Hobbes, Desire, and the Democratization of Rhetoric

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article considers the modern melding of rhetoric and democracy by looking at the approach to rhetoric in the early-modern figure Thomas Hobbes. While other scholars have considered Hobbes's approach to rhetoric in terms of humanistic, Ramistic, and Aristotelian influences, I look at it in light of the psychagogic tradition of rhetoric still active in the Renaissance. Reading Hobbes in light of the psychagogic tradition makes his approach to rhetoric less equivocal or contradictory than is often supposed, even as it helps us see in Hobbes's work a concerted effort to democratize rhetoric. I conclude that the real tension Hobbes presents us with is not found in his approach to rhetoric, which is relatively consistent, but rather in what his work suggests about the tensions of a democratized rhetoric.

Journal
Advances in the History of Rhetoric
Published
2013-01-01
DOI
10.1080/15362426.2013.763737
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Advances in the History of Rhetoric

Cites in this index (1)

  1. Advances in the History of Rhetoric
Also cites 16 works outside this index ↓
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  2. Semantics and Political Theory in Hobbes
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  3. Talking Wolves: Thomas Hobbes on the Language of Politics and the Politics of Language
  4. Patriarcha and Other Writings
  5. Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment
  6. The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation
  7. Sense and Nonsense about Sense: Hobbes and the Aristotelians on Sense Perception and Imag…
  8. Doctor Faustus
  9. Subverting the Leviathan: Reading Thomas Hobbes as a Radical Democrat
  10. Aristotle's Phantasia in the Rhetoric: Lexis, Appearance, and the Epideictic Function of …
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  11. Renaissance Debates on Rhetoric
  12. Hobbes on Rhetoric
  13. Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes
  14. Rhetoric, Modality, Modernity
  15. Hobbes's Moral Philosophy
  16. Aristotelian and Ramist Rhetoric in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan: Pathos versus Ethos and Logos
    Rhetorica  
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