436 RHETORICA with are the values advocated by partisans in the public discourse of the writers' polities. The work of literature is to re-present the speech of that discourse at some distance from the exigencies of decision that it responds to and attempts to create, in the cooler, more contemplative medium of writing that "wards off the decisiveness of the tongue ... and asks us to try out its words on our tongues, so that we might develop our sense of what is at stake in the process of our decision making" (p. 265). Shifting our position in literary eloquence from that of the judge listening to the calls of deliberative or forensic arguments to decide now, we would step back to the epideictic position of the theoros, critical observer, witnessing the representation of conflicting claims without an immediate call to choose, reflecting on those representations, and taking them to heart in a way that might shape our future decisions. Bevis not only rhetoricizes the principles of New Criticism; he also exemplifies a practice of close reading that brings to the fore his authors' ambivalent responses to the public oratory of their times and links their formal devices to their rhetorical criticism. New Critical preferences for ambiguity and indirection and indecision in literature return but with a crucial difference. Sometimes the only way to voice a sufficiently complex attitude is to say two things at once; sometimes an alternative meaning can only shadow the words that declare something else; sometimes the only way to suspend unreflective calls to decision to resort to aporia—that shibboleth of the deconstructive variant of New Criticism. Professors of rhetoric and of literature have much to learn from Bevis's rhetorical criticism and from the rhetorical criticism in the literary texts he explicates. They are well worth working with and, to cite a phrase Bevis cites from Empson, well worth "working out." Don Bialostosky University of Pittsburgh Jan Rothkamm, Institutio Oratorio. Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leiden: Brill 2009, 539 pp. ISBN: 9789004173286 The idea that rhetoric since the time of Plato has been foreign to philoso­ phy is antiquated today. Philosophy isn't aiming at empirical knowledge but providing certain conceptual distinctions by means of elucidations, which are introduced with the help of tropes and figures. An important question is how early modern philosophers reflected on the rhetorical use of language Reviews 437 to express their ideas. The book answers this question with respect to Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes and Spinoza, who appear successively on the philosophi­ cal scene in the short period from 1561 to 1679, as is shown in the instructive svnchronopsis". It was only natural that Bacon used the study of style to demonstrate his high level of education. Not originality, but familiarity with established values was a commonly accepted measure of skill. In order to adhere to good style, Descartes relied on the counsel of a rhetorician like Aemilius. At the same time Latin wasn't completely unchallenged as the one and only language of the educated anymore. Especially French proved to be an exceedingly serious competitor to the ancient languages. Spinoza's in part deliberately idiosyncratic use of Latin wasn't necessarily seen as a defect of his texts. Like many modern scientists, he committed himself to the ideal of the autonomous thinker and not of the educated reader (p. 364). Thus method is one of the most important fields of hidden effects of rhetoric in early modern philosophy. The most important result of this book is that all these effects of rhetoric are to be understood against the background of education. Bacon was well educated in oratory (p. 85). The influence of Roman rhetoric especially shows where Bacon insists on a balance between indicium and elocutio, logos and pathos, and relies on the efficiency of schemes and precepts. This fits with Bacon's strong inclination against the preference of words above matter in the "schools". The answer to "Aristotelism" had to be a new a conception of rhetoric which was at the same time dwelling on passions and actions. Rhetoric should persuade the hearer to undertake actions. The aim of rhetoric consequently is to "apply Reason to Imagination", enabling "a...