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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Edmund Burke And The Art Of Rhetoric by Paddy Bullard
Edmund Burke ranks among the most accomplished orators ever to debate in the British Parliament. But often his eloquence has been seen to compromise his achievements as a political thinker. In the first full-length account of Burkes rhetoric, Bullard argues that Burkes ideas about civil society, and particularly about the process of political deliberation, are, for better or worse, shaped by the expressiveness of his language. Above all, Burkes eloquence is designed to express ethos or character. This rhetorical imperative is itself informed by Burkes argument that the competency of every political system can be judged by the ethical knowledge that the governors have of both the people that they govern and of themselves. Bullard finds the intellectual roots of Burkes rhetoric of character in early modern moral and aesthetic philosophy, and traces its development through Burkes parliamentary career to its culmination in his masterpiece, Reflections on the Revolution in France.show more