History, rhetoric, poetic, proof: Carlo Ginzburg\'s reading of Aristotle\'s Rhetoric

Author(s)

Carlos Eduardo de Almeida Ogawa

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2010-03-17

Examining board members

Francisco Murari Pires; Temistocles Americo Correa Cezar; Marcelo Aparecido Rede

• Advisor: Francisco Murari Pires

Abstract

The historian Carlo Ginzburg was involved throughout the 1980s and 90 in the american discussion on postmodernism, arguing against the postmodern tendencies pointing to their skeptical relativism. Ginzburg associates the postmodern emphasis in linguistics to the use of the word rhetoric. His proposal intends to refute those skeptical tendencies by recovering the first book of Aristotles Rhetoric, where the greek philosopher defends a rhetorical proof based on argumentation and evidence instead of passion rousing. The present work tries to analyze the book where Ginzburgs reading of Aristotle appears, History, rhetoric, proof, and his attempt to create an evidentiary rhetoric. Our work takes account not only of the reading itself of the ancient text but also to the possibles contexts in which the reading can be placed. (AU)