Book Reviewed: Williams, Mark A.E. Just Words: Lessons of Ancient Education, Classical Rhetoric, and Pagan Religion for a Post-Christian World (Pasco, WA: Integratio Press, 2024).
Journal of Christian Teaching Practice, Volume 12, 2025 (January – December)
Reviewed by: David Dockery
Reviewer Affiliation: Texas A&M University
Total Pages: 252
ISBN-13: 978-1959685111
Some books have a title that only begins to capture the fine-grained subtleties of their subject matter. Burke’s Rhetoric of Motives, Ricœur’s Time and Narrative, and Gadamer’s Truth and Method are all famous examples of this tradition. Williams’ Just Words: Lessons of Ancient Education, Classical Rhetoric, and Pagan Religion for a Post-Christian World employs the same strategy. While the combination of topics may bemuse the reader at first, Just Words synthesizes them in a fascinating manner to reveal the moral implications of classical rhetorical theory for contemporary education.
Williams argues that religion, education, and rhetoric are inextricably linked both historically and conceptually. Historically, rhetoric has occupied the heights of the trivium, the structure of liberal arts education. Conceptually, to educate involves handing down a “cultural identity” that can broadly be construed as religio-political in nature (Williams 21). This is done through rhetorical training the likes of which ancient rhetoricians modeled. Thus, religion, education, and rhetoric interact to form a socially significant nexus of concepts.
The exigence for the book, Williams argues, is the growing fragility of public discourse caused by grounding rhetoric in identity. When rhetoric prioritizes social identity, “every disagreement becomes a potential existential threat” (Williams 2). Evidently, something has gone awry with education in the humanities to produce this situation. To wit, Williams believes that the nexus of religion, rhetoric, and education has become malformed by bad rhetorical theory. Instead of grounding rhetoric in transcendent truths, the humanities relativize it according to the individual and the group.
To better understand the current problem, Williams conducts close readings of three classic Greek rhetoricians: Gorgias, Isocrates, and Plato. Our situation reflects their theories enough that studying them can reveal insights into contemporary problems. These readings occupy chapters 3-6. He begins with what he considers the two faulty options, the rhetorics of Gorgias and Isocrates, both of which hold an affinity for the identity-theory of rhetoric. Gorgias makes rhetoric too individual-centered, evacuating it of true moral purpose in exchange for temporal power. The problem with Gorgias is that his rhetoric floats in a world of nothingness. There is no pre-existing resource for meaning. All meaning is, therefore, created “ex nihilo” from the powerful rhetor’s soul, motivated by desire for personal advantage (Williams 183). Justice is merely a power game. Isocrates, on the other hand, critiques the teachings of sophists such as Gorgias for a lack of communal purpose; however, his alternative ends up being no better. He places excessive significance on the power of the group as the purpose of rhetorical education—a notion with unsettling parallels throughout human history. In trying to create an educated elite of sophisticated rhetors, Isocrates fails to account for what makes a good education. He merely magnifies Gorgias’ flaws to the level of group identity.
Having exposed the inadequacies of these two sophists’ theories, Williams presents Plato’s approach as a better alternative. Through a close reading of the Phaedrus, Williams argues for a Platonic theory of rhetoric. Rhetoric, for Plato, is about “leading the soul” toward transcendent truths. The goal is to internalize these truths and re-animate them within one’s life through the power of memory. Only in this way can words seriously make claims about justice, for justice belongs to the divine world. A true rhetoric is a philosophical rhetoric, one that seeks the transcendent Good so that its practitioners may know what good rhetoric is. This transcendence enables what the book promises: Just words, or rather, words that participate in justice. The Platonic approach, Williams contends, is therefore a corrective to the problems inherent in Gorgias and Isocrates’ constitutive theories of rhetoric. These theories position rhetoric as a means of making things, which forces them into the inevitable quagmire of making something from nothing. Plato’s mimetic, philosophical rhetoric resolves this problem by reflecting ultimate reality. Embracing this view is a step towards understanding, and hopefully solving, the problems posed by identity-focused theories of rhetoric.
Just Words has two major potential uses for a classroom setting, especially on the graduate level. First, it is a compelling exposition of three major Greek rhetoricians. Williams’ interpretation of Plato is especially interesting, for he emphasizes the mystical, religious aspects of Plato’s thought. This is not the Plato most students initially encounter. The Plato of textbooks is usually what Williams calls the “Modernist” Plato, a version of the philosopher reimagined for the Enlightenment (98). The Plato of the sources is quite different, which many students may never realize unless they read his corpus for themselves. Williams helpfully provides nuance to an otherwise flattened figure in the history of rhetoric and philosophy. For the teacher wishing to expose students to classical rhetoric, this is a great resource. Combined with some other readings, it can show how scholarly conversations can develop even around texts as old as Plato’s. Even if one disagrees with the book’s overall argument, these chapters provide excellent insights into the theories of Gorgias, Isocrates, and Plato. Second, Just Words articulates an alternative perspective about the nature of rhetoric. Most readings in rhetorical theory courses will proceed with the assumptions that Williams critiques. The constitutive theory of rhetoric is a popular approach but that does not mean it should go unchallenged. Some graduate students may find themselves looking for an alternative way to ground the study of rhetoric, and Williams offers one such way. Assigning Just Words can turn a chorus of literature into a conversation, which may help students find their way into the discipline.
If the book has any faults, they reside in its overly nuanced writing style. The author’s admirable attempt to not overstate his case sometimes results in too many qualifications. These can muddy the writing. As Williams tries to make clear what the book is not, one may sometimes lose track of what the book is. But this stylistic issue is not so prevalent that it makes the book unreadable. On the contrary, in an era when everyone confidently shouts their opinion, it is refreshing to read a book that acknowledges other opinions. What the book lacks in soundbites it makes up for in careful attention to its subject matter.
Still, one wonders whether Williams asks too much of rhetoric. Like Plato, he insists that a “true rhetoric” requires “the pursuit of the actual divine” (Williams 159, emphasis in original). Rhetoric must try to reflect rather than constitute reality or it is not really rhetoric. As he says, “The problem that frustrated Socrates there was the prioritization of an image of wisdom (in order to impress others and empower a political faction) above the pursuit of actual wisdom” (Williams 159). Rhetoric should study reality, not appearances. True rhetoric needs dialectic to discern the proper “context” for rhetoric (Williams 151). But this line of reasoning risks turning rhetoric into simply another branch of philosophy. Indeed, it risks turning every subject into a branch of philosophy. Perhaps that is a feature, not a bug, of Plato’s argument. But it does raise questions about whether everyone should be reporting to the chair of the philosophy department when they are up for tenure. Beyond this totalizing impulse, there is the practical problem of how one is supposed to teach rhetoric in a secular university. Apart from a theocratic takeover of state universities, how is a teacher of rhetoric supposed to recommend that students pursue the actual divine? Again, this is not necessarily an argument against the truth of Plato’s position. It does, however, raise questions about how to practically apply this theory in the contemporary education landscape. If Williams is correct, then Plato’s critique of Sophistic rhetoric is grounds for a radical intervention in the entire system of higher education.
Perhaps these Classical thinkers are not as mutually exclusive as Williams suggests. The book proceeds under the assumption that higher education must choose between Plato and his rivals. What communion hath the Platonist with the Sophist? What has Athens to do with Sicily? It seems to me, however, that there is no reason why anyone must accept these systems in their totality. One need not accept Gorgias’ nihilism to adopt his aim of individual empowerment. Nor, for that matter, does one have to prioritize group identity above all to educate a new generation of rhetorically gifted leaders, as Isocrates wished. And though my personal sympathies lie with Plato, there is nonetheless a grand tradition of realist philosophers who do not accept the theory of Forms. The great rhetoricians of the tradition are not necessarily monolithic blocks. Rather, they are a starting point for an unending conversation. It falls to us to do as Williams suggests, re-animating them in new and vibrant ways, to address the challenges of our time. There is no space to outline what precisely that might look like here. However, there is no a priori reason to believe such a synthesis is impossible. If anything, this remarkable work is a call to the tradition, to continue the conversation that shapes education even today. For that alone, Just Words is worth reading.