The Passions of Rhetoric: Lessing’s Theory of Argument and the German Enlightenment

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This work reveals Lessing’s contribution to the history of rhetoric and his participation in the long-standing debate between philosophy and rhetoric. It also reassesses the importance of rhetoric to argumentation in the 18th-century and establishes that Lessing developed his own views on rhetoric and argumentation, and that these views were opposed to the anti-rhetorical position of other 18th-century intellectuals, including Kant. The few treatments of Lessing’s polemical writings that have appeared in the last few years concentrate on the practice of rhetoric and not on Lessing’s own views on language and argument. Moore’s work, on the other hand, combines both an interest in style of argument and the philosophy which informs it. The book should interest students of European rhetoric, 18th-century German critical writing and 18th-century polemics on theatre and theology. All quotations in German have been translated into English to inform a wider audience.