Tag Archives: argumentation

Blogging Schick and Vaughn’s “How to Think about Weird Things,” Chapter 3, page 37

Something that jumped out at me early on in chapter 3 of the college critical thinking text, Schick and Vaughn’s How to Think about Weird Things (5th edition, 2008), is the distinction that was made between argument and persuasion. To win support for … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Poison in the Ear: Shakespeare, Karl Rove, and Barack Obama

A theme in Shakespeare’s plays is poison poured into the ear—from Iago going around whispering his poisons into the ears of the characters in Othello, to Lady Macbeth and the Weird Sisters arousing the lusts of Macbeth for power. In Hamlet, Claudius … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Aristophanes, Atheism, Rhetoric, and Iconoclasm: A Review of “Clouds”

Aristophanes’ comedy, Clouds, is a humorous send-up of ancient Greek rationalism, science, atheism, and lawyerly sophistry, as supposedly represented by Socrates and the philosophical and sophistic schools of Athens. Aristophanes portrays Greek intellectuals as an arrogant class of effete and … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments