A Rhetoric of Human Nature: Exploring the Nexus of Rhetoric and Aquinas's Theory of Human Nature

A Rhetoric of Human Nature brings together rhetoric and the natural law theory of St. Thomas Aquinas in an innovative exploration of how it is that persuasion is intrinsic to human nature. Chapters on rhetorical theory and on Aquinas' conception of natural law establish a theoretical foundation in which to conceive rhetorical praxis as being connatural to the human person. The thesis is advanced that rhetoric is a natural kind, possessive of dispositional properties that are aligned with Aquinas' theory of human action. Subsequent chapters reveal that the essence of this "natural rhetoric" obtains in harmonizing the actions of the intellect and the will with the influence of the passions so as to instantiate virtue. Insofar as this employment of natural rhetoric brings order to one's mind, the book proposes that it brings order also to human communities who use the discursive practice to apprehend virtue communally. Given the manner in which it harmonizes the operations of the mind and the disparate selves that constitute communities, natural rhetoric reveals the manner in which persuasion is connatural to the human person.