The Rhetorics of Thomas Hobbes and Bernard Lamy

Makes accessible to modern readers the 17th-century rhetorics of Thomas Hob­bes (1588–1677) and Bernard Lamy (1640–1715) Hobbes’ A Briefe of the Art of Rhet­orique, the first English translation of Aristotle’s rhetoric, reflects Hobbes’ sense of rhetoric as a central instrument of self-defense in an increasingly frac­tious Commonwealth. In its approach to rhetoric, which Hobbes defines as “that Faculty by which wee understand what will serve our turne, concerning any subject, to winne beliefe in