Talking Democracy

Benedetto Fontana is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Baruch College of the City University of New York. Cary J. Nederman is Professor of Political Science and Director of Graduate Studies at Texas A&M University.Gary Remer is Associate Professor of Political Science at Tulane University.

• ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Deliberative Democracy and the Rhetorical TurnBenedetto Fontana, Cary J. Nederman, and Gary Remer1.Rhetoric and the Roots of Democratic PoliticsBenedetto Fontana2.Democratic Deliberation and the Historian’s Trade: The Case of ThucydidesArlene W. Saxonhouse3.Deliberation versus Decision: Platonism in Contemporary Democratic TheoryGary Shiffman4.Rhetorical DemocracyRussell Bentley5.Cicero and the Ethics of Deliberative RhetoricGary Remer6.Disarming, Simple, and Sweet: Augustine’s Republican RhetoricJohn von Heyking7.The Road to Heaven Is Paved with Pious Deceptions: Medieval Speech Ethics and Deliberative DemocracyCary J. Nederman and Tsae Lan Lee Dow8.Deliberative Democracy and the Public Sphere: Answer or Anachronism?Thomas Murphy9.Auditory Democracy: Separation of Powers and the Locations of ListeningJohn Uhr10.Reading J. S. Mill’s The Subjection of Women as a Text of Deliberative RhetoricNadia Urbinati11.Criteria of Rationality for Evaluating Democratic Public RhetoricDouglas WaltonContributorsIndex

“A fine scholarly volume, Talking Democracy is a salutary corrective to any conception of political theorizing as something of a straightforwardly progressive enterprise which has long ago surpassed the wisdom of the ancients, who remain only to be caricatured or pillaged. The editors accomplish this by assembling a diverse collection of essays which draw upon pre-modern political thought in order to assess the idea of deliberative democracy. The contributors illuminate the shortcomings of that present-day endeavor to design the best regime by retrieving an understanding of deliberative practices and democratic realities which deliberative democratic theory forgets or abstracts away from, whether neglectfully or willfully. Above all, the book demonstrates the wrong-headedness of imagining the possibility and supposing the desirability of liberating deliberation from rhetorical persuasion.”—Travis D. Smith Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR)