ABSTRACT
This chapter assumes that rhetoric can function as a strong frame for serious inquiry, and, in particular, inquiry with a pragmatic interest such as politics and ethics. Thus, the rhetorical engagement is not simply a matter of the historian’s capacity for rhetorical analysis of the author’s presentation of ideas in the texts he reads; rather, what is at stake is the recognition of the function of rhetorical habits of inquiry at specific junctures in the history of thought. The Roman political anthropology of his brief narrative could nourish a Humanist expansive psychology; in turn, the Classical revival strategies of the Humanists as psychologists which he describes at great length constitute a pragmatic interest, carrying with it a curiosity about achieving effect, stimulating action. What is of interest to the historian of Renaissance rhetoric is the extent to which the Humanists appropriated, as psychologues and anthropologues, this un-philosophical Romanitas.
