The ethics of
Rhetoric
The ethics of
Rhetoric
By RICHARD M. WEAVER
Thus it happens that rhetoric is an offshoot
of dialectic and also of ethical studies.
—Aristotle, Rhetoric
Chicago · HENRY REGNERY COMPANY · 1953
Copyright 1953 by Henry Regnery Company. Copyright under International
Copyright Union. Manufactured in the United States
of America. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 53-8796.
Second Printing, December, 1963
Table of Contents
| PAGE | ||
| I. | The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric | 3 |
| II. | Dialectic and Rhetoric at Dayton, Tennessee | 27 |
| III. | Edmund Burke and the Argument from Circumstance | 55 |
| IV. | Abraham Lincoln and the Argument from Definition | 85 |
| V. | Some Rhetorical Aspects of Grammatical Categories | 115 |
| VI. | Milton’s Heroic Prose | 143 |
| VII. | The Spaciousness of Old Rhetoric | 164 |
| VIII. | The Rhetoric of Social Science | 186 |
| IX. | Ultimate Terms in Contemporary Rhetoric | 211 |
| Index | 233 |
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments with thanks are due the following:Charles Scribner’s Sons for the passage from Allen Tate’s“The Subway,” from Poems 1922-1947; Karl Shapiro andRandom House, Inc., for the passage from Essay on Rime;and the Viking Press, Inc., for the passage from SherwoodAnderson’s A Story Teller’s Story.