The Habermas-Gadamer Debate in Hegelian Perspective

In this paper I will comment on the now concluded debate between Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jürgen Habermas. In that debate, conducted in various forums over the better part of a decade, Habermas accused Gadamer of universalizing a hermeneutic theory which tends to uncritically sustain existing cultural norms. Gadamer, for his part, thought that Habermas\u27 project of critical theory yields only an abstract and illusory liberation from untranscendable conditions of cultural understanding. I shall not review point and counterpoint in this exchange. but will, for the most part, take much higher ground. Both Gadamer and Habermas are conscious of formulating their general views in the long shadow of Hegel. By reconstructing each of their positions as opposed responses to the Hegelian legacy, I hope to point to how their disagreement might be adjudicated

Back to Class Warfare: The Rhetoric of Mitt Romney

The essay suggests that Mitt Romney sees America from a 19th century perspective

Introduction to Poroi 13.2

Volume 13, Issue 2 of POROI: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Rhetorical Analysis and Invention makes available three articles on topics in the rhetoric of science

Richard Lewontin and the Argument from Ethos

This essay uses rhetorical analysis to defend the population geneticist Richard Lewontin from accusations made by E. O. Wilson and others that his Marxist social philosophy distorts his empirical science. I suggest that Lewontin’s appeal to his own authority as an experimental evolutionary biologist supports his claim that racism has no biological justification and that it is his opponents whose assumptions about society distort their scientific arguments

Does Aristotle\u27s Political Philosophy Rest on a Contradiction?

Critique of David Keyt. 1987. Three Fundamental Theorems in Aristotle\u27s Politics. Phronesis, 32.1:54-79. Keyt claims that Aristotle is committed to these three propositions: 1. The polis is a natural entity, coming to be and existing by nature. 2. A polis comes to be when a legislator imposes constitutional form on social matter by political art. 3. Nothin can come to be both as a natural entity and as a product of rational art. This paper surveys previous attempts to resolve the dilemma, then argues that Keyt relies too much on the idea that the polis is the consequence of an individual constitutive act; rather, intentional actions are woven into the process throughout its existence. The natural end of the polis is the good life, and bringing this about is a natural process