The Rhetoric of the Philosophical Frontispiece

This chapter analyzes how Hobbes, Vico, and Rousseau employ the frontispieces they include in their works as rhetorical devices or emblems to impress on our memory the ideas they contain. The art of the frontispiece was prominent in the founding of modern philosophy but has been lost in later philosophy. The critical literature on philosophical authors' works is enormous, but one finds in it almost no attention to the presence of their frontispieces or to their importance for the contemplation and comprehension of their themes. As such, the chapter considers what may be learned if one interprets the whole of these three works in terms of the frontispieces the authors have placed in them. The aim in the chapter is to discover the authors' intent in putting forth the ideas the texts contain. In seeking this intent the chapter endorses the principle that all books are about other books.