George Campbell: Rhetoric in the Age of Enlightenment.

• Author: Hansen, Andrew C.
• Position: Book Review

By Arthur E. Walzer. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003; pp. vii-175. $54.50; paper $17.95.

Arthur Walzer begins the first book-length study of George Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric with the observation that his work "is a good fit in this series [SUNY series, Rhetoric in the Modern Era], a series of introductory books on historic figures of modern rhetoric" (1). But do not let the modesty of the opening line--or the humility that Walzer sustains throughout his efforts--mislead you. Walzer's George Campbell: Rhetoric in the Age of Enlightenment is a conscientiously considered and economically written study of some of the most important issues in George Campell's Philosophy of Rhetoric and in the modern scholarship that has accumulated since the 1950s.

Although Walzer notes that POR generates as little interest now as the monograph seems to have at Campbell's death, the book is not written to entice new Campbell scholars; rather, it is to "be helpful to students working their way through the Philosophy of Rhetoric" (2). With that goal in mind, Walzer's expressed purpose is to "make Campbell clearer" by demonstrating the "unity and originality of Cambell's theory" in light of his intentions: to exploit the developments of modern empiricist philosophy to expand and refine key topoi in the rhetorical tradition "from the perspective of reception" (4). Closely attentive to Campbell scholarship in rhetorical and composition studies, Walzer's book goes beyond merely being an introduction of past discoveries and succeeds in providing "a sustained close reading of Campbell's text" that is sensitive to the intellectual and rhetorical traditions upon which Campbell drew as he attempted to deepen the rhetorical tradition and empiricist philosophy.

Perhaps because Walzer crafted the work as a sort of graduate student guidebook as much as an original argument and contribution to Campbell studies, George Campbell reads like a series of eleven essays, loosely tied together by general themes and the hypothetical reader's marching through Philosophy of Rhetoric. The chapters focus upon enduring issues in Campbell scholarship or intellectual curiosities of the day upon which Campbell consciously reflected. Each is thorough and can largely be taken separately from the other chapters, a fact most evident in Walzer's decision to add a chapter on Campbell's "Other 'work'" and a conclusion that surveys the previous Campbell studies.

After an introduction in which he...