The Weimar origins of rhetorical inquiry
By: David L. Marshall
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2020
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 372
ISBN-13: 9780226722351
Subjects: Rhetoric; History; German Philosophy; Political science; Philosophy; Philosophers; Intellectual life; HISTORY; General
Description: The Weimar origins of political theory is a widespread and powerful narrative, but this singular focus leaves out another intellectual history that historian David L. Marshall works to reveal: the Weimar origins of rhetorical inquiry. Marshall focuses his attention on Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Aby Warburg, revealing how these influential thinkers inflected and transformed problems originally set out by Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, Theodor Adorno, Hans Baron, and Leo Strauss. He contends that we miss major opportunities if we do not attend to the rhetorical aspects of their thought, and his aim, in the end, is to lay out an intellectual history that can become a zone of theoretical experimentation in para-democratic times. Redescribing the Weimar origins of political theory in terms of rhetorical inquiry, Marshall provides fresh readings of pivotal thinkers and argues that the vision of rhetorical inquiry that they open up allows for new ways of imagining political communities today.
Table of contents: title: Frontmatter --; title: CONTENTS --; title: 1: The Weimar We Know and the Weimar We Do Not Know --; title: 2: Idioms of Rhetorical Inquiry --; title: 3: Heideggerian Foundations --; title: 4: Hannah Arendt and the Rhetorical Constitution of Space --; title: 5: Walter Benjamin and the Rhetorical Construal of Indecision --; title: 6: Warburgian Image Practices --; title: 7: New Points of Departure in the Weimar Afterlife --; title: 8: The Possibilities Now --; title: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS --; title: BIBLIOGRAPHY --; title: INDEX