Chapter 1 opens with a discussion of the foundational importance of classical education in Roman society and politics, and how it served as a basis for both office-holding and elite Roman identity and self-fashioning. The chapter also provides a prosopographical sketch of the teachers and students that are visible in the historical record from the fourth to early sixth centuries in Gaul, showing that identifiable teachers and students begin to fade from the sources from the later-fifth and early-sixth centuries. It discusses the marked shift in the visibility of these individuals, the changing nature of our sources for education throughout the period, the limitations of our sources, and what we can learn from those limitations. The chapter argues that, while classical education largely disappears from the historical record by the early sixth century, this by no means indicates that classical education ceased to exist entirely. Rather, it shows that classical education was no longer a ‘public’ institution as it had been under the Roman empire, and that it did not occupy that specific place within politics, society, and culture that allowed it to be visible and take a prominent place in the technical and literary texts of the period.

This chapter emphasizes narrative as a vehicle for psychological analysis. It begins by noting the prominence of emotion in the Confessions; Augustine himself tells us in the Reconsiderations that the work is meant to arouse not just the mind but also the heart toward God. It argues that the Confessions contributes to ancient philosophical debates about the character of the emotions and how they should be controlled and moderated. The work presents a “therapy of the emotions” that is sometimes aligned with, and sometimes in critical tension with, the philosophical spiritual exercises proposed by earlier writers. Augustine is, in certain respects, more hopeful about progress in virtue than his philosophical predecessors; he presents his therapy of the soul for everyone, not just those with fortunate natural proclivities. Yet he insists that such progress can be made only by God’s grace. The techniques of ancient philosophy are, in themselves, unavailing for moral transformation.

The introduction sets out the approaches, sources, and scope of the book. It acquaints the reader with the main features of classical education and places the book within the modern historiography.

This chapter analyses the literary, textual, and propaganda work of the two main British fascist organisations in the interwar period: the British Fascisti (1923–1935), founded by Rotha Lintorn-Orman, and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF, 1932–1940). The evolving styles, structures, and aesthetics in fascist publications reflect shifts in policy and strategy, often influenced by opposing political movements. Fascist literature was a strategic tool in a war of words and ideas, and as such was crucial for promoting fascist ideology. The chapter highlights the dissemination of fascist materials, including newspapers sold at events, manifestos for recruitment, and pamphlets on diverse topics. Songs, short stories, and poems aimed to mobilise and instruct, while public speeches were central to fascist rallies and demonstrations. The BUF trained its members, the Blackshirts, in public speaking, making speeches integral to their propaganda efforts; these speeches were later published, recorded, or filmed. This ‘gestural politics’ is exemplified by the BUF’s newspaper Action!, a title that symbolised the movement’s focus on public performance and outreach. Through these varied forms, the chapter shows how fascist propaganda intertwined literary efforts with political activism to influence British society.

This chapter traces the history of Renaissance Italy’s long and passionate love affair with the textual and material remnants of classical antiquity, exploring classical influences within literary and intellectual history, art history, and material culture. The classicizing movement known as humanism is charted here from its origins in the early 1300s to the moment sometimes called the High Renaissance in early sixteenth-century Rome. The chapter argues that past paradigms have often over-emphasized the secular leaning of Renaissance humanism or posited a sharp transition from a medieval, other-worldly to an earthly, human-focused world-view. Countering this, the chapter examines the ways in which a society and culture still deeply invested in Christianity responded to the philosophical challenges posed by pagan antiquity and the strategies it developed to reconcile the two.

This chapter discusses the work of twelfth-century theologians in Paris who laid the foundations for the development of theology as a discipline in the university. These thinkers explored the characteristics and limits of the discourse on God in theological treatises and summae, which employed increasingly sophisticated technical terminology drawn in part from grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

In this chapter, I argue that Plato borrows from Euripides’ Antiope, in order to frame the terms of the debate between Socrates and Callicles in the last part of the Gorgias about whether the philosophical or the political life is best. I argue that Plato’s engagement with this tragedy is an instance of paratragedy, that is, the non-parodic adaptation of a work of tragedy in order to enrich the dramatic situation. What redeems the Antiope in Plato’s eyes is its endorsement of the superiority of the intellectual over the political life. In adapting the Antiope for his own purposes, Plato defends an account of good life as spent in the cooperative pursuit of wisdom and virtue. This life runs up against two limits that are thematized in the Gorgias: human obstinacy, the refusal to cooperate and recognize the force of argument; and endemic uncertainty due to our finite capacity for argument. Since Socrates is portrayed as both defending the life of philosophy in argument, and actively living it, then the Gorgias itself counts as an ideal tragedy. This reading of the dialogue sheds important light on the arguments concerning the nature and value of rhetoric. In the end, I assess the dialogue in light of the constraints on ideal tragedy articulated in Chapter 4.

This chapter reconstructs the relationship between the Gospel of Truth’s author and his intended audience, arguing that its author ensures its rhetorical effectiveness by his use of keywords and vivid imagery.

This chapter examines the likelihood of voluntary compliance in public health contexts, with emphasis on lessons learned during COVID-19 regarding trust in mask wearing, social distancing, and vaccine uptake.

Kant’s thoughts on language as a practical tool of what he would call “pragmatic formation” in his pedagogical writings are often overlooked. If anything, Kant is read from selected passages of his third Critique as being opposed to the arts of oratory and persuasion. This chapter will canvas Kant’s supposed animosity to the persuasive employment of language – rhetoric, in a term – and detail the complexity that lies behind Kant’s reaction to language as a tool of action among moral agents. Drawing upon his anthropological lectures and writings, as well as his religious and aesthetics work, I will argue that Kant leaves space in his system for a moralized, and moralizing, use of persuasive language in human community. Language use can draw upon inclinations and desires in an agent, and thereby compromise their autonomy. Yet there are ways that Kant speaks of or hints at that use language in ways that move us to be free. Kant’s aesthetics also allows room for vivid presentations as a way to make clear to one’s listener what one already knows in a nonmanipulative manner; these presentation styles are tied in with Kant’s religious thought, as well as with the western rhetorical tradition in general.

Tusculans 1 offers a multi-faceted refutation of the proposition ‘death is an evil’, accomplished in part through a detailed doxography of a wide range of philosophers of different schools. This survey is far from a jumble of contradictory views, however: Cicero avoids dogmatic insistence on the arguments of any single school and has instead crafted a minimally sectarian protreptic designed to convince readers of any philosophical persuasion that death is not an evil, an approach whose origin he traces back to Socrates’ reflections on death in Plato’s Apology. Furthermore, I argue that this approach amounts to a direct challenge to Cicero’s philosophical rivals, a group of Epicurean authors writing in Latin – including, I speculate, Lucretius – whom Cicero had criticiaed in several prefaces for their narrow-minded dogmatism. In Book 1 Cicero therefore tackles a topic of perennial interest, illustrates how philosophy can and should be written, and attempts to marginalise his Epicurean opponents.

Offensiveness is a key issue in contemporary public discourse, especially in relation to media content. Stand-up comedy has provided an important site for discussions of offensiveness, both inside of performances and in the commentary on comedy in other forms of popular media. This chapter provides a brief summary of some well-known examples of stand-up comedy that are embroiled in debates on offensiveness, before engaging in a discussion of what constitutes offensive stand-up comedy. The chapter theorises the discursive work that offensive stand-up comedy does in contemporary contexts through concepts of rhetoric, the performative, and symbolic violence. Comedy and harm are discussed and an explanation of what researchers have described as the impacts of humour and comedy is given. Throughout the chapter, the points made are elaborated with extracts from British stand-up comedian Ricky Gervais’ Netflix special Supernature (2022), especially through an analysis of jokes made by Gervais about transgender people. These and other jokes are examined alongside the disclaimers used in the stand-up comedy performance.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the central argument of the book. Medical anthropology, psychology, and psychiatry must steer a course between realism and constructivism, integrating the useful features of both perspectives. Metaphor theory and 4-E cognitive science provide ways of integrating cognitive and socio-cultural processes. Metaphor production and comprehension involves cognitive and emotional processes embodied and enacted through rhetoric and social discourse. These practices constitute a hermeneutic circle that can be traced from body to person to social world and back. They show how symbols and things live in the same world. This work has implications for understanding the ways illness experience and healing practices are embedded in larger systems of knowledge/power. The metaphors that arise in individuals’ struggles to make sense of their predicaments and to heal from affliction are borrowed from everyday concepts of mind and body, as well as the political language of power, resistance, and dissent. Every metaphor lends power to a particular view of the world. We must judge the value of metaphors on their moral, political, aesthetic, and pragmatic implications.