Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (review)

BOOK REVIEWS ll! The few stylistic liberties that are taken are all noted and explained. Among these is the substitution of first person for third person ("my mind" for "the author's mind," etc.), since Schelling refers to several other authors in many passages and a literal translation would be repetitious and confusing. There are also occasional insertions in brackets identifying the referent of pronouns when it might otherwise be ambiguous or, less often, completing a sentence fragment. Brackets are also used to indicate alternative translations of particular terms; for example, Inhalt is translated first as "content" and in brackets as "meaning" (p. 43). Detailed and instructive notes identify and comment upon explicit and implicit references to Kant, Spinoza, Fichte, and Leibniz; many other thought-provoking connections are made to philosophers from Parmenides to Tillich. Difficult and often misunderstood concepts, such as intellektuelle Anschauung, are illuminated not only by Marti's own careful commentary and etymological observations but by reference to other relevant passages of the text, as well as to Schelling's letters and later writings. Perhaps most useful for the person who does not read German are the biographical comments on such seldom translated figures of the time as F. H. Jacobi, G. E. Schulze, and Karl Leonhard Reinhold, who were influential on the thought of the young Schelling. This is especially important since Schelling rarely identifies by name those of whom he is critical in the essays, and the uninitiated reader is often at a loss to understand who or even what is being so strenuously objected to without some guidance. Finally, the notes that discuss the significance and translation of such important terms as Bedingung, Erkenntnis, and Vorstellung increase the reader's appreciation of the wealth of interpretations to which these essays have been subjected and still remain open to. Marti's book accomplishes more than its stated purpose of "furnish[ing]... the four basic essays as an introduction to further study of Schelling." It also stimulates an awareness of the importance of studying Schelling, whose writings mirror so clearly the challenges and conflicts with which philosophers found themselves confronted after Kant. DALE LOUBET Emory University George A. Kennedy. Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 198o. Pp. xii + 29 a. $18.oo, cloth; $9.oo, paper. In 1963 George Kennedy's Art of Persuasion in Greecewas published, and in 1972, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, the second volume in a projected history of rhetoric . That these works seem to be largely unknown to specialists in ancient philosophy is regrettable not merely because important philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, are also key figures in the history of rhetoric but, more important, because the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy "constituted a continual dialectical tension throughout classical culture .... this process of mutual assimilation and con- 112 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY fiict between rhetoric and philosophy is one that embraces the whole of ancient civilization/'~ The intellectual culture of the ancient world----of which philosophy was a part--was rhetorical. To be an educated person, throughout antiquity; meant first and foremost that one had studied with the grammaticus and then with the rhetor; it meant that one had the ability to express oneself well and effectively. Excellence in the use of language was an ideal of human development. Thus the context in which ancient philosophy came into being and lived was rhetorical. To ignore this, as many schola.rs do, is to impoverish our understanding of individual ancient philosophers. And it permits the continued retrojection into antiquity of a post-Renaissance conception of philosophy as part of a scientific culture, which is all too familiar in modern histories of philosophy. The Art of Persuasion in Greeceand The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World together trace the history of classical rhetoric from its origins to the third century A.D. Both volumes utilize a basic distinction, laid down in the first, between a practical and a philosophical tradition in rhetoric, and individuals and schools familiar from our histories of ancient philosophy figure in both volumes. Professor Kennedy had intended to proceed with the...