INSTRUCTORInvestigating Arguments treats rhetoric as a fundamentally dialogic art ofcritical thought and reasoned discourse--and rhetorical education as a processof gaining informed experience in rhetoric by engaging, in the context ofa community discussion, with significant and challenging issues and argu-ments, and by inventing argumentation of one's own. In addition to thepragmatic goal of cultivating skill in discourse, a rhetorical education aimsat the greater goal of helping students better exercise their freedom (andtheir responsibility) in the realm of ideas, a freedom (and responsibility)they all too frequently don't know they have. Rhetoric, after all, is therealm of thought in which things may always be otherwise. What we offer, then, is a set of occasions for rhetorical experience inwhich students can exercise and develop their powers as critical readers andas writers of argumentative prose. In selecting these forty-one readings, atvarious levels of challenge and ranging over a broad historical spectrumfrom pre-Socratics to contemporaries, we have sought to enable students toexamine issues and arguments in their intellectual-historical contexts; toin which we live. Though constrained by the number of readings we could realisticallyinclude, a part of our intent was to embody, or at least partially reflect, anintellectual history centered on the ancient and ongoing conflict betweenSophistic and Platonic approaches to knowledge and discourse. This historyincludes some of the major shifts in Western thought, such as the emergenceof scientific method, "natural reason," and the "rights of man"; Darwinismand the "death of God"; and the twentieth-century return to something likea Sophistic skepticism (but also an optimism) concerning the nature of"truth" and human belief. An important part of this history, moreover, isthe emergence of strong critiques--from women, from Marxists, fromAfrican-Americans, and others--of the dominant culture and its values,and the increasing (though still limited) presence in the literary forum ofvoices formerly excluded from it. Though constrained by numbers, again,we have sought to represent this aspect of the story in our book. To representthe whole story fully would require, of course, an enormous volume; andto study it fully takes years, not weeks. Here, it functions as the backgroundnarrative in the choice and chronological arrangement of our readings--and, as represented by the readings themselves, as an introductory overviewor sketch, and the beginnings of a full rhetorical education.