Truth and enjoyment in Cicero rhetoric and philosophy beyond the pleasure principle Paul Allen Miller

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miller, Paul Allen, 1959- author.

Series:

Classics in theory series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cicero, Marcus Tullius.

Happiness.

Truth.

truth.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Oxford University Press, 2026.

Oxford Oxford University Press [2026]

Summary:

'Truth and Enjoyment' in Cicero offers a fundamental re-examination of the relation between truth and enjoyment as understood in the traditional confrontation between rhetoric and philosophy in Cicero. His simultaneous advocacy of classical rationality and continued emphasis on the importance of performativity and enjoyment in language-on ratio as a desire (cupiditas) and force (vis) in the real, situates him at the crossroads of reason and the unconscious. Where the modern concept of truth abstracts truth from the subjective experience of speaker and hearer, for Cicero truth is inseparable from our experience of it, and it is precisely the possibility of their separation that he criticizes in works like De Oratore and De Re Publica where he seeks an ideal reconciliation between rhetoric and philosophy, truth and enjoyment. This book looks at the problem of enjoyment as central to understanding the difference between rhetoric and philosophy

Contents:

Cover

Truth and Enjoyment in Cicero : Rhetoric and Philosophy Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Copyright

Dedication

Classics In Theory

Acknowledgments

Contents

Preface: How I Came to Write This Book

Introduction: Why Cicero and Why Now Truth and Enjoyment

I. Enjoyment beyond the Pleasure Principle

II. Catiline: A Monster of Enjoyment

III. Truth and Persuasion in the Roman Republic

IV. Cicero: Our Desire

1: Rhetoric and Philosophy in De Oratore Healing the World

I. Book 1: Performing Freedom and Domination

II. Book 2: Gladiators of Truth

III. Book 3: Coincidentia Oppositorum

IV. Truth and Enjoyment: Cicero beyond the Pleasure Principle

2: "Set Your Controls for the Heart of the Sun": De Re Publica and the Governmental Sublime

I. Here Comes the Sun: Government and Speech

II. Dissonance and Resolution: The Dialectic of the Mixed Constitution

III. "And you may ask yourself, 'Well, how did I get here?' "

IV. Harmony: The Problem of the One and Many

V. Return to Forever

3: De Amicitia Love, Death, and a Friendship to Come

I. The Unfriended Life Is Not Worth Living

II. Friends and Other Lovers

III. The Politics of Friendship

IV. A Friendship and a Politics to Come

4: The Heart of Darkness Truth and Enjoyment in the Philippics

I. Parrhēsia, Rhetoric, and Republican Politics

II. Enjoying Antony: The Second Philippic

III. Antony, Antigone, and Enargeia

IV. "Life consists not in breathing

there is no life at all to the slave"

5: Wish-Fulfillment in De Officiis Cicero's Aesthetics of Existence

I. De Officiis in Context

II. The Aesthetics of Existence

III. Class Conflict and the Emergence of the Real

IV. Utopian Thinking and the Possibility of Thought from the Outside

V. Natural Law and the Return to Oneness

VI. Cicero's Dream, Our Own

References

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on March 2, 2026)

Other Format:

Print version :

ISBN:

9780198931355

0198931352

OCLC:

1574925669

Publisher Number:

CIPO000359211

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license