The Ethics of Rhetoric by Richard M. Weaver

Richard M. Weaver (1910 - 1963) was an American scholar who taught English at the University of Chicago. He is primarily known as an intellectual historian, political philosopher and a mid-20th century conservative and as an authority on modern rhetoric. His books Ideas Have Consequences and The Ethics of Rhetoric remain influential among conservative theorists and scholars of the American South. Weaver was also associated with the "New Conservatives," a group of scholars who in the 1940s and 1950s promoted traditionalist conservatism. -- Excerpt from Wikipedia

In The Ethics of Rhetoric, Weaver evaluates the ability of rhetoric to persuade. Similarly to ancient philosophers, he found that language has the power to move people to do good, to do evil, or to do nothing at all. Weaver evaluates the ethical and cultural role of rhetoric and its reflection on society, draws upon classical notions of rhetoric in Plato's Phaedrus, and examines the effectiveness and implications of the manipulation of language in the works of Lincoln, Burke, and Milton. The book also includes his remarks about sociology and some proposals for modern rhetoric.

Originally published in 1953, The Ethics of Rhetoric by Richard M. Weaver remains timeless in its evaluation of rhetoric's role in society, and is a wonderful source for anyone writing an essay on ethics in rhetoric.

Contents Covered:

• The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric
• Dialectic and Rhetoric at Dayton, Tennessee
• Edmund Burke and the Argument from Circumstance
• Abraham Lincoln and the Argument from Definition
• Some Rhetorical Aspects of Grammatical Categories
• Milton's Heroic Prose
• The Spaciousness of Old Rhetoric
• The Rhetoric of Social Science
• Ultimate Terms in Contemporary Rhetoric
• Index