Abstract
In this article, I argue that for John Milton in Paradise Lost and Areopagitica freedom was a rhetorical quality of action: an ethical capacity to address a situation by means of language. I contrast Milton’s approach to that of Thomas Hobbes, for whom freedom was only a state. These reflections suggest that Milton’s rhetorical freedom, a capacity to act amid oppositions by virtue of the wisdom and power of discourse, offers the outlines of an alternate modernity.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 162-180 |
| Journal | Advances in the History of Rhetoric |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jul 3 2015 |