Rhetoric

The essays of Richard McKeon have long circulated piecemeal among scholars who see him as the leading twentieth-century philosopher and historian of rhetoric. This volume brings together McKeon's seminal works in rhetoric and philosophy, and vividly demonstrates the basis for this extraordinary reputation.

In his pursuit of rhetoric's fundamental qualities, McKeon ventures far beyond a verbal art of persuasion. He details a history in which rhetoric functions as a tool for creating disciplines, arts, systems, and methods. Expression has always been an important element of rhetoric, but rhetoric also can serve as an organizational principle that provides the framework within which we can reveal and arrange the significant parts of any human undertaking.

Given the prodigious range of McKeon's intellectual curiosity, his longtime and pervasive interest in rhetoric suggests the unique place he assigns it in the scheme of humanistic arts. Throughout history rhetoric has infused and ordered philosophy, and more important, philosophy has often been an unknowing form of rhetoric. By bringing together McKeon's most important works on rhetoric and philosophy, this volume seeks to broaden the reader's appreciation of rhetoric as a central, critical method for the analysis of ideas.