Milton, Habermas, and the dynamics of debate
pp. 237-256
in: Paul Cefalu, Gary Kuchar, Bryan Reynolds (eds), The return of theory in early modern English studies II, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
This essay examines debate in Milton's work, especially his late poems, and in the thought of Jürgen Habermas. I argue that Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes offer forms of debate highly resistant to the proto-Habermasian version of communicative action advanced in the early Areopagitica. Each of these three late poems casts a Habermasian hallmark - persuasion by force of the better argument — in starkly sinister lights.
