Reading for the Renaissance Man continues with its first substantive episode – an introduction to Thucydides and his famous history. If you prefer audio, you can listen here: https://www.podbean.com/player-v2/?i=qtf4y-1b44cc9-pb&from=pb6admin&share=1&download=1&rtl=0&fonts=Arial&skin=1&font-color=auto&logo_link=episode_page&btn-skin=7 And it should now be available on most major podcast platforms (for example here it is on Apple Podcasts). Or video can be found here: I welcome any and all feedback (and yes, as a couple of you have pointed out, the fan will be off for the next episode!), and if you enjoy, subscribing on your preferred platform not only will let me know how much traction the show’s getting, but also will help other folks to discover it.
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In this short episode, our first “real” episode, I lay out some background and context for understanding who Thucydides was, why he wrote his history, and why we still care about it today. Â As always, if you want to dig into the practical application of the lessons we want to draw from these books, check out https://rhetoricfortherenaissance man.
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Exciting news! I’ve launched a companion podcast to this blog, Reading for the Renaissance Man. On it, I’ll be reading old books from the Western Canon with some amount of commentary. The idea is to help all of us who have been “meaning to get to” certain classic works for years, but have somehow not found the time. We’ll be starting with Thucydides’s The Peloponnesian War in our soon-to-be-posted first real episode. What’s the connection with the goal of this blog? Well, the Renaissance Man was a broadly read humanist, and part of his ability to persuade was based on being familiar with a wide range of people, times, and…
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Clear Writing is Clear Thinking Though “rhetoric” began as the art of speaking to groups out loud, it has long also included writing as well. Though many of the principles we’ve discussed with speaking apply to writing, there are also some differences worth highlighting. For one, writing tends to handle detailed, complex material better than speaking. For another, writing tends to allow for greater polish (and for that polish to be appreciated). Also, with writing, you can’t “read” your audience live and make adjustments – once you put it out there, that’s what folks will read, for better or worse. Below, we’ll cover some ways to cope with and take…
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Okay, so we spent last time laying the groundwork for how to approach getting better at public speaking by identifying the main hurdle to speaking well as fear, and the main antidote for fear as practice, both in the short term (practice this speech so you’re not as nervous delivering it), and in the long term (give lots of speeches, so that your baseline level of nerves is lower). Now let’s actually dig into what to practice: what to say, how to say it, and how to hold yourself as you say it. Crafting a Speech – Clearly Structure Compelling Points The first, and most important, step in giving a…
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With this entry, we come to the first thing that comes to mind for most of us when hear the word “rhetoric”: public speaking. Though I’ve stressed throughout that “rhetoric” includes any kind of persuasive communication, it was first and has longest been practiced in this form. Public speaking also acts as a microcosm of the Renaissance Man approach: it is multi-faceted, requires diligent practice, and becomes a deeply personal and individualized endeavor the more you pursue it. With that said, let’s jump in. The Main Hurdle: Fear Many folks struggle with public speaking. They find it hard and unpleasant and don’t know how to do better. It turns out…
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First off, my apologies for going dark for a while there – between the holidays and a few other things, I was not able to keep up with the weekly schedule, ironically enough as I’m in the middle of writing about productivity. At any rate, we now resume our regularly scheduled posts. Prioritization At the core of being more productive is the skill of prioritization – deciding what is important and what is not, what to do first and what to do later, what to make as perfect as you can and what to make “good enough.” Prioritization is a concept easily explained and grasped, but much harder to put…
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Despite the many good things about a note card-based system of taking and organizing notes, there are occasional downsides. In this case, in going through my outline for this introductory series of posts, I skipped over the bridge between strategy and the more tactical issues we’ve begun discussing in Persuasion and will keep on with in Speaking Well and Writing Well. Specifically, in a busy life with many demands, how do you get the things done that actually matter? How do you take day to day steps to reach the strategic goals you’ve defined in accordance with your values? I don’t propose to give a comprehensive answer here, as I…
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We now come to what might be considered the heart of rhetoric, which is how to use our speech and writing to convince others of things we would like them to think, feel, or do. I hope that by now I’ve made clear why we didn’t jump straight into persuasion, as central as it may be. If we aren’t clear on our values and ethics, persuasion becomes a matter of mere expediency, twisting and turning to whatever shape suits our self-interest. Even with values nailed down, though, if we can’t think through how set goals and pursue them effectively, then we will not know when or how to deploy our…
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So far, in talking about Strategy, we’ve taken it for granted that “you” want certain outcomes, and can set goals to make that happen. But on closer examination, this “you” turns out to be more complex. All of us have experienced “wanting” something we know we’d be better off without, or the opposite, knowing we “should” want something, but lacking the motivation to make it happen. To think clearly and effectively about strategy, then, it’s helpful to clarify what part of ourselves we ought to heed in setting goals and going after them, which I propose ought to be the old-fashioned notion of the Will. Desire, Wanting, and the Will…