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Heidegger and Rhetoric by Daniel M. Gross, Ansgar Kemmann

2007; University of California Press; Volume: 25; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/rht.2007.0021

1533-8541

Robert J. Dostal,

Rhetoric and Communication Studies

Reviews 209 treatments on the conversion of classical rhetoric in the Christian era, rhetoric from the end of antiquity to the modern age, and Greco-Roman rhetoric in the contemporary world. At the back of the volume there is a thesaurus of concepts and technical terms and a chronological table of important literary and rhetorical events in the Greek and Roman worlds. The bibliography consists of collections of sources; general works; proceedings, melanges, and collections; specialized journals; thematic and diachronic studies; and works relevant to the individual chapters and the conclusion, the references to which are further subdivided into different eras covered. All of these sections are useful in an introductory survey of this type. Relevant passages from the Greek and Latin texts appear only in English translation. Finally, W. E. Higgins' eloquent translation from the French makes Pernot's text comprehensible to the uninformed reader of rhetoric, which is no mean feat given the technical nature of the material discussed. Inevitably, some infelicities and inconsistencies emerge in respect of translation (e.g., "the encomium readies the reception for hard sayings," p. 181) and transliteration (e.g., "Thucydides" but "Kleon," p.18) respectively. How does Rhetoric in Antiquity compare with other books on classical rhetoric intended for a general readership that have been published during the past dozen years? Pernot's volume is generally more accessible and less traditional than George Kennedy's A New History ofClassical Rhetoric (1994); more specifically it offers more information on the historical and cultural background of rhetoric and is less text based. Thomas Habinek's Ancient Rhetoric and Oratory (2005), however, focuses especially on the political, so­ cial, and cultural aspects of rhetoric and avoids the traditional structure of Pernot and Kennedy. A great strength of Pernot as a scholar of rhetoric is his positive approach, as evidenced by his generally favourable view of imperial rhetoric and declamation. Rhetoric in Antiquity is therefore partic­ ularly suitable as an introductory survey text for a postgraduate or senior undergraduate course on rhetoric. William J. Dominik University of Otago Daniel M. Gross and Ansgar Kemmann, eds., Heidegger and Rhetoric. State University of New York Press, 2005. ISBN 10 0-7914-6551-6.195 pp. This volume is a collection of six essays and one interview, each of which addresses the theme of Heidegger and rhetoric. The obvious occasion and motivation for this volume is the recent (2002) publication of Heidegger s lectures on Aristotle in the summer semester of 1924: Grundbegriffe der Aristotelischen Philosophic, Gesamtausgabe, volume 18 (as yet untranslated). One of the foci of these lectures is Aristotle's Rhetoric. One of the peculiarities 210 RHETORICA of the book under review is that a reader unfamiliar with the lectures could come away with the impression that the lectures provide a reading of Aristotle's Rhetoric. There are various references in this collection (and elsewhere in the secondary literature, I should add) to the SS 1924 lectures as lectures on Aristotle's Rhetoric. Nancy Struever, for example, asserts in her essay, "Alltaglichkeit, Timefulness, in the Heideggerian Program'' that "it [these lectures] remains, arguably, the best twentieth-century reading of Aristotle's Rhetoric." This may be so, but the lectures only deal with certain parts of the Rhetoric and spend much time considering sections of Metaphyics, Physics, On the Soul, Nicomachean Ethics, and On the Ports ofAnimals. In short, these lectures by Heidegger concern what the title announces: basic concepts of Aristotle's philosophy including logos, ousia, entelecheia, energeia, phusis, dunamis, telos, praxis, ethos, pathos, nous, hedone among others. Of the concepts just listed Heidegger relies primarily on the Rhetoric only for an explication of pathos. The reason why it makes some sense to highlight Heidegger's concern with the Rhetoric is that the Rhetoric clearly is a central text for him. He even objects to an early editor's placing this work at the end of Aristotle's works. He makes the large claim that the "tradition has long ago lost an under­ standing of rhetoric" and that "Rhetoric is no less than the interpretation (Auslegung) of Dasein in its concreteness, the hermeneutics of Dasein itself." (p. 110). As Theodore Kisiel argues in his essay in this...