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33Wilbur Samuel Howell, "Poetics, Rhetoric, and Logic" (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 17 (3): 334. 1979.
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31Spinoza’s Democratic ImaginationThe European Legacy 19 (7): 833-853. 2014.Spinoza is the great philosopher of the imagination and the first great philosopher of democracy. Rather than seeing democracy as a form of government that has overcome the need for imagination and symbols, he shows in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus that an enlightened state depends on three myths: the myth of the sovereignty of the people so as to reconcile democracy as rule by the people with each individual living as he or she wants to live; the myth that we are a people, emotionally and …Read more
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29Deliberative Rhetoric and Ethical DeliberationPolis 30 (2): 189-209. 2013.Central to Aristotle’s Ethics is the virtue of phronēsis, a good condition of the rational part of the soul that determines the means to ends set by the ethical virtues. Central to the Rhetoric is the art of presenting persuasive deliberative arguments about how to secure the ends set by the audience and its constitution. What is the relation between the art and the virtue of deliberation? Rhetorical facility can be a deceptive facsimile of virtuous reasoning, but there can be more fruitful conn…Read more
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29Spinoza's "Ethics"Philosophy and Theology 24 (2): 155-190. 2012.The Preface to Part 4 of Spinoza’s Ethics claims that we all desire to formulate a model of human nature. I show how that model serves the same function in ethics as the creed or articles of faith do in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, the function of allowing the imagination to provide a simularcrrum of rationality for finite, practical human beings.
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28Rhetoric, Prudence and Skepticism in the Renaissance (review)New Vico Studies 5 (n/a): 198-199. 1987.
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27The Justice of Politics iii and the Incompleteness of the NormativeAncient Philosophy 18 (2): 381-416. 1998.
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23For the Sake of Argument: Practical Reasoning, Character, and the Ethics of BeliefUniversity of Chicago Press. 2004.What role should it play? And are claims to rationality liberating or oppressive? For the Sake of Argument addresses questions such as these to consider the relationship between thought and character.
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23Book review: Aristotle's rhetoric: An art of character (review)Philosophy and Literature 19 (1). 1995.
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22Maurice Finocchiaro (1997). Galileo on the World Systems: A New Abridged Translation and Guide (review)Argumentation 13 (3): 335-337. 1999.
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21Euthyphro Prosecutes a Human Rights ViolationPhilosophy and Literature 38 (2): 510-527. 2014.Socrates encounters Euthyphro as both are on their way to court, Socrates as a defendant against charges of blasphemy and Euthyphro as a prosecutor of his father for negligently causing the death of a slave—a human rights violation. While I argue that piety and pollution supply a productive way of thinking about human rights crime and punishment, Euthyphro is a very troubling model for the human rights prosecutor, since he is an almost paradigmatically unattractive character. Reading the Euthyph…Read more
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19After Virtu: rhetoric, prudence and moral pluralism in MachiavelliHistory of Political Thought 17 (2): 195-223. 1996.
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18Plato’s Crito On the Nature of Persuasion and ObediencePolis 29 (1): 1-20. 2012.The Crito dramatizes the impossibility, and the indispensability, of persuasion sby locating it between two extremes, Socrates and the Laws, the truths of philosophy and the force of politics. The question is whether those two limits are themselves inside or outside rhetoric. Can philosophy persuade, ormust it always be an alternative sto persuasion? Socrates insists on ignoring the opinion, and the power, of the many, and so the Laws have to show themselves as different from the opinion of the …Read more
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18Book Review:A Poetic for Sociology: Toward a Logic of Discovery for the Human Sciences. Richard H. Brown (review)Ethics 89 (2): 217-. 1979.
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18The Editors extend their sincere appreciation to the following persons who served as invited reviewers between May 1999 and April 2000 (review)Philosophy and Rhetoric 33 (4). 2000.
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17Charmides and the Virtue of Opacity: An Early Chapter in the Hitory of the IndividualReview of Metaphysics 71 (3). 2017.The Charmides, searching for a definition of temperance, constantly confronts problems of reflexivity, transparency and opacity. Transparency and opacity structures the Charmides, from the dramatic beginning of Socrates peeking inside Charmides’ cloak, to Charmides’ initial depiction of sôphrosynê as concealing what one can do. The final two proposed definitions of temperance in the Charmides, self-knowledge and the knowledge of knowledge, are explicitly reflexive. That reflexivity is best under…Read more
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16Colloquium 2: Living Well and Living Together: Politics VII 1-3 and the Discovery of the Common LifeProceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 25 (1): 43-67. 2010.
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15Nathan Rotenstreich, "Philosophy, History, and Politics: Studies in Contemporary English Philosophy of History" (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 17 (3): 367. 1979.
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13Review: The God of Abraham and the God of the Philosophers (review)Philosophy East and West 50 (1). 2000.
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Law |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |