Michael Weinman on Aristotle, Rhetoric, & Pedagogy

The Hannah Arendt Center Presents

Michael Weinman

"Pedagogy or demagogy: The dangerous dunamis of the rhetor's art."

March 27th, 2012 at 7:00 PM  Olin 102, Bard College

Weinman notes: "My subject is the power of composed speech. While it is by no means unusual to note that rhetoric is terribly powerful, I believe you might hear something uncommon. For, while most discussions of the influence of rhetoric focus on the ways in which it distracts, distorts and dissembles—in short, on the ways that rhetoric minimizes or even abolishes the power of truth in political discourse—I aim tonight, drawing upon the classical analysis of the speaker’s art offered by Aristotle, to sing its song of praise. I shall not pretend that the common attacks on rhetoric are false. Rather, I will show that it is precisely because they are true that we need to cherish and cultivate this art, albeit in a fashion diametrically opposed—in the manner of an antistrophe—to way it is generally practiced. If rhetoric is generally practiced as the tool of the demagogue, mine is the praise of the antistrophic rhetoric of the pedagogue. Decrying the tool itself because of it demagogic use, I shall try to persuade you, undermines our own capacity to deploy the tool pedagogically, at our peril. "

Michael Weinman is presently a visiting academic at ECLA Bard. He has previously taught at St. John's College in Annapolis, MD, and in the Department of Philosophy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva, Israel.

Weiman has published several books including the recently published,  Language, Time and Identity in Woolf’s The Waves: The Subject in Empire’s Shadow and  Pleasure in Aristotle’s Ethics.

You an learn more about Weinman's work here.