Just Words: Lessons of Ancient Education, Classical Rhetoric, and Pagan Religion for a Post-Christian World

What do we expect from our words? And what if those very expectations were not just wrong, but dangerous, and dangerous precisely because they kept us from moving toward justice? In a provocative and sustained argument, Professor Williams forwards the claim that our present ideas of language are a closed loop that inevitably spirals toward violence. By turning to views that were common in the ages before the modern world, but now lost, he suggests not a new but an old perspective on logos, one that seems to provide a foundation for responding to the troubles and limitations of our own time. This book teaches about the past while inspiring the present to reach beyond itself.