Drawing connections between rhetoric, poetry, and modern public discourse, Devin, Heather, and Kajsa are joined by Joe Carlson to discuss how words are not simply containers for ideas — they help to form the ideas themselves. If this is true, what happens when a culture loses its sensitivity to language?
Four questions covered in this episode:
Is it more important to teach students philosophy or poetry?
How important is the invention step of rhetoric to be free from the tools of AI?
Was Hitler a good rhetorician?
Did Christianity adopt and modify classical rhetoric or did classical rhetoric distort “Christian rhetoric” (as Cassiodorus claims)?
Let us know your thoughts!