Research Article| August 01 1999 Short Reviews: Taming Democracy: Models of Political Rhetoric in Democratic Athens, by Harvey Yunis, Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition, by Janet M. Atwill, Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from the Roman Empire: Introduction, Text, and Translation of the Arts of Rhetoric Attributed to Anonymous Seguerianus and to Apsines of Gadara, by Mervin R. Dilts and George A. Kennedy, Language and Society in Early Modern England, by Vivian Salmon, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, by Quentin Skinner and Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science, by Alan G Gross and William M. Keith Harvey Yunis,Taming Democracy: Models of Political Rhetoric in Democratic Athens (Ithaca, NY: Comell University Press, 1996) xv + 316pp.Janet M. Atwill,Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998) 265pp.Mervin R. Dilts and George A. Kennedy eds. Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from the Roman Empire: Introduction, Text, and Translation of the Arts of Rhetoric Attributed to Anonymous Seguerianus and to Apsines of Gadara, Mnemosyne Supplement 168 (Leiden: E. J. Brill 1997) xxvii + 249 pp.Vivian Salmon,Language and Society in Early Modern England (The Netherlands: John Benjamfris, 1996) 276 pp.Quentin Skinner,Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) xvi + 477 pp.Alan G Gross and William M. Keith eds. Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997) 371 pp. Michael Svoboda, Michael Svoboda C/O The Joanne Rockwell Memorial House, 1910 E. Jefferson Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar James Fredal, James Fredal Department of English, 164 W. 17th Avenue, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar John T. Kirby, John T. Kirby Program in Comparative Literature, Purdue University, SC 1354, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Linda C. Mitchell, Linda C. Mitchell Department of English, One Washington Square, San Jose State University, San Jose, California 95192-0090, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Wade Williams, Wade Williams Department of English, The University of Puget Sound, 1500 North Warner, Tacoma, Washington 98416, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Judy Z Segal Judy Z Segal Department of English, University of British Columbia, #397-1873 East Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T1Z1, Canada Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1999) 17 (3): 331–346. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1999.17.3.331 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Michael Svoboda, James Fredal, John T. Kirby, Linda C. Mitchell, Wade Williams, Judy Z Segal; Short Reviews: Taming Democracy: Models of Political Rhetoric in Democratic Athens, by Harvey Yunis, Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition, by Janet M. Atwill, Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from the Roman Empire: Introduction, Text, and Translation of the Arts of Rhetoric Attributed to Anonymous Seguerianus and to Apsines of Gadara, by Mervin R. Dilts and George A. Kennedy, Language and Society in Early Modern England, by Vivian Salmon, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, by Quentin Skinner and Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science, by Alan G Gross and William M. Keith. Rhetorica 1 August 1999; 17 (3): 331–346. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1999.17.3.331 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search Copyright 1999, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1999 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Reviews 343 within this conventional context. "What this means in practice", Skinner explains, "is that I treat Hobbes's claims about scientia civilis not simply as propositions but as moves in an argument. I try to indicate what traditions he reacts against, what lines of argument he takes up, what changes he introduces into existing debates" (p. 8). While Skinner's method has occasioned much debate, culminating in a collection of essays entitled Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics (1988), historians of rhetoric, who themselves attempt to understand texts within larger contexts, should welcome the attention paid to questions of intention, meaning, and language. Meticulously researched, Skinner's study of Hobbes and the rhetorical culture of Tudor England is a welcome contribution to histories such as Victoria Kahn's Machiavellian Rhetoric and Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment. Together, these studies clarify the complex interplay between rhetorical and political traditions in early modem Europe. WADE WILLIAMS The University ofPuget Sound Alan G Gross and William M. Keith eds, Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997) 371 pp. Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar writes "The Idea of Rhetoric in the Rhetoric of Science", the lead essay in this volume—its "Provocations"—and the rest of Rhetorical Hermeneutics is a collection of "Dissensions", "Extensions" and "reflections", the last including a response to respondents by Gaonkar. So the book is the perfect rhetorical study. It is utterly dialogic; Gaonkar's claims are all tested on an audience of distinguished rhetorical theorists and rhetoricians of science: John Angus Campbell, Thomas Farrell, Steve Fuller, Alan Gross, James Jasinski, David Kaufer, William Keith, Andrew King, Michael Leff, Deirdre McCloskey, Carolyn Miller and Charles Willard. The book has an 344 RHETORICA excellent cast—and a sometimes argumentative one (McCloskey writes that the philosophical warrants for Gaonkar's case against a ubiquitous rhetoric themselves warrant the question, "So what?", p. 107); it also has a very worthy project. The central question of Rhetorical Hermeneutics is this: can a theory of production be usefully, and without distortion, transformed into a theory of interpretation? This question sponsors others—for example, does the "thinness" of rhetorical theory (the paucity of constraints on its terms of use) make it so easy to spread, as it were (rhetoric is the universal hermeneutic) as to weaken the plausibility of rhetoric altogether (what distinguishes rhetoric as an interpretive program?)? Gaonkar answers his own questions in part by evoking the work in rhetoric of science of John Angus Campbell, Alan Gross, and Lawrence Prelli. Campbell and Gross respond. Campbell, Gaonkar finds, is mired in a problem of agency ("refuses to let go of an image of Darwin as the rhetorical superstar", p. 49); Gross is only successful as a rhetorical critic to the extent that he does not practice the neoAristotelianism he proposes; Prelli, among other questionable practices, seems to be "probing into the 'rhetorical unconscious'" of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (p. 73). So Gaonkar describes problems in the house of rhetoric of science; he also draws attention not only to the problematic relation of rhetorical criticism to other criticisms, but also to the "embattled" relation of Rhetoric of Science—as a discipline—to both rhetorical studies and science studies. Gross and Keith's design and authoritative editing shape a volume which deserves consideration at a number of levels: What are possible answers to questions raised? What can be said about the questions qua questions? Why does rhetoric ask so many questions about itself anyway? The book not only deserves consideration at these levels; it also enables it. Fuller writes, for example, "The more that rhetoric of science looks like classical rhetoric, the less exciting its interpretations seem...[T]he more that rhetoric of science strays from classical sources, and the more provocative its readings become, the more interchangeable its methods seem with those used by sociologists and critical theorists" (p. 279). Gross writes, "The current attitude of Reviews 345 historians and philosophers oscillates between increased need to take a rhetorical point of view into consideration and an occasional hostility to the possibility of rhetorical analysis" (p. 146). With such comment, the authors invite readers to participate...