For those of us who went to graduate school during the 1970s and 1980s, our understanding of early-modern rhetoric was shaped in large part by a preoccupation with clarifying the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy. The curriculum at that time usually included a heavy dose of secondary literature by scholars in the tradition of Wilbur Samuel Howell, Karl Wallace, Douglas Ehninger, Vincent Bevilacqua, and Lloyd Bitzer. A common theme in those readings was an investment in mapping the primary texts of modern rhetorical theory against the background of metaphysics and epistemology. Occasionally, we read an essay like Walter Ong's “Ramist Method and the Commercial Mind,” which suggested a different approach to the subject. However, our interest in documenting the influence of Francis Bacon's scientific method on Joseph Priestley's theory of rhetorical invention or of explaining how George Campbell responded to David Hume's skepticism left us with little time to explore the influence of commercial culture on modern rhetorical theory—even in cases that probably should have been obvious like Adam Smith's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres or Richard Whately's Elements of Rhetoric.Today, many of us who were originally trained as historians of rhetoric find ourselves surrounded by colleagues who dismiss the history of rhetoric courses as hopelessly passé. In fact, if we're honest, even for those of us who embrace the history of rhetoric as an essential component of liberal arts education, our files of lectures about the intricacies of Enlightenment rhetorical theory can seem increasingly remote and tired. As Christopher Hill once explained, every generation is faced with the task of rewriting history in its own way: “although the past does not change, the present does; each generation asks new questions of the past and finds new areas of sympathy as it re-lives different aspects of the experiences of its predecessors” (1972, 15). The challenge facing historians of rhetoric, in other words, is this: how do we reframe Enlightenment rhetoric to reveal its relevance in our lives today?In Rhetorical Style and Bourgeois Virtue, Mark Garrett Longaker suggests a “way in” to modern rhetorical theory that is likely to resonate with many twenty-first-century readers. Instead of approaching Enlightenment rhetoric as a reaction to modern theories of metaphysics and epistemology, Longaker reconfigures the subject around compelling problems of economics and ethics. For example, in an age of free-market capitalism and consumer culture, what is the moral grounding for our obligation to transparency and honesty in our rhetorical transactions? When attempting to flourish in an economic system that gives its highest rewards to self-interested instrumentalism and greed, is it still possible to cultivate a sense of altruism, honor, or loyalty toward others? And, furthermore, as we find ourselves inhabiting an increasingly privatized, competitive, and commercialized “marketplace of ideas,” how do we reconcile the values of free speech with the values of rhetorical decorum and politeness? For anyone who worries about the practical fallout of these sorts of questions, Longaker provides a compelling reminder that “our age is not exceptional. From its seventeenth-century financial beginning through its nineteenth-century industrial episode to its twenty-first century digital projection, capitalism has been thoroughly rhetorical” (11). In expanding upon this claim, Longaker proceeds recursively in relation to four case studies: John Locke on clarity, Adam Smith on probity, Hugh Blair on moderation, and Herbert Spencer on economy.Chapter 1 examines John Locke's obsession with discursive clarity and its role in commercial contracts. Traditional readings of book 3 of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (the treatment of the “abuses of words” and the remedies for those abuses) tend to place a heavy emphasis on Locke's relationship to British empirical sciences as inspired by his involvement with the Royal Society of London for the Pursuit of Natural Knowledge. While this focus on epistemology and scientific inquiry did obviously play an important role in Locke's analysis of the subject, Longaker advises historians of rhetoric that there is more to the story. His close reading of the Essay makes clear that Locke's attacks on sophistry and rhetoric are unusually vitriolic and inconsistent with other statements Locke made about the significance of verbal imprecision in the sciences. If we pay attention to the evolution of early drafts of Locke's Essay and if we read the Essay against the background of Locke's other writings on issues having to do with economics and business finance, we begin to realize that his frequent allusions to the relationship between argument and commerce and his analogies between sophistry and financial dishonesty are not just stylistic embellishments. Longaker explains that Locke's rule about linguistic propriety “is not just a stylistic guideline, nor is it principally a political suggestion. Locke believed that propriety in currency and language preserves commercial stability, since propriety depends on consent, and consent to a common medium permits financial and conversational exchange” (22). Longaker examines Locke's conception of an ethical obligation to propriety in commercial interactions. He then explains how Locke's requirement for clarity and his rule against disputation were implicated not only in his theory of natural law and social contract theory, but also in his analysis of misrepresentation in financial contracts. Longaker concludes the chapter with a survey of Locke's writings on education. He demonstrates how Locke's writings emphasized a “rhetorical pedagogy of clarity” (37) as an essential component in the education of the new merchant classes.In chapter 2, Longaker turns to Adam Smith's analysis of sincerity and probity. He begins by reviewing the common assumption that Smith's version of free-market capitalism transforms all goods and services into commodities, such that the value of bourgeois virtue is defined as a transactional calculation of prudence. As Smith said in The Wealth of Nations (1776), “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the baker, or the brewer that we expect [their probity]… but from their regard to their own interest” (Smith quoted by Longaker 44). That is to say, any claims about moral obligation within a capitalist system appear to be grounded in a claim to expedience—protecting one's reputation in the marketplace (in the short term, and also in the long term). However, as Longaker explains, this common interpretation of Smith is faulty. The interpretation persists because key passages have been read out of context. A more robust reading of Smith would strive to examine these passages against the background of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), the Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1762), and Smith's lectures on jurisprudence (c. 1754–1764). Longaker succinctly summarizes his survey of this literature by asserting that Smith did not, in fact, define probity as merely a “ruthless calculation of interest”: “Honesty may be prudent, and the prudent man may be honest, but he is not honest because he is prudent. Probity comes from a felt sense of right, which leads to an honest rhetorical style” (44). Longaker devotes most of chapter 2 to unpacking these claims—and, more generally, to explaining the recurring problem in Enlightenment ethics regarding the relationships between instrumental reason, moral feeling, habit, and ethical character. Longaker explains how Smith posited the psychological mechanism of fellow feeling or sympathy as the basis for capitalism's “two legal pillars,” property and contract (56–57). The capacity for sympathy can only be cultivated through the exercise of imagination—not through reason. With Smith, we see the beginnings of a decline in classical invention and the rise of aesthetics and belletristic criticism as dominating forces in rhetorical pedagogy. Longaker concludes the chapter with an examination of Smith's efforts “at promoting rhetorical criticism of imaginative literature to illustrate how he wanted students to study, discern, and produce honest discourse in the free arenas of civil society: the literary salon, the commodities exchange, and the rhetoric classroom” (44).Longaker presents Locke and Smith as having been generally optimistic about capitalism as a force for social improvement. Capitalism promotes rhetorical virtue in the sense that clarity is a necessary condition for meeting the obligations of financial contracts. Further, a felt sense of sympathy and of sincerity is an essential condition for becoming an effective participant in the marketplace. Later writers, however, became increasingly cynical about the relationship between virtue and commerce. Virtue and commerce “seemed sometimes complementary and sometimes contradictory forces.” This ambivalence prompted the question, “Did capitalism make people good, or did good people make commerce possible?” (74). In chapter 3, Longaker takes this question as the starting point for his analysis of Hugh Blair. Conceding that Blair was not a systematic or consistent thinker, Longaker brings a sense of order to his analysis by focusing on Blair's participation in a debate among eighteenth-century intellectuals regarding the vice of licentiousness and the corrupting influence of material luxuries. Reviewing statements by writers such as Lord Kames, Adam Ferguson, David Hume, and Daniel Defoe, Longaker asserts that Blair's most important contribution to the “luxury debates” was the “bourgeois virtue of moderation” which would provide “a ballast to right a commercial ship listing toward overconsumption” (79). Specifically, “Christian morals and republican virtue teach good habits of moderate consumption and personal savings, habits that support commerce by ensuring reinvestment and by preventing overconsumption” (74). In his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Blair gave his students a guide to rhetorical moderation by crafting a synthesis between Locke's demand for verbal clarity and Smith's celebration of sentimental figures (88).In chapter 4, Longaker turns to Herbert Spencer as “the proper inheritor of the British Enlightenment's integration of ethics, economics, and style” but who, in the end, tracked the “decline and fall of rhetorical style and bourgeois virtue” (101). Spencer's essay “The Philosophy of Style” (1852) is usually remembered for its treatment of language as a source of “friction” which hinders the “machinery” of the human intellect: “the more time and attention it takes to receive and understand each sentence, the less time and attention can be given to the contained idea; and the less vividly will that idea be conceived” (Spencer quoted by Longaker 102). This famous description of the “economics of style” grew out of Spencer's work in industrial engineering and his analysis of the need for efficient communication within large corporations. But Longaker claims that this is actually the least interesting feature of Spencer's analysis of style: “More interesting and more important is Spencer's adherence to the British Enlightenment faith that rhetorical style can facilitate sympathy; will ameliorate humanity, and must advance commerce” (103). This optimism that permeated Spencer's rhetorical economics was a product of his belief in the Enlightenment's theory of historical progress. He believed in the power of capitalism—not so much as an artificial creation of human beings but as a divinely ordained necessity in human evolution. Over time, however, Spencer learned to distinguish biological evolution from social evolution. In the process, according to Longaker, he became increasingly skeptical about the role and significance of individual agency. Ultimately, Spencer's fascination with the mechanisms of a deterministic evolution led him to turn away from rhetorical education and from the imaginative arts all together. As Longaker explains, Spencer “lost faith in the individual's ability to purposefully cultivate bourgeois virtue” (123).The narrative arc of Longaker's survey is clear and perspicacious. Although he examines a limited number of canonical texts in Enlightenment rhetorical theory, by shifting the frame of analysis from epistemology to economics, he succeeds in uncovering in those familiar texts many original and compelling insights. If there is any criticism one might offer, it is that, at times, the narrative is too neat and too economical. Longaker focuses so scrupulously on a progression of ideas that he sometimes neglects complicating issues that—on closer examination—may also turn out to be relevant. For example, he devotes little attention to the influence of the classical traditions of invention and argument on Enlightenment rhetoric. However, one can't help but be curious about how classical notions of scientific discovery and rhetorical advocacy were reconciled with Adam Smith's theory of economic growth in commercial society—which depends on the division of labor and specialization in the labor force (including both physical and intellectual labor). Although it may have distracted from Longaker's central interest by drawing us back to the more familiar grounds of rhetoric and epistemology, the tendency toward intellectual fragmentation—which undermines modern usage of the classical topoi—does seem to be important to any discussion of rhetorical pedagogy and bourgeois ethics. So, for instance, by ending his narrative with Spencer, Longaker overlooks other writers (John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, Alexander Bain, and John Ruskin, for example) who were preoccupied with responding to Smith's division of labor because of its dangerously dehumanizing implications. The project of reframing public discourse—and specifically, of reframing public argument—in a way that would secure social justice as a constraining value to commercial culture became pervasive to nineteenth-century ethics and economics.Longaker's “rebranding” of Hugh Blair as a “moderate man” who “taught bourgeois virtue to offset the vice of luxury and to prevent the corruption of commerce” (98) is an intriguing claim. But for those of us who are accustomed to reading Blair's lectures against the backdrop of neo-classical rhetoric and eighteenth-century classical education, the argument is not entirely convincing. For example, dating at least to Charles Rollin's The Ancient History (1729), Greek history had been a stage for attacking the commercial decadence of Athenian “popular culture” and for defending an elite “high culture.” Blair's disdain for disputation and for popular oratory and his endorsement of polite belles lettres reenacted a standard trope in eighteenth-century debates about class and economic stratification. Longaker's interpretation of Blair might be more convincing had he acknowledged this historical context—or at least provided greater attention to the way Blair's notion of belles lettres would be mobilized as a class marker.Finally, it is surprising that Longaker grants Richard Whately only a brief reference in his text. Whately was, after all, a major force in nineteenth-century British interpretation of rhetoric and of political economy. A prolific writer, he offered commentary on diverse subjects that seem directly relevant to the question of bourgeois virtue: tolerance and partisanship, charity and covetousness, luxury, argumentative clarity and consistency, humility and moral judgment, and the relationship between reason and passion in persuasive discourse. Granted, any careful examination of Whately on rhetoric, economics, and ethics, would easily fill a book by itself. Still, one suspects that by adding someone like Whately to this discussion the project might have gained an extra level of depth and nuance.Despite these minor disappointments, the bottom line is that Longaker's work stands as essential reading for anyone who is interested in the relationship between rhetoric and economics. In fact, for all of us who face the prospect of spending the remainder of our careers responding to the consequences of a collective investment in Trumpean economics—and at a time in which the Supreme Court has declared that “money is speech”—Longaker's analysis gives us ample motivation to rethink our assumptions about the relevance of Enlightenment rhetorical theory to our twenty-first-century predicament. John Locke, Adam Smith, Hugh Blair, and Herbert Spencer each grappled with moral problems that are surprisingly similar to problems we face today. Rhetorical Style and Bourgeois Virtue may not provide a comprehensive study of the subject, but it is an impressive point of entry that is likely to inspire compelling research for the future.