A few posts back, I mentioned that I'm teaching philosophy in a new program that offers low income people in the community a free course in the humanities. Why a person who specializes in rhetoric is teaching philosophy is a good question, and the answer leads to a discussion about which department heads support this sort of outreach effort and which (cough) do not. Local politics aside, given the list of associations with philosophy the Odyssey students generated at the beginning of class last night, the better question--and the one that has vexed rhetoricians and philosophers alike for millennia--is this: in what ways doesn't a rhetoric specialist already traffic in philosophy? Here's the list:
beliefs
theories
convictions
experience
perception
abstract
argumentative
motives
dangerous
Why?
weird
the color brown
