This volume is intended to introduce students and general readers to the theory and practice of rhetoric. Part I offers classic statements of rhetoric in Plato (in the Gorgias), Aristotle (in the Art of Rhetoric) and other seminal thinkers—both what rhetoric is and what its potential virtues and vices, strengths and weaknesses, are. The rest of Part I is devoted to explaining Aristotle’s classic and influential account of rhetoric: its three main kinds (deliberative, epideictic, and judicial) and the three “modes of persuasion” or proofs characteristic of it (those that appeal to the speaker’s ethos or character, to the pathos or emotion of the audience, and to logos or the logic of the speech itself). Part II offers a broad range of exemplary speeches, ancient and modern, grouped thematically. There is a preference throughout for political speeches, as distinguished from essays, letters, and other forms of communication; and our collection boasts a diversity of speakers.

In the Anthropocene, earth system governance must be effective both within and across identities, and the inescapable equivocality of democratic governance means that discussions can never be closed but merely transformed as old problems and concerns give way to new.The experimental quality that effective environmental governance must possess cannot be a transient quality but, rather, must be a permanent feature of the landscape of democratic decision-making, in which success is realized in a context of identity politics.To take place without distortion and without posing systemic disadvantage, and for intergroup differences to be accommodated, substantial equality of access to decision-making and equitable allocation of fundamental capabilities are essential prerequisites.Institutional arrangements must provide for empowerment of those whose identities are otherwise ill-favored and the embeddedness of environmental decision-making in the communities of fate where people actually determine their shared life experiences.

More than just democracy in the form of aggregation of votes, deliberative democratic practice makes possible the learning, local knowledge, and engagement required by enlightened environmental governance under the conditions associated with the concept of the Anthropocene.