Pairs passages from works of classical rhetoric with contemporary legal rulings to highlight and analyze their deep and abiding connections in matters of persuasion
Classical Rhetoric and Contemporary Law: A Critical Reader is a rich work that analyzes the interplay between ancient rhetorical traditions and modern legal practice, reestablishing the lost connections between law and classical rhetoric. From Isocrates’s Panegyricus in 380 BCE to the landmark US Supreme Court case Trump v. Hawaii in 2018, and from Antiphon’s fifth century BCE First Tetralogy to 1995’s O. J. Simpson trial, the volume draws on an array of sources to illuminate how ancient rhetorical insights may even today challenge and enrich our grasp of contemporary legal principles.
What is the good life? Posing this question today would likely elicit very different answers. Some might say that the good life means doing good—improving one’s community and the lives of others. Others might respond that it means doing well—cultivating one’s own abilities in a meaningful way. But for Aristotle these two distinct ideas—doing good and doing well—were one and the same and could be realized in a single life. In Confronting Aristotle’s Ethics, Eugene Garver examines how we can draw this conclusion from Aristotle's works, while also studying how this conception of the good life relates to contemporary ideas of morality.
The key to Aristotle’s views on ethics, argues Garver, lies in the Metaphysics or, more specifically, in his thoughts on activities, actions, and capacities. For Aristotle, Garver shows, it is only possible to be truly active when acting for the common good, and it is only possible to be truly happy when active to the extent of one’s own powers. But does this mean we should aspire to Aristotle’s impossibly demanding vision of the good life? In a word, no. Garver stresses the enormous gap between life in Aristotle’s time and ours. As a result, this bookwill be a welcome rumination on not only Aristotle, but the relationship between the individual and society in everyday life.
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