Virtues and Vices of Speech
WW Norton · Print & ebook · September 17, 2019
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- Who it’s for
- Pontano examines speech through Aristotelian ethics, asking where virtue lies in its many forms.
- Themes
- Ethics of speech, Truth and deception, Virtue and moral character
- Genres
- Rhetoric, Ethics, Renaissance Philosophy
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Start with this bookAbout this book
Giovanni Pontano, who adopted the academic sobriquet “Gioviano,” was prime minister to several kings of Naples and the most important Neapolitan humanist of the quattrocento. Best known today as a Latin poet, he also composed dialogues depicting the intellectual life of the humanist academy of which he was the head, and, late in life, a number of moral essays that became his most popular prose works.
Continue reading
The De sermone (On Speech), translated into English here for the first time, aims to provide a moral anatomy, following Aristotelian principles, of various aspects of speech such as truthfulness and deception, flattery, gossip, loquacity, calumny, mercantile bargaining, irony, wit, and ridicule. In each type of speech, Pontano tries to identify what should count as the virtuous mean, that which identifies the speaker as a person of education, taste, and moral probity.
The Ethics of Speech
Pontano examines speech through Aristotelian ethics, asking where virtue lies in its many forms.
Come here for
- Aristotelian accounts of truthfulness, flattery, gossip, and wit
- Moral questions around bargaining, irony, and ridicule
Expect
- A moral anatomy of speech, from deception and calumny to loquacity
- An English translation of De sermone
Where it sits
| Ethics | 65% |
|---|---|
| Rhetoric | 63% |
| Renaissance Philosophy | 51% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Renaissance History
- Renaissance Philosophy
- Philosophy of Language
- Authors
- Giovanni Gioviano Pontano, G. W. Pigman Iii
- Publisher
- WW Norton
- Published
- September 17, 2019
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Ethics of speech · Truth and deception · Virtue and moral character
- Reading lane
- Renaissance History