The Ethics of Rhetoric

The Ethics of Rhetoric lists the nature of rhetoric, rhetorical aspects of grammatical categories and the spaciousness of old rhetoric among its topics. The contents associate Edmund Burke with argument from circumstance and Abraham Lincoln with argument from definition, naming a different form of argument for each. The discussion says, comparatively, that an oration under conditions a hundred years earlier aimed less to make people think than to remind them of existing beliefs.

The discussion compares the oratorical rostrum with the church as a place less for fresh instruction than for steady inculcation, and describes the orator's conviction. The argument links freedom with surroundings of a determinate nature, on whose determinateness a person can rely when planning a course of action. The account presents rules and habits as means of securing liberty in other areas, where freedom is especially prized rather than continually fought for.