On the fiftieth anniversary of Philosophy and Rhetoric I hope a future for the journal that not only continues to publish scholarship that reflects seriously on the productive possibilities of putting the unique understandings of the human condition delivered by philosophy into contact with the singular insights into the power and perils of speech, writing, and gesture offered up by rhetoric. I also wish for it printed pages on which scholars engage thoughtfully the challenges posed by worlds and loss of (...) worlds. Never before in my lifetime has this task seemed so urgent and so necessary. This article is delivered in that spirit.On 13 July 2013 a jury of six women in Sanford, Florida, returned a verdict of not... (shrink)

An isolated sentence—aphoristic, not fragmentary—tends to reverberate like an oracular utterance having the self-sufficiency of a communication to which nothing need be added.That is barbarian language you hear.There is no document of culture which not at the same time a document of barbarism.Zōon logon ekhon echoes. It rings, three unpunctuated words filling the air and resounding across the landscape. It reverberates, a fragment heard over and over, almost to the point where it seems to go without saying—almost. It reflects, an (...) idea in which a question of beginning, perhaps the beginning, returns from the rock face as that which "has governed an enormous tradition", an origin story, a common... (shrink)

1st Gent.: Our deeds are fetters that we forge ourselves. 2d Gent.: Ay, truly: but I think it is the world that brings the iron. R. L. Scott once explained that the “environment is experienced as being rhetorical,” meaning anything within the milieu can participate in addressivity, that who or what addresses what and whom is variable and multiple. He stressed that human valuing determined participation, but he nonetheless anticipated a more robust, posthuman ecological view when he contended that “one (...) must not think of rhetorical attributes as exclusively the property of speakers, writers, or other message-senders”. Scott claimed an “enlarged concept of rhetoric” was necessary... (shrink)