Since 2007, I have been writing about how it is that we seem to be wired to persuade: That we spend nearly all of our awake hours either persuading ourselves of one thing or another, or persuading each other.
My new book offers an explanation. Titled “Thomas Aquinas on Persuasion: Action, Ends, and Natural Rhetoric,” and published by Lexington Books, my book uses Aristotle’s theory of essence (that we know things based on what their “essence” is, or what their ultimate ends are) and Aquinas’s conception of human actions as starting points. Philosophically rigorous, the book argues that our propensity to persuade is in fact something that is natural to us, and that the essence of persuasion brings about different stages of human action. Howard Kainz, a former professor of mine from Marquette University, writes that “This book is truly groundbreaking, insofar as nothing on the interface of natural law and rhetoric has been published in recent decades.” If you know of anyone who might be interested, please recommend it to them! A free PDF is available for anyone who is economically challenged!
Media Ethics Report 