Persuasion, Reflection, Judgment

Book excerpt: Gasché expounds on Aristotle, Heidegger, and Arendt in “a major interpretative achievement that underscores what is at stake in political thought” (Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews). As one of the most respected voices of Continental philosophy today, Rodolphe Gasché pulls together Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric, Martin Heidegger’s debate with theory, and Hannah Arendt’s conception of judgment in a single work on the centrality of these themes as fundamental to human flourishing in public and political life. Gasché’s readings address the distinctively human space of the public square and the actions that occur there, and his valorization of persuasion, reflection, and judgment reveals new insight into how the philosophical tradition distinguishes thinking from other faculties of the human mind. “Here Rodolphe Gasche is at his best: rigorous, scholarly, creative, forceful, laser focused on the issues at stake, learned, thoughtful, and original. He demands much of his readers, but reading his work is rewarding in ways that can be profoundly affecting.” —Dennis J. Schmidt, author of Between Word and Image “Rodolphe Gasche has long been one of the most meticulous readers of texts on the philosophical scene and here he once again offers a master class in how to do philosophy through interpretation.” —Robert Bernasconi, author of How to Read Sartre