Search results for " rhetoric."

Building Consensus. An introduction to a rhetorical approach

2016

The contemporary debate on democracy shows two points of view: the “deliberative” one and the “agonistic” one. The first one is related to the classical tradition that considers Habermas as its reference point. It emphasizes the role of rational deliberation as a means to produce a legitimate and binding consensus. In contrast, the second one draws its inspiration from C. Schmitt, and considers conflict and disagreement as unavoidable conditions of democratic life. Despite their obvious differences, these two theoretical models have a conception of rhetoric in common that is subjected to, or at least excluded from, the full exercise of argumentative rationality. We propose an interpretation…

Il sapere congetturale tra medicina e retorica. Un’indagine su semeion e tekmerion

2019

In this essay we focus on the epistemology of Hippocratic medicine starting from the analysis of two terms on which scholars have paid attention, semeion and tekmerion (and related verbs semainein and tekmairesthai ), connecting them to the notion of eikos. Our goal is to examine the conjectural and fallible nature of human knowledge starting from the peculiar case of ancient Greek medicine. In order to do this, we will make a comparison with another techne that played a crucial role in Greek culture: rhetoric. After all, if this comparison medicine-rhetoric may sound surprising for modern scholars, in the Greek world it was instead widespread and it is not by chance that the terms of our i…

Giovanni Meli medico a Palermo tra '700 e '800: il primo dei tre Ricettari

2023

Si discute del primo Ricettario di Giovanni Meli come documento della cultura scientifica sette / ottocentesca a Palermo, esaminando anche questioni filologiche sul latino scientifico del tempo, che avranno importanza per i fini ecdotici.

The Reform and Innovation as Rhetoric and Method

2018

We start from an observation from a well-known Swedish organisational analyst, Nils Brunsson, which reads like irony but feels like reality: the only guaranteed outcome of (organisational) reform is the next reform. What Brunsson calls ‘the reform of reform’ will be – all too – familiar to many readers, particularly those working in the public sector. Given repeated exposure to permanent reorganization – brought in under the mantel of reform and innovation – it is tempting to ascribe this permanent revolution to one or both of two causes: the failure of previous reform attempts and/or the need of senior managers to demonstrate their ‘transformative’ effects upon their organization in order …

The Ambivalence of Revenge and of the Avenger's Role in HAMLET: The Function of Letters and Emblematic Allusions

2011

"'Mens sana in corpore sano': the Rhetoric of the Body in Shakespeare's Roman and Late Plays"

2010

In many of his stage settings Shakespeare appears to be obsessed by the idea, image, or concept of the body in its multiple literal and figurative aspects and by the dramaturgical potentiality of the language of corporeality. The rhetoric of the body does in fact lend itself to an impressive series of striking theatrical forms since it is innate to the physicality of performance and to the natural ‘spectacle’ of the dramatic actio. What indubitably makes the corporeal semantics of Shakespeare’s language even more fertile is the social, political, and ideological value acquired by this kind of rhetoric in the culture of the early Renaissance. In the history plays in particular the political …

Emotions and political rhetoric: Perception of danger, group conflict and the biopolitics of fear

2016

Abstract In the present article I shall argue that human emotion is multifaceted and has a cognitive dimension in virtue of its intricate connections with beliefs, memories, imagination, and other products of human rationality. Human emotion also has a social and political dimension. When we think about fear we cannot characterize it as a mere stimulus-response phenomenon: it is, due to its cognitive facet, more complex and related to our ideas about survival and well-being. This leaves fear exposed to political rhetoric, and thus to political manipulation. Fear can be aroused, guided and nourished amongst the population, giving rise to a biopolitics of fear. In this article, I will conside…

Representation, nation and time : the political rhetoric of the 1866 parliamentary reform in Sweden

2000

Syntaxe adjectivale et syntaxe verbale. Un cas d'étude en grec ancien

2013

Ad Dionem Chrysostomum

2018

Loci aliquot Dionis Chrysostomi ad genuinam lectionem restituuntur