James Kastely

Department Chair and Professor of English, University of Houston, Texas

James Kastely is department chair and professor of English at the University of Houston in Texas. He is the author of Rethinking the Rhetorical Tradition: From Plato to Postmodernism (Yale, 1997), The Rhetoric of Plato’s Republic: Democracy and the Philosophical Problem of Persuasion (Chicago, 2015) and Loving the World Appropriately: Persuasion and the Transformation of Subjectivity (Chicago, 2022).

Written by James Kastely

Ancient fresco depicts a seated figure holding a child, while another figure approaches, accompanied by a young child with wings, on a weathered background.

CIVIC LIFE

Can political persuasion be something more than manipulation?

Kant argued that persuasion was a product of manipulation and deception. But it can also be a force for good in civic life

by James Kastely