The Passions of Rhetoric reveals Lessing's contribution to the history of rhetoric and his participation in the long-standing debate between philosophy and rhetoric; attempts a reassessment of the importance of rhetoric to argumentation in the 18th-century; and establishes that Lessing developed his own views on rhetoric and argumentation and that these views were opposed to the anti-rhetoric position of other 18th-century intellectuals, including Kant.

The few treatments of Lessing's polemical writings that have appeared in the last few years concentrate on the practice of rhetoric and not on Lessing's own views on language and argument. Moore's work, on the other hand, combines both an interest in style of argument and the philosophy which informs it, a rich tradition going back to the ancient Greeks

1. The book is required reading for students of European rhetoric, 18th-century German critical writing, and 18th-century polemics on theatre and theology. All quotations in German have been translated into English for the benefit of a wider audience.