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David Bates Assistant Professor of Rhetoric Professor Bates' current research involves an investigation into the relation between violence, constitution, law, and order in the French Revolution. The aim of this project is twofold: to offer an analysis of the development of democratic discourse during the Revolution, as well as to engage with its historical and theoretical legacy in Germany, France, Britain, and the United States. He is also developing a book-length study, Imagining Truth: Conjectural Knowledge in an Age of Reason, which addresses the role of rhetoric in Enlightenment epistemology and scientific methodology through an analysis of 18th-century perspectives on analogy, metaphor, conjecture, and discovery. His recent publications include "Idols and Insight: An Enlightenment Topography of Knowledge," in Representations 73 (2001), and "The Mystery of Truth: Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin's Enlightened Mysticism," in Journal of the History of Ideas 61: 4 (2000). |
