2,309 words

Richard Weaver
The Ethics of Rhetoric
Muriwai Books, 2017 (1953).

The great task that lies ahead of us is to persuade our people of the rightness of our ideas. It behooves us, then, to study the art of rhetoric, or persuasion. Richard Weaver’s The Ethics of Rhetoric is a rigorous and intelligent introduction to this vanishing art. (more…)

Martin Heidegger

2,441 words

Part 2 of 2

3. The Hermeneutic Circle in Heidegger’s Being and Time

Heidegger’s purpose in Being and Time[1] is to explore the question of the sense (Sinn) of Being (Sein). By “Being” Heidegger means the meaningful presence of beings to a knower. By the “sense of Being,” Heidegger refers to the meaningful presence of meaning itself. (more…)

4,276 words

Socrates

Part 1 of 2

The concept of philosophical dialectic is quite mysterious and intimidating. Even among professional philosophers, dialectic often has connotations of mysticism, obscurantism, and slight of hand. I wish to dispel this aura. I will lay out the elements of philosophical dialectic by looking at specific arguments in Plato’s Republic[1] and Hegel’s Philosophy of Right[2] and then employ Heidegger’s account of the hermeneutic circle Being and Time and Husserl’s account of the logic of parts and wholes in his Logical Investigations to clarify the dialectical process.  (more…)