Author: Miller, Paul Allen
Title: Truth and Enjoyment in Cicero: Rhetoric and Philosophy Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Place edition: Oxford
Editor: Oxford University Press, Oxford Academic
Year edition: 2026
Pages: 380
Keywords: Philosophie - Filosofia - Philosophy, Rhétorique - Retorica - Rhetorics
Description: This book offers a fundamental re-examination of truth and enjoyment as understood in the conflict between rhetoric and philosophy in Cicero. His simultaneous advocacy of classical rationality and continued emphasis on the importance of performativity and enjoyment in language-on ratio as a desire (cupiditas) and force (vis) in the real-situate him at the crossroads of reason and the unconscious. Where the modern concept of truth abstracts truth from the subjective experience of speaker and hearer, for Cicero truth is inseparable from our experience of it, and it is precisely the possibility of their separation that he criticizes in works like De Oratore and De Re Publica where he seeks an ideal reconciliation between rhetoric and philosophy, truth and enjoyment. This book looks at the problem of enjoyment (jouissance) as central to understanding the confrontation between rhetoric and philosophy. “Pleasure” is distinguished from “enjoyment,” with pleasure always being balanced by the constraints of the reality and hence always open to substitution and deferral. Jouissance, however, is a drive that leads beyond any utilitarian calculus, seeking a form of radical experience that can be both sublime and destructive. [Editor]
Works:
Author initials: Miller 2026
Title: Truth and Enjoyment in Cicero: Rhetoric and Philosophy Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Place edition: Oxford
Editor: Oxford University Press, Oxford Academic
Year edition: 2026
Pages: 380
Keywords: Philosophie - Filosofia - Philosophy, Rhétorique - Retorica - Rhetorics
Description: This book offers a fundamental re-examination of truth and enjoyment as understood in the conflict between rhetoric and philosophy in Cicero. His simultaneous advocacy of classical rationality and continued emphasis on the importance of performativity and enjoyment in language-on ratio as a desire (cupiditas) and force (vis) in the real-situate him at the crossroads of reason and the unconscious. Where the modern concept of truth abstracts truth from the subjective experience of speaker and hearer, for Cicero truth is inseparable from our experience of it, and it is precisely the possibility of their separation that he criticizes in works like De Oratore and De Re Publica where he seeks an ideal reconciliation between rhetoric and philosophy, truth and enjoyment. This book looks at the problem of enjoyment (jouissance) as central to understanding the confrontation between rhetoric and philosophy. “Pleasure” is distinguished from “enjoyment,” with pleasure always being balanced by the constraints of the reality and hence always open to substitution and deferral. Jouissance, however, is a drive that leads beyond any utilitarian calculus, seeking a form of radical experience that can be both sublime and destructive. [Editor]
Works:
Author initials: Miller 2026
