Here's Gordon Mitchell's shout out to Jon Favreau through an Isocratean lens:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-mippq7hms

Got it downloaded. Just curious - what were Bloom's biggest contributions to rhetoric? Anything particularly noteworthy in the thesis? The Closing was really praised to the skies by several of the figures of my study - though I imagine "traditionalists" like Kirk and Gottfried would find more than a few things to be annoyed by - and I want to delve into it at some point.

So good, so far . . .

"So we find Isocrates in a no-man's land between rhetoric and philosophy - too philosophic for the politician, and too aware of the immediate and the changing for the philosopher. . . . Plato and Demosthenes are secure in their positions because they are too obviously what they are to be completely misapprehended. It is possible, however, that his assignment to limbo is not entirely the fault of Isocrates but that it is our categories which are not quite appropriate." p. 3-4

"Politics is not merely a protective adjunct of humanity, but coexstensive with it. The other terms, like economics [we're sadly and slowly remembering], are comprehended by politics, inasmuch as they represent a fragmented part of the need that establishes civil society. To analyze this aspect separately would be to misunderstand it." p.9

We should study _politeia_ . . .

Much love and gratitude for sharing the diss . . .

DG