Handbuch Rhetorik und Philosophie

Andreas Hetzel

23Rhetorik, Politik und radikale Demokratie

Abstract: Focussing on the work of the Argentine philosopher Ernesto Laclau I will illustrate how important rhetorical forms of reflection can become for political philosophy. The article starts with a discussion of the relationship between classical rhetoric and democracy in general. It shows how the development of a culture of speech and democratic forms of life mutually depend on each other. The discovery of speech as the first and foremost medium of society’s self-constitution implies a break with philosophical attempts to anchor a hierarchical social order in an underlying cosmic order. Laclau takes the anti-foundationalism of classical rhetoric into account by replacing the notion ...