This dissertation explores Aristotle’s use of teleology as a principle of explanation, especially as it is used in the natural treatises.

This subproject of 'From Homo Economicus to Political Animal' analyzes Greek economic thinking in late 5th- and 4th-century philosophical circles.

The relevance of intentionality to the interpretation of Aristotle was first suggested by Brentano in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. Here we take our starting point from Brentano and investigate how Brentano’s concept of intentionality is rooted in Aristotle.

Argumentation and rhetorics is the study of how we convince people verbally. In other words, what do people say and how do they say it?

Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Augustan Rome: Greek culture in the Roman world.

This project traces how, why, and under what circumstances scholars invoked the trope of “dogmatism,” especially in controversies. Relevant controversies from various fields, periods, and countries will be subjected to in-depth rhetorical analysis.

This timely and engaging book examines the rise of populism across the globe. Combining insights from linguistics, argumentation theory, rhetoric, legal theory and political theory it offers a fully integrated characterization of the form and content of populist discourse.

Aristotle's Poetics: the oldest and most influential work of western literary theory.

On the 24th of June, Martijn Wackers successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Martijn on this achievement!

Subproject of

This anthology contributes to a historically grounded understanding of the complex relationship between Christian missions and the roots of humanitarianism and its contemporary uses in a Middle Eastern context.

This article assesses Russian rhetoric toward Ukraine from 2004 to 2019 by analyzing statements by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In this dissertation the notions of category and type are studied through the lens of logical syntax.

On February 20th, Gulnaz Sibgatullina succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Gulnaz on this great result.

On March 12th, Jonathan Brown succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Jonathan on this great result.

In February 2020 Jed Wentz will start the new course 'Practical Rhetoric: public speaking according to historical sources'. Registration is now open!

Louis Verreth and Jeroen De Keyser recently published a critical edition of Francesco Filelfo’s Latin translation of the Rhetorica ad Alexandrum (Edizioni dell'Orso).

Just one year ago, nobody would have given Trump a cat's chance in the US presidential elections. Now he will be the next President of the United States. Professor of Journalism and New Media Jaap de Jong explains the rhetoric that has got Trump so far.

This project studies the theory and practice of moral education in the (Neo)Platonic tradition.

Saeedeh Shahnahpur defended her thesis on 13 September 2016.

The leading argument of this doctoral thesis is that Aristotle’s text De Interpretatione is of methodical relevance for present-day philosophical thinking. In the era of science and technology, the status of philosophy has become problematic.

De semantiek van Aristoteles: waarheid en betekenis in het tijdperk van het darwinisme

This dissertation addresses the different use of the same philosophical model: immanent teleology. In this work Aristotle, the founder of the study of final causes, is put in relation with the modern French evolutionary thinker Henri Bergson, the philosopher of time. The dissertation tackles the two…

Lecture

This research cluster aims to analyse and interpret the formation and transmission of Graeco-Roman culture by exploring the relationships between cultural products (texts, objects, practices) and their societal and historical contexts.

How do you make lobbying and rhetoric both challenging and understandable for high school students? Professor Jaap de Jong found the answer in climate activist Greta Thunberg. Together with his colleague Arco Timmermans, he developed a digital guest lecture on how to present a convincing story.

Lecture, PCNI Research Group State of the Art Meeting

Drawing on a broad array of sources, this project examines modern retrievals of Bacon’s idols, thereby testing Justus von Liebig’s intriguing observation, back in 1863, that Bacon’s name lived on mainly in mottos or stereotypical phrases. More importantly, it examines the rhetorical purposes served…

What is the difference between a minister saying that something is possible or that it is not impossible ?

This project is a close and sensitive contextual study of Jacob of Sarug's (ca. 451-521 AD) metrical homily

This project examines the intriguing relationship between Greek literary criticism and Latin literature in Rome (first centuries BC and AD).

Presentations related to this chair.

The purpose of this programme is to join knowledge and insights from linguistics, literary analysis, and rhetoric, for the purpose of developing a set of methods for the stylistic investigation of any type of text in Dutch.

A source of inspiration for readers who are curious to understand how people move and convince each other

Representations of violence are often said to generate cathartic effects, but what does “catharsis” mean? And what theory of the unconscious made this concept so popular that it reaches from classical antiquity to the digital age?

The multiple connections between emblematics and Natural History in the broader perspective of their underlying artistic, literary, political and religious ideologies.

This collaborative project aims to explore the history of the concept “barbarism” in Europe from the 18th century to the present, with a particular emphasis on the role of literature and art in the concept’s shifting functions.

This study interrogates contemporary and historical uses of barbarism, arguing that barbarism also has a disruptive, insurgent potential.

This publication aims at the analysis of the performance of a corpus of Fongbe stories that I collected in three villages in the south of Benin in 1976 and 1977. The corpus consists of 37 stories (57.000 words). The stories aim at children’s education.