledge of scientific literature. He also drew attention to the importance of the ‘subjective side of science’, both in emphasizing the role of the imagination when reviewing the basic principles of human nature and in illustrating the working of these principles by reference to the history of astronomy.Less
The Lectures on Rhetoric clearly illustrate Smith's interest in the principles of human nature and the emphasis that he placed upon the faculties of reason and imagination, together with man's propensity to discover patterns of causality or to classify phenomena. While these faculties and propensities are illustrated by reference to a wide range of literary works, they are further illustrated by writings of a more philosophical or scientific kind. It is probable that Smith's essay on the ‘External Senses’ dates from the early 1750s, and it is known that at least part of his study of the ‘Imitative Arts’ was read to a society in Glasgow. However, Smith had a very wide knowledge of scientific literature. He also drew attention to the importance of the ‘subjective side of science’, both in emphasizing the role of the imagination when reviewing the basic principles of human nature and in illustrating the working of these principles by reference to the history of astronomy.
Paul W. Kahn
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300212082
- eISBN:
- 9780300220841
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300212082.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law
This book introduces law students to the art of reading judicial opinions. At the same time, it offers an innovative theory of the nature of legal argument, emphasizing the roles of rhetoric, ...
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This book introduces law students to the art of reading judicial opinions. At the same time, it offers an innovative theory of the nature of legal argument, emphasizing the roles of rhetoric, narrative, voice, persuasion, and context. Separate chapters deal with the development of legal doctrine and the way in which facts operate as the context or horizon against which legal claims are understood. The book defends a humanist approach to law, which is a necessary complement to the dominant social science approach.Less
This book introduces law students to the art of reading judicial opinions. At the same time, it offers an innovative theory of the nature of legal argument, emphasizing the roles of rhetoric, narrative, voice, persuasion, and context. Separate chapters deal with the development of legal doctrine and the way in which facts operate as the context or horizon against which legal claims are understood. The book defends a humanist approach to law, which is a necessary complement to the dominant social science approach.
Roland Vogt (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9789888083879
- eISBN:
- 9789882209077
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888083879.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
'Constructive engagement' is the rhetorical hallmark of Europe's policy towards China. This approach fits with the European self-imagination as a normative and civilian power that promotes regional ...
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'Constructive engagement' is the rhetorical hallmark of Europe's policy towards China. This approach fits with the European self-imagination as a normative and civilian power that promotes regional integration and multilateral channels to advance its interests. But a closer critical analysis reveals that this European self-conception is not only an attempt to discursively create its own identity but also a normative project to gradually transform China. Arguably this is a false promise which has exacerbated the misexpectations and the cognitive gap between both sides. The longer this European self-imagination is kept intact the more disillusionment the EU will experience in its relations with China.Less
'Constructive engagement' is the rhetorical hallmark of Europe's policy towards China. This approach fits with the European self-imagination as a normative and civilian power that promotes regional integration and multilateral channels to advance its interests. But a closer critical analysis reveals that this European self-conception is not only an attempt to discursively create its own identity but also a normative project to gradually transform China. Arguably this is a false promise which has exacerbated the misexpectations and the cognitive gap between both sides. The longer this European self-imagination is kept intact the more disillusionment the EU will experience in its relations with China.
Carlo Michelstaedter
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300104349
- eISBN:
- 9780300130126
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300104349.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Language
This translation of Carlo Michelstaedter's Persuasion and Rhetoric brings the powerful and original work of a seminal cultural figure to English-language readers for the first time. Ostensibly a ...
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This translation of Carlo Michelstaedter's Persuasion and Rhetoric brings the powerful and original work of a seminal cultural figure to English-language readers for the first time. Ostensibly a commentary on Plato's and Aristotle's relation to the pre-Socratic philosophers, Michelstaedter's deeply personal book is an extraordinary rhetorical feat that reflects the author's struggle to make sense of modern life. This edition includes an introduction discussing his life and work, an extensive bibliography, notes to introduce each chapter, and critical notes illuminating the text. Within hours of completing Persuasion and Rhetoric, his doctoral thesis, 23-year-old Michelstaedter shot himself dead. The text he left behind has proved to be one of the most trenchant and influential studies in modern rhetoric, a work that develops Nietzschean themes and anticipates the conclusions of, among others, Martin Heidegger.Less
This translation of Carlo Michelstaedter's Persuasion and Rhetoric brings the powerful and original work of a seminal cultural figure to English-language readers for the first time. Ostensibly a commentary on Plato's and Aristotle's relation to the pre-Socratic philosophers, Michelstaedter's deeply personal book is an extraordinary rhetorical feat that reflects the author's struggle to make sense of modern life. This edition includes an introduction discussing his life and work, an extensive bibliography, notes to introduce each chapter, and critical notes illuminating the text. Within hours of completing Persuasion and Rhetoric, his doctoral thesis, 23-year-old Michelstaedter shot himself dead. The text he left behind has proved to be one of the most trenchant and influential studies in modern rhetoric, a work that develops Nietzschean themes and anticipates the conclusions of, among others, Martin Heidegger.
Robert S. Lehman
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780804799041
- eISBN:
- 9781503600140
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804799041.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Impossible Modernism concludes with a short discussion of two figures: the flash of lightning that cuts across the desert scene in the last section of The Waste Land and the “storm of progress” that ...
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Impossible Modernism concludes with a short discussion of two figures: the flash of lightning that cuts across the desert scene in the last section of The Waste Land and the “storm of progress” that blows through the ninth thesis “On the Concept of History.” These images, it is maintained, in their attempt to present together tradition, on the one hand, and event, on the other, bring to the fore modernism’s paradoxical historical imagination, and the relevance of this imagination to our contemporary aesthetic and political concerns.Less
Impossible Modernism concludes with a short discussion of two figures: the flash of lightning that cuts across the desert scene in the last section of The Waste Land and the “storm of progress” that blows through the ninth thesis “On the Concept of History.” These images, it is maintained, in their attempt to present together tradition, on the one hand, and event, on the other, bring to the fore modernism’s paradoxical historical imagination, and the relevance of this imagination to our contemporary aesthetic and political concerns.
Quentin Skinner
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199264612
- eISBN:
- 9780191718526
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199264612.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Hobbes assured John Aubrey ‘that Aristotle was the worst teacher that ever was, the worst politician and ethick’, but he conceded at the same time that ‘his rhetorique and discourse of animals was ...
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Hobbes assured John Aubrey ‘that Aristotle was the worst teacher that ever was, the worst politician and ethick’, but he conceded at the same time that ‘his rhetorique and discourse of animals was rare’. It is certainly evident that Aristotle's Rhetoric was a work by which Hobbes was deeply impressed. One sign of its impact on his thinking has frequently been remarked. When Hobbes first turns to examine the character of the ‘affections’ in chapters 8 and 9 of The Elements of Law, he enunciates a number of his definitions in the form of virtual quotations from book 2 of Aristotle's text. But a further and connected influence of the Rhetoric has been much less discussed. When Hobbes asks himself in chapter 9 of The Elements, and again in chapter 6 of Leviathan, about the nature of the emotions expressed by the phenomenon of laughter, he proceeds to outline a theory of the ridiculous closely resembling Aristotle's analysis in the Rhetoric and the Poetics. It is with the Aristotelian tradition of thinking about the laughable, and Hobbes's peculiar place in that tradition, that this chapter is principally concerned in what follows. It focuses on two specific questions: What emotion does the phenomenon of laughter express? And how is the phenomenon of laughter to be understood and appraised?Less
Hobbes assured John Aubrey ‘that Aristotle was the worst teacher that ever was, the worst politician and ethick’, but he conceded at the same time that ‘his rhetorique and discourse of animals was rare’. It is certainly evident that Aristotle's Rhetoric was a work by which Hobbes was deeply impressed. One sign of its impact on his thinking has frequently been remarked. When Hobbes first turns to examine the character of the ‘affections’ in chapters 8 and 9 of The Elements of Law, he enunciates a number of his definitions in the form of virtual quotations from book 2 of Aristotle's text. But a further and connected influence of the Rhetoric has been much less discussed. When Hobbes asks himself in chapter 9 of The Elements, and again in chapter 6 of Leviathan, about the nature of the emotions expressed by the phenomenon of laughter, he proceeds to outline a theory of the ridiculous closely resembling Aristotle's analysis in the Rhetoric and the Poetics. It is with the Aristotelian tradition of thinking about the laughable, and Hobbes's peculiar place in that tradition, that this chapter is principally concerned in what follows. It focuses on two specific questions: What emotion does the phenomenon of laughter express? And how is the phenomenon of laughter to be understood and appraised?
Thomas McFarland
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182870
- eISBN:
- 9780191673894
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182870.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter discusses the third Romantic emphasis, that associated with the concept of symbol, in a polemical matrix. It directs the polemic against the illustration of the distortion of Romantic ...
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This chapter discusses the third Romantic emphasis, that associated with the concept of symbol, in a polemical matrix. It directs the polemic against the illustration of the distortion of Romantic awareness, this one inhering in Paul De Man's adjudication of the significance of Romantic symbol and his preference for allegory. It notes that the adjudication occurs in an article, ‘The Rhetoric of Temporality’, which might fairly be said to have been one of the most influential articles, at least in literary affairs, of the century. It explains that the article treats of allegory and symbol, with a reversal of the traditional preference for symbol.Less
This chapter discusses the third Romantic emphasis, that associated with the concept of symbol, in a polemical matrix. It directs the polemic against the illustration of the distortion of Romantic awareness, this one inhering in Paul De Man's adjudication of the significance of Romantic symbol and his preference for allegory. It notes that the adjudication occurs in an article, ‘The Rhetoric of Temporality’, which might fairly be said to have been one of the most influential articles, at least in literary affairs, of the century. It explains that the article treats of allegory and symbol, with a reversal of the traditional preference for symbol.
Carole Hillenbrand
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625727
- eISBN:
- 9780748671359
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625727.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
This chapter examines the strategies and tropes used by the Arab and Persian chroniclers in the medieval Muslim narratives of the battle of Manzikert, and the didactic purposes for which these ...
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This chapter examines the strategies and tropes used by the Arab and Persian chroniclers in the medieval Muslim narratives of the battle of Manzikert, and the didactic purposes for which these narratives are used. Qur'anic resonances, such as presenting the arrogant Byzantine emperor Romanus as a latter-day Pharaoh, and other Muslim elements in these accounts, such as the importance of positioning the battle on a Friday, are discussed. Narrative techniques, including theatrical features, are analysed. The influence of the Mirrors for Princes advice literature is also examined. This chapter emphasises in its conclusion that these accounts can hardly be described as providing concrete details about the actual battle of Manzikert; instead, they are vehicles through which Arabic and Persian writers can praise their Turkish overlords, can vaunt the military prowess traditionally associated with the Turks, and – through the triumphal symbol of none other than the captured Byzantine emperor himself – can proclaim the triumph of Islam over Christianity. Thus Manzikert provides not only a spur but also an examplar for subsequent Muslim victories over the Christian foe.Less
This chapter examines the strategies and tropes used by the Arab and Persian chroniclers in the medieval Muslim narratives of the battle of Manzikert, and the didactic purposes for which these narratives are used. Qur'anic resonances, such as presenting the arrogant Byzantine emperor Romanus as a latter-day Pharaoh, and other Muslim elements in these accounts, such as the importance of positioning the battle on a Friday, are discussed. Narrative techniques, including theatrical features, are analysed. The influence of the Mirrors for Princes advice literature is also examined. This chapter emphasises in its conclusion that these accounts can hardly be described as providing concrete details about the actual battle of Manzikert; instead, they are vehicles through which Arabic and Persian writers can praise their Turkish overlords, can vaunt the military prowess traditionally associated with the Turks, and – through the triumphal symbol of none other than the captured Byzantine emperor himself – can proclaim the triumph of Islam over Christianity. Thus Manzikert provides not only a spur but also an examplar for subsequent Muslim victories over the Christian foe.
Tom Shippey
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781382615
- eISBN:
- 9781786945167
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382615.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book makes an argument for the intellectual ambition and intellectual achievement of science fiction, a genre consistently undervalued by professional literary critics. It is pointed out ...
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This book makes an argument for the intellectual ambition and intellectual achievement of science fiction, a genre consistently undervalued by professional literary critics. It is pointed out repeatedly how much the genre owes to developments in anthropology, history, and other “soft sciences”; how the authority of the hard sciences is both asserted and challenged; and how the authority of ancient myths and modern values are likewise interrogated, with widely variant results. Science fiction, it is argued, has been a collective “thinking machine” for authors and readers alike, often (and especially in its early years) people without academic experience or intellectual support. It has been (but increasingly less so) a genre for autodidacts. Reading and writing it is nevertheless an education in itself, as the author shows with repeated personal prefaces both to the book as a whole and to each chapter. Science fiction, finally, has its own rhetoric, seen in neologisms, paratextual devices, anachronisms, breaches of stylistic decorum, and the manipulation of degraded information, techniques little understood by and often incomprehensible to critics used only to the conventions of mainstream literature. All these features contribute to the description of science fiction as hard reading, but correspondingly rewarding reading. They have made science fiction the most characteristic literary genre of the twentieth and now the twenty-first centuries.Less
This book makes an argument for the intellectual ambition and intellectual achievement of science fiction, a genre consistently undervalued by professional literary critics. It is pointed out repeatedly how much the genre owes to developments in anthropology, history, and other “soft sciences”; how the authority of the hard sciences is both asserted and challenged; and how the authority of ancient myths and modern values are likewise interrogated, with widely variant results. Science fiction, it is argued, has been a collective “thinking machine” for authors and readers alike, often (and especially in its early years) people without academic experience or intellectual support. It has been (but increasingly less so) a genre for autodidacts. Reading and writing it is nevertheless an education in itself, as the author shows with repeated personal prefaces both to the book as a whole and to each chapter. Science fiction, finally, has its own rhetoric, seen in neologisms, paratextual devices, anachronisms, breaches of stylistic decorum, and the manipulation of degraded information, techniques little understood by and often incomprehensible to critics used only to the conventions of mainstream literature. All these features contribute to the description of science fiction as hard reading, but correspondingly rewarding reading. They have made science fiction the most characteristic literary genre of the twentieth and now the twenty-first centuries.
Sergey Dolgopolski
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823244928
- eISBN:
- 9780823252497
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823244928.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
The book shows how the characters in the Talmud live their lives as performances of remembering the past traditions better. As the book argues much life of the characters means constant verification ...
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The book shows how the characters in the Talmud live their lives as performances of remembering the past traditions better. As the book argues much life of the characters means constant verification of the memory of the past through intrinsically open process of refuting, counterrefuting, and reinventing, that gives the characters their authority, and by the same token, keeps their past in the open. Reading the Talmud and philosophical discourse in light of each other the book takes up the fundamental problem of time. It asks: What are the modes of thinking in late ancient texts of the Talmud? Resulting from a heuristic rereading of the texts of the Babylonian Talmud against the grid of its reception in twentieth century text-critical scholarship on the Talmud, Talmud criticism, the answer has to do with historically older forms of the virtual agents, agency, and of the virtual as such. The analysis discerns and renegotiates two tacit philosophical subscriptions that continue to inform Talmud criticism: the medieval concept of a virtual agency called “thinking subject” and its modern continuations privileging the future over the past in understanding of the nature of time, in which the “thinking subject” lives. These assumptions defined how critical scholars have understood the named, nameless and “anonymous” characters in the Talmud. Predicating life of the “thinking subject” on having a future made modern philosophers—and scholars on the Talmud with them—reduce the past to a necessary fiction of the starting point, thereby erasing a possibility of looking at the past, rather than future, as informing human experience of living in the world with others, and in particular with the other others. Departing from the paradigm of the “thinking subject” living in futurist time, the book shows how the characters displayed in the Talmud return the erased possibility of approaching both the past and the virtual differently.Less
The book shows how the characters in the Talmud live their lives as performances of remembering the past traditions better. As the book argues much life of the characters means constant verification of the memory of the past through intrinsically open process of refuting, counterrefuting, and reinventing, that gives the characters their authority, and by the same token, keeps their past in the open. Reading the Talmud and philosophical discourse in light of each other the book takes up the fundamental problem of time. It asks: What are the modes of thinking in late ancient texts of the Talmud? Resulting from a heuristic rereading of the texts of the Babylonian Talmud against the grid of its reception in twentieth century text-critical scholarship on the Talmud, Talmud criticism, the answer has to do with historically older forms of the virtual agents, agency, and of the virtual as such. The analysis discerns and renegotiates two tacit philosophical subscriptions that continue to inform Talmud criticism: the medieval concept of a virtual agency called “thinking subject” and its modern continuations privileging the future over the past in understanding of the nature of time, in which the “thinking subject” lives. These assumptions defined how critical scholars have understood the named, nameless and “anonymous” characters in the Talmud. Predicating life of the “thinking subject” on having a future made modern philosophers—and scholars on the Talmud with them—reduce the past to a necessary fiction of the starting point, thereby erasing a possibility of looking at the past, rather than future, as informing human experience of living in the world with others, and in particular with the other others. Departing from the paradigm of the “thinking subject” living in futurist time, the book shows how the characters displayed in the Talmud return the erased possibility of approaching both the past and the virtual differently.
