Heuristic Strategies in the Speeches of Cicero

ebook Argumentation Library

By Gábor Tahin

cover image of Heuristic Strategies in the Speeches of Cicero

Sign up to save your library

With an OverDrive account, you can save your favorite libraries for at-a-glance information about availability. Find out more about OverDrive accounts.

   Not today

Find this title in Libby, the library reading app by OverDrive.

Download Libby on the App Store Download Libby on Google Play

Search for a digital library with this title

Title found at these libraries:

Library Name Distance
Loading...

This book introduces a new form of argumentative analysis: rhetorical heuremes. The method applies the concepts of heuristic thinking, probability, and contingency in order to develop a better understanding of complex arguments in classical oratory. A new theory is required because Greek and Roman rhetoric cannot provide detailed answers to problems of strategic argumentation in the analysis of speeches. Building on scholarship in Ciceronian oratory, this book moves beyond the extant terminology and employs a concept of heuristic reasoning derived from the psychology of decision making and mathematical problem solving. The author analyses selected passages from Cicero's forensic speeches where arguments of probability are deployed, and shows that the Sophistic concept of probability can link ancient rhetoric and modern theories of argumentation. Six groups of heuremes are identified, each of which represents a form of probabilistic reasoning by which the orator plays upon the perception of the jurors.

Heuristic Strategies in the Speeches of Cicero