Rhetorical Style and Bourgeois Virtue
eBook - PDF

Rhetorical Style and Bourgeois Virtue

Capitalism and Civil Society in the British Enlightenment

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Rhetorical Style and Bourgeois Virtue

Capitalism and Civil Society in the British Enlightenment

About this book

During the British Enlightenment, the correlation between effective communication and moral excellence was undisputed—so much so that rhetoric was taught as a means of instilling desirable values in students. In Rhetorical Style and Bourgeois Virtue, Mark Garrett Longaker explores the connections between rhetoric and ethics in the context of the history of capitalism.

Longaker's study lingers on four British intellectuals from the late seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century: philosopher John Locke, political economist Adam Smith, rhetorical theorist Hugh Blair, and sociologist Herbert Spencer. Across one hundred and fifty years, these influential men sought to mold British students into good bourgeois citizens by teaching them the discursive habits of clarity, sincerity, moderation, and economy, all with one incontrovertible truth in mind: the free market requires virtuous participants in order to thrive.

Through these four case studies—written as biographically focused yet socially attentive intellectual histories—Longaker portrays the British rhetorical tradition as beholden to the dual masters of ethics and economics, and he sheds new light on the deliberate intellectual engineering implicit in Enlightenment pedagogy.

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Yes, you can access Rhetorical Style and Bourgeois Virtue by Mark Garrett Longaker in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Languages & Linguistics & Economic History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. COVER Front
  2. Series Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Table of Contents
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Abbreviations for Frequently Cited Works
  7. Definitions and Introductions
  8. Notes to Definitions and Introductions
  9. Chapter 1: John Locke on Clarity
  10. Notes to Chapter 1
  11. Chapter 2: Adam Smith on Probity
  12. Notes to Chapter 2
  13. Chapter 3: Hugh Blair on Moderation
  14. Notes to Chapter 3
  15. Chapter 4: Herbert Spencer on Economy
  16. Notes to Chapter 4
  17. Conclusions and Provocations
  18. Notes to Conclusions and Provocations
  19. Bibliography
  20. Index
  21. COVER Back
  22. Notes