History of Rhetoric

In Timaeus 49, Plato sympathetically describes Anaximenes’ theory of matter, with its seven states of matter, its contrary mechanisms of rarefaction and condensation, and notion that the birth of one elements is the death of another. Plato treats Anaximenes as a kind of philosopher of process rather than a material monist, as Aristotle portrays him. From this perspective, Anaximenes can be seen as a forerunner of Heraclitus rather than of Diogenes of Apollonia. Plato seems to introduce Anaximenes’ theory as an approximation of his own theory of matter. Plato’s interpretation may be inspired by the readings of Cratylus and other Heracliteans and have its roots in a pre-Parmenidean world-view. Although it conflicts with Aristotle’s better known and more Eleatic interpretation, Plato’s interpretation is at least as old, and deserves serious consideration as the only other early understanding of Anaximenes.

Wprowadzenie Lucjusz Anneusz Seneka Młodszy (Lucius Annaeus Seneca Minor, ok. 4 r. p.n.e.-65 r. n. e) należy do najważniejszych autorów literatury rzymskiej1. K. Leśniak napisał2: "Autor Listów do Lucyliusza, Lucjusz Anneusz Seneka, należy do średniego pokolenia znakomitych twórców hiszpańskich, uczonych, literatów i filozofów, którzy w licznych szkołach iberyjskołacińskich rozwijali działalność w duchu i szacie rzymskiej. Już w dwa bez mała wieki, jakie upłynęły od usadowienia się Rzymian w Hiszpanii, tzn. w okresie bitwy pod Akcjum, retoryka hiszpańska zajmuje czołowe miejsce w literaturze rzymskiej. Uczniowie stają się mistrzami. (…) Rodzina jego należała do tej bogatej i wykształconej prowincjonalnej arystokracji urzędniczej, która przez długi okres czasu była podporą wielkości Rzymu i stanowiła rezerwuar ludzki dla Imperium Romanum i dla cesarzy". Zbiór listów Seneki pt. Epistulae morales ad Lucilium obejmuje 124 listy podzielone przez niektórych wydawców na 20 ksiąg. Listów tych było znacznie więcej, ale nie wszystkie zachowały się do naszych czasów. Aulus Gelliusz w Noctes Atticae, XII 2, 3 przekazał informację o księdze XXII. Adresatem listów jest Lucyliusz, ekwita rzymski, prokurator na Sycylii, znany tylko z tej korespondencji Seneki. Trudno jednoznacznie ustalić, czy listy te mają charakter autentycznej korespondencji, czy są fikcyjną kreacją literacką Seneki. W tej kwestii zdania badaczy są podzielone. Nie mamy także listów od Lucyliusza do Seneki. Wiele wskazuje na to, że listy do Lucyliusza zostały napisane w ostatnich latach życia filozofa z hiszpańskiej Kordoby. Najczęściej przyjmuje się lata 62-64 n. e. Powstały zatem w atmosferze zagrożenia życia filozofa ze strony cesarza Nerona (37-68 n. e.). Liczne dywagacje na temat lęku przed śmiercią i porady, jak nad nim zapanować są niejako zapowiedzią (literacką prolepsą) samobójczej śmierci Seneki w roku 65 n. e. Jak trafnie pisze M. Davies3: "The ever-present threat of death is a frequent topic in the work, reflecting his own awareness of living and writing under the hostile scrutiny of the imperial court and its delatores".

Frankfurt's well-known analysis is useful for understanding bullshit assertions in spoken and written language. But the term "bullshit" is routinely applied to a wider range of phenomena. Paper work is bullshit. Textbook prices are bullshit. Airport security lines are bullshit. Even within the realm of language, Frankfurt's analysis applies straightforwardly only to utterances that purport to aim at the truth. Yet, bullshit is possible not only in speech acts other than assertion, but also in conversational contexts where truth-even for assertions-is not the goal. I argue that Frankfurt's essay contains the resources for a generalized theory of bullshit that encompasses the full range of phenomena, and of which the classic Frankfurtian analysis is a special instance. I contrast the account with other adaptations of Frankfurt's approach. I conclude by exploring the important role that the concept of bullshit can play in debating and evaluating our practices more generally.

This article examines algorithmic persuasion within a long-term theoretical framework that links language, persuasion, and legal rationality. Beginning with the classical relationship between speech, corporeality, and persuasion, the analysis traces the historical process through which language becomes progressively objectified, culminating in contemporary generative artificial intelligence. The paper distinguishes persuasion as a psychological effect from persuasiveness as the quality of a discourse as rational achievement emerging in oppositional argumentative contexts, a distinction central to modern legal theory. Drawing on recent empirical literature, the article shows that generative AI can reach persuasive effectiveness comparable to human agents, while identifying transparency, personalization, and cultural heuristics as key moderating factors. Finally, it highlights the ethical and juridical tensions between technological efficiency, human oversight, privacy, and the preservation of human dignity.

This article aims to present three hypotheses about how the preaching treatise of the Catalan author, Francesc Eiximenis, entitled 'Ars praedicandi populo', ended up in Krakow in the library of Mikołaj Spycymir. For this purpose, three codices, which contain copies of the Eiximenis treatise, were compared to each other. The article also presented in more detail the biography of Nicolaus Spycymir, the owner of the oldest copy of the treatise. The first two hypotheses are related to the Franciscan Order and diplomatic travels and pilgrimages to Compostela. They seem not to be as well-grounded in the sources as the third hypothesis, which concerns the Polish delegations to the Council of Basel and Council delegations coming to Kraków. One of the delegates of the Council was Marc Bonfill, a Catalan theologian and well-known preacher, associated, like Eiximenis, with the University of Lerida and Girona. The article also pays special attention to Bonfill’s associate, Stanisław Sobniowski, who was a close friend of Spycimir. It is possible that Spycymir obtained the treatise on the preaching arts through these connections (Bonfill or Sobniowski). This hypothesis, however, requires further research.

Reinhardt, Kirk, and Marcovich have argued that there is only one genuine river fragment in Heraclitus, fr. B12. On this view, there is no evidence for the thesis that one cannot step twice into the same river.  Tarán (1999) has argued against this view, defending B91a as supporting the thesis. But B91a, like several other alleged river fragments, closely echoes the language of B12 while contradicting it. B12 is the only river fragment, offering a paradoxical but philosophically coherent account of a world that has both flux and order.

Rencontre avec Simon Susen. Suite de nos échos au colloque « Hartmut Rosa : accélération, résonance, énergies sociales », qui s’est déroulé du 30 août au 5 septembre, sous la direction de Corine Pelluchon et Dietmar Wetzel, avec, cette fois, le témoignage de Simon Susen, sociologue, intervenu sur « La théorie critique comme sociologie des relations au monde ? ».

In Aristotle's Protrepticus, the pursuit of intelligence and wisdom via the practice of philosophy is the ultimate good.  It will lead to our being "like" the gods with the use of the mind over all other temptations or prospects. I have always been intrigued by such a claim, as such a claim seems to border on idolatry, mysticism, or extreme self-deception. But in Plato and Aristotle's universe, the divinity seems always to be close at hand.

The Perverse Language is the fourth part and last of Volume I in THE MISCOMMUNICATION TRILOGY and serves as the culminating movement of the first volume’s inquiry into linguistic decay, distortion, and miscommunication. While the earlier parts examine the planned obsolescence of language, the conspiratorial nature of speech, and the rise of anti-languages, this book confronts the most troubling dimension of communication: its perversion. Language here is not merely fragmented or manipulated; it becomes structurally inverted, detached from truth, sincerity, and shared reality.
The book opens with the concept of mass miscommunication. Misunderstanding is no longer treated as accidental or episodic but as systemic. In contemporary societies, speech circulates at unprecedented speed, yet clarity diminishes. Biased language, ideological framing, and algorithmic amplification create environments in which distortion stabilises itself. The “miscommunication axiom” suggests that the more communication expands without shared interpretative frameworks, the more entropy increases. Communication multiplies; understanding contracts.
A central section of the book is devoted to lying. Rather than moralising deception as purely individual failure, Ayolov analyses the linguistics of lying as a social practice. Why do people lie? Because language permits strategic ambiguity, selective emphasis, and contextual framing. Conspicuous dishonesty, however, often signals something deeper: a cultural shift in which truth becomes negotiable. The line between error, manipulation, and narrative construction blurs.
The analysis of hypocrisy advances this diagnosis. Hypocrisy thrives not in silence but in hyper-articulation. Public actors proclaim virtue while engaging in contradictory practices. Organised hypocrisy emerges when institutions maintain symbolic commitments that diverge from operational realities. The paradox lies in the fact that hypocrisy can stabilise social systems; it allows moral language to persist even when behaviour deviates. Language preserves legitimacy while action undermines it.
Deception, in Ayolov’s account, is both art and science. The book explores the aesthetics of deception — how persuasive narratives captivate audiences — and the institutionalisation of deception within scientific fraud, media manipulation, and political propaganda. The concept of “overproduction of truth” captures a distinctive modern condition: rather than censorship through silence, societies face saturation through competing truths. When everything claims validity, discernment weakens.
The hermeneutic section addresses interpretation as both remedy and risk. Understanding depends on interpretation, yet interpretative frameworks are themselves shaped by bias and ideology. Typology and categorisation organise perception but also limit it. The book argues that miscommunication is not solved by multiplying interpretations; it requires reflexivity about the frameworks guiding interpretation.
A particularly striking chapter examines obfuscation. Grammaticalisation and lexical inflation transform simple realities into complex abstractions. Bureaucratic language, academic jargon, and managerial vocabulary obscure agency and responsibility. The limits of words become visible not because language fails, but because it is stretched beyond clarity. Obfuscation does not eliminate meaning; it multiplies it to the point of opacity.
The final section introduces the concept of hypernormalisation. Distorted communication becomes normalised through repetition. Citizens recognise inconsistencies between words and reality yet continue to participate in the linguistic performance. The “language of names” reveals how labels can dehumanise, reducing individuals to categories. Once categorisation hardens, empathy weakens. Language becomes an instrument of distance.
The concluding movement toward “discommunication” suggests that breakdown is not merely communicative failure but structural inversion. Lingua perversa is a condition in which words no longer mediate shared understanding but reinforce fragmentation. Sanity itself becomes entangled with linguistic stability. When language detaches from coherent reference, psychological and social equilibrium destabilise.
Yet The Perverse Language does not culminate in despair. By exposing the mechanisms of lying, hypocrisy, deception, obfuscation, and hypernormalisation, the book invites awareness. Perversion is not inevitable; it is produced. Recognising distorted patterns enables resistance. Communication can be recalibrated through sincerity, clarity, and reflexive listening.
As the final part of Volume I in THE MISCOMMUNICATION TRILOGY, The Perverse Language synthesises the trilogy’s foundational concerns. It demonstrates that linguistic decay is not simply about simplification or fragmentation but about inversion — the transformation of language from a medium of mutual understanding into a mechanism of systemic distortion. The task that remains is not to abandon language but to confront its perverse tendencies with disciplined attention and ethical responsibility.

The foreword to a new volume: Claude Pavur, S.J.,”The Meaning of Jesuit Rhetoric," foreword in Jesuit Rhetoric across Space and Time: Local and Global Perspectives, editor-in-Chief, Sophie Conte and editors Cinthia Gannett, John Brereton, Manfred Krauss, Elizabethada Wright, and Bartosz Awianowicz (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2026), xi-xxi. Most of the Table of Contents is given here.

This course will cover various important figures in the global history of rhetoric. We start our investigation with the thinkers from ancient Greece-Plato, Aspasia, Diotima, Protagoras, Gorgias, Isocrates, and Aristotle. We will examine what they believe rhetoric is, what its value is, and what role it should play in ethics and politics. We'll talk about how Cicero, Quintilian, Christine de Pizan, Immanuel Kant, the American pragmatists and various stoics conceptualized and practiced rhetoric. Attention will be given to the promises and challenges of diversifying the rhetorical canon. Classical accounts of rhetoric and communication in the Chinese and Indian contexts will be explored.

/Relative vs absolute Protagoras vs Plato (19 pages). Four related philosophical topics: 1) the subjective/objective, or experiential/verbal domains; 2) definitions: physical and verbal; 3) relativism and absolutism; 4) the philosophers Protagoras and Plato.

Las Elegantiae de Valla contribuyeron de forma decisiva a la
renovación del latín defendida por los humanistas. La obra se difundió
rápidamente en manuscritos y en ediciones durante la segunda mitad del
siglo XV en toda Europa. Sin embargo, su carácter de texto destinado
a eruditos y a alumnos de nivel avanzado dificultaba su utilización en
las aulas, por lo que muy pronto aparecen manuales que resumen y
simplifican su contenido, facilitando su consulta. Ejemplo de ellos son el
Compendium elegantiarum, de Bonus Accursius; los Elegantiarum uiginti
precepta; los Flores Rhetorici, de F. Manzanares; las Elegantiae latinitatis,
de P. Niavis; el De Elegantiis terminorum; y la Elegantiarum medulla, de
J. Wimpfeling. Asimismo, muy pronto las elegantiae se unen a preceptivas
epistolares, pues escribir cartas de acuerdo con la norma de los autores
latinos fue otra de las preocupaciones iniciales del Humanismo. Así las
encontramos en los Elegantiarum uiginti precepta, los Flores Rhetorici,
las Elegantiae latinitatis o la Elegantiarum medulla. En este trabajo
estudiaremos la reutilización y manipulación de las Elegantiae de Valla
en estos manuales, la posible influencia de Dati en este proceso, así como
las posibles relaciones existentes entre ellas.

Valla’s Elegantiae made a decisive contribution to the
renewal of Latin defended by humanists. The work quickly spread in
manuscripts and editions during the second half of the 15th century
throughout Europe. However, its character as a text intended for scholars
and advanced students made it difficult to use in classrooms, so manuals
soon appeared to summarize and simplify its content, making it easier to
consult. Among these manuals we find Bonus Accursius’s Compendium
elegantiarum, the Elegantiarum uiginti precepta, F. Manzanares’s Flores
Rhetorici, P. Niavis’s Elegantiae latinitatis, the De Elegantiis terminorum,
and J. Wimpfeling’s Elegantiarum medulla. Furthermore, the elegantiae
are introduced in epistolography school books, since writing letters
according to the rules of Latin authorities was one of the concerns of
Humanism in its initial stages. In this work we will study the reuse
and manipulation of Valla’s Elegantiae in these manuals, the possible
influence of Dati in this process, as well as the possible relations between
them.

This paper explores the belliphonic—the sonic dimension of warfare—in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, focusing on the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. While modern warfare studies emphasize the sounds of mechanized combat, the acoustic landscapes of ancient and medieval battles remain understudied. Drawing on recent scholarship by Clauss, Lummer, Potthoff, and Pretzer, this study situates Tolkien’s soundscapes within both historical and mythological traditions. Tolkien’s immersion in classical, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse literature, combined with his experience of World War I, enabled him to create richly layered battle sounds in which horns, cries, silence, and environmental acoustics carry narrative and psychological weight. Through close reading, the paper examines how Tolkien employs explicit, implied, and plausible sounds to shape morale, leadership, and mood. The shifting soundscape of the Rohirrim—from ritualized horns to the heavy silence before their charge—reveals how sound structures expectation and emotion. Théoden’s horn-blast and battle cry revive heroic conventions reminiscent of Exodus and the Völuspá, while Merry’s sensory disorientation under the Witch-king reflects both medieval depictions of fear and the shellshock familiar from WWI poetry. Ultimately, the study argues that Tolkien’s battles are not primarily visual spectacles but intricate auditory experiences that link medieval traditions, modern warfare, and the mythic cosmology of the Ainulindalë, transforming war into a narrative of sound and meaning. This paper was presented at Oxonmoot 2025, St. Anne's College, Oxford on September 7th, 2025.

Drawing on feminist rhetoric and critical imagination as theoretical frameworks, this qualitative study examines the revolutionary rhetorical politics of two women who defied their eras' gender constraints: Aspasia, a disenfranchised metic in ancient Greece, and Sojourner Truth, an emancipated slave in nineteenth-century America. Both women strategically reclaimed and transformed public rhetorical spaces traditionally controlled by men, creating profound shifts in gender politics across vastly different historical contexts. It analyzes Aspasia's unprecedented penetration of Athenian intellectual life where women were systematically excluded from public discourse and Truth's commanding presence in abolitionist and suffragist spaces where Black women's voices were marginalized by intersecting oppressions of race and gender. Using Aristotle's rhetorical typologies with Lefebvre's spatial theory and critical feminist analysis, this research examines the complex dialectic between space and power. It reveals how these pioneering women not only navigated hostile rhetorical environments but fundamentally reimagined and reconstructed them, establishing vital precedents for women's participation in public discourse. Their achievements, separated by over two millennia yet linked by parallel struggles, illuminate historical continuities in women's rhetorical resistance to spatial confinement and their persistent efforts to occupy and transform rhetorical territories previously denied to them.

Paideia. The Ideas of Greek Culture. Vol III. The Conflict of Cultural Ideals in the Age of Plato; translated by Gilbert Highet; New York, Oxford University Press, 1944.

Paideia. Die Formung des griechischen Menschen. 3 Bände. Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1934–1947.

„The IIIrd volume of Paideia details the struggle to maintain Greek cultural identity and educational ideals when the traditional framework of the city-state faltered, highlighting the enduring power of intellectual and moral formation.”

"First, do no harm." This core principle of medical ethics, often linked to the father of medicine, Hippocrates of Kos—though its exact origins are debated—guides practitioners to help or, at the very least, avoid causing harm. The phrase has endured alongside the tradition of doctors taking an oath, and even today, we still refer to the Hippocratic oath when speaking about medical professionalism.

Political issues, especially the theory of the political system of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, appeared in university lectures in Vilnius as early as the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. Although these mentions were brief, they testified to the continuing reception of Western political thought and the lecturers’ keen interest in national affairs.
From 1677 on, professors in the newly established Department of Ethics were required to give annual lectures on politics (Praelectiones politicae). Manuscripts from 1688-1692 have survived in the collection of Vilnius University Library and are made available here for the first time.
The present volume contains the surviving parts of a lecture by Christopher (Christophor) Puciłowski. After the definition of the secular state (status civilis saecularis) as a republic (res publica) Puciłowski presents, in the fourth questio, the (pre)history of the monarchical system and argues in favour of religious unity, i.e. non-tolerance. The preserved beginning of the fifth quaestio introduces the history of Poland, after which the text of the lecture breaks off.

On the surface, the Cratylus presents us with two competing theories concerning the
“correctness of names”, a naturalist and a conventionalist one. More in depth, it attacks
the very idea that the study of language is the privileged or even the only way of acquiring knowledge. Besides casting doubt upon the epistemological value of words it raises the question of the ontology allowing for a theory of knowledge. In comparison with the Cratylus, the theory of language put forward in the Theaetetus and the Sophist marks a double shift: from onoma to logos and from the relation onoma–pragma to the relation logos–dianoia–eide. The alternative between an ontology of flux and an ontology of unchanging Forms which underlies the debate about the correctness of names in the Cratylus resurfaces in the Theaetetus and the Sophist. The Sophist tries to resolve this conflict by assigning motion and rest their proper places among the greatest genera, thus replacing the primitive ontology of single Forms with a structured ontology of relationships among them. This ontology provides a basis for the theory of falsehood of judgement and speech and, more generally, for the theory of imitation which can be true or false. On this new basis, the conception of speech as a kind of mimesis can be reformulated. Since speaking and judging consist in a kind of imitation and since imitation, as such, allows for falsehood, neither speech nor judgement can be the criterion of truth. Only what is not itself an imitation can provide this criterion.

Leo Strauss argued that ancient philosophers wrote esoterically, embedding genuine insights in structural patterns rather than propositional statements. This paper examines whether Straussian hermeneutics helps explain how Plato's tetradic psychology-a four-part model of the soul including constitutional self-governance (auto politeia)-remained unrecognized for twenty-four centuries despite textual evidence in plain sight. I identify two layers of obscuring: Plato's deliberate compositional method (his absence from dialogues, numerical puzzles, inadequate summaries) and subsequent interpretive distortion (Aristotle's strategic misreading, Cicero's retitling of Peri Psychēs Hygeias as De Republica, and scholarly tradition perpetuating these frames). A recent example from contemporary Platonic scholarship illustrates how even direct quotation of tetradic passages gets filtered through tripartite expectations. I conclude by distinguishing two types of discoveryencountering a text versus recognizing its meaning-and suggest that clinical practice with constitutional psychology may provide recognitional advantages that purely textual scholarship cannot.

The article focuses on some discursive defects that influence on decision-making around issues of science and technology (technoscience). Particularly, the nature and use of the linguistic phenomenon known as bullshit are analysed, and the results of this analysis are placed into the general context of the controversy about climate change. The conclusion emphasizes the relevance of avoiding confusions and humbug in the information available to the public and linked to decisions in the realm of science policy or regulation.

From online ads to humanoid robots, AI is increasingly integrated into the arts. This paper discusses the role of technological innovation in reshaping creative practice, focusing on AI tools. Contributing to the growing discourse on the intersection of technologies and psychology of creativity, the analysis critically examines how AI art metastasises into AI slop and destabilises creative authenticity. To illustrate the authenticity crisis in human-machine creativity, an online experiment that evaluates viewers’ inability to distinguish AI images from children’s drawings is presented.

Confessio Amantis, John Gower ; Confissão do amante (Robret Pay tr.) ; Confysión del amante (Juan de Cuenca tr.) ; introducción de Antonio Cortijo Ocaña y Manuel Faccon ; edición trilingüe de Elena Alvar, Antonio Cortijo Ocaña y Manuela Faccon.

Principled pragmatism is a broad and expanding approach to water policy research, especially in the South Asian countries of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. These studies advocate policies that are both pragmatic, in the ordinary language sense of the term, and principled. However, our review found that principled pragmatism research has not drawn on the philosophical pragmatism of John Dewey and others, which has been influential across many fields of social and environmental science, including water resources research. We review the influence of philosophical pragmatism on water resources research, notably that of geographer Gilbert F. White, and survey its expanding influence in water and environmental studies. With this perspective on philosophical pragmatism, we retrace the historical origins and development of principled pragmatism in World Bank water studies that advocated policies that are jointly practical and principled, with major applications in India and Pakistan. We then turn to research on water diplomacy led by Tufts University, which developed a strong conceptual framework for principled pragmatism, and a sophisticated application in Bangladesh. We show how that approach can be further strengthened by shifting from its distinction between principles and pragmatism to the philosophical argument that pragmatism is inherently and dynamically principled. The final section shows that this philosophical perspective has deep historical roots in South Asian thought and practice, exemplified by three early 20th century South Asian leaders-B.R. Ambedkar (Bombay), Muhammad Iqbal (Punjab), and Rabindranath Tagore (Bengal)-whose work suggests further avenues for principled pragmatism in water resources research.