Abstract

200 RHETORICA pondent à un changement de locuteur reçoivent des appellations variées, pour lesquelles S. renvoie au Handbuch de Lausberg: sermocinatio, éthopée, prosopopée, contradictio, percontatio, communicatio, subiectio, conformatio '.... Toutes relèvent plus ou moins du dialogue fictif, mais une présentation glo­ bale et ordonnée aurait été utile, le paragraphe de l'introduction consacré à la communication étant très léger (p. 20). Le terme de contradictio, par exemple, n'existe que pour la déclamation. La percontatio correspond au départ à un interrogatoire et se présente comme un cas particulier de la figure générale de la subiectio (dialogue fictif avec l'adversaire), elle même s'inscrivant dans le cadre plus général de la sermocinatio, etc. Pour finir, il faut dire combien précieuses sont toutes les notes concer­ nant les problèmes historiques, juridiques et militaires: c'est assurément un point fort de ce commentaire, qui met bien en évidence à la fois le sta­ tut du soldat romain et les différents aspects de la procédure militaire. S. relève et définit une foule de termes techniques, renvoyant aux traités ju­ ridiques, rhétoriques et militaires, ainsi qu'aux historiens. Il y a là une masse d'informations qui éclaire véritablement la compréhension du texte. On saura gré à S. d'avoir envisagé le texte dans tous ses aspects et de fournir au lecteur une grande masse d'informations et de références. Son livre est assurément un livre fort utile aux spécialistes de rhétorique. Sylvie Franchet d'Espèrey Université de Bordeaux Daniel M. Gross, The Secret History ofEmotion: From Aristotle's Rhetoric to Modern Brain Science. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2006. x + 194 pp. This disappointing little book has several admirable goals, none of which it meets well. The author seeks to deconstruct (his term) contemporary sci­ entific accounts of the emotions that would reduce them to manifestations of biological processes; to criticize humanists who rely upon these accounts, especially Richard Sorabji and Martha Nussbaum, and to uncover an alter­ native or "secret" history of the emotions that in his view has been obscured by uncritical acceptance of the dominant Cartesian model of the human sub­ ject. To meet the first goal Gross selects as his straw man the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, whose work on the biology of emotions has sparked some interest in recent years—although certainly no more than that of a wide range of scientists, at least some of whom offer accounts that can be easily adapted to the assumptions and goals of humanistic scholars. While Gross is no doubt right to criticize Damasio for his assumption of a transhistorical, universal human subject, he provides little or no evidence that Damasio's perspec­ tive is characteristic or representative of scientific thinking at large. What is more, he fails to consider the ways in which Damasio's own universalizing Reviews 201 views may be undermined by other, more nuanced research into the science of emotions. A similar reductivism is manifest in Gross' brief reference to sociobiology, which might lead the reader to the mistaken conclusion that there has been no discussion among sociobiologists of the multiple and di­ verse political implications of their research (to take but one example: the opening chapters of S. Shennan, Genes, Memes, and Human History). Gross' selective reading of the scientific literature on emotions not surprisingly shapes his assessment of liberal humanist attempts to reconcile philosophy and science. Oddly enough, for one committed to the social construction of emotions, Gross is more critical of writers like Sorabji and Nussbaum for their mistaken reliance on misleading science than he is for their impoverished accounts of social and historical constraints and possibilities. In his attempt to construct an alternative history of emotions, one that emphasizes their irreducible sociality, Gross would seem to be on surer ground. Here he traces continuities of thought from Aristotle and the Stoics through eighteenth-century writers David Hume, Sarah Fielding, William Perfect, and Adam Smith. The readings of Aristotle and the Stoics are straightforward; those of Hume and Smith perhaps more likely to spark...