Milton, Hobbes, and Rhetorical Freedom

Ned O’Gorman University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, I argue that for John Milton in Paradise Lost and Areopagitica freedom was a rhetorical quality of action: an ethical capacity to address a situation by means of language. I contrast Milton’s approach to that of Thomas Hobbes, for whom freedom was only a state. These reflections suggest that Milton’s rhetorical freedom, a capacity to act amid oppositions by virtue of the wisdom and power of discourse, offers the outlines of an alternate modernity.

Journal
Advances in the History of Rhetoric
Published
2015-07-03
DOI
10.1080/15362426.2015.1081527
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