"This book examines and establishes the importance of one aspect of popular political arguments - rhetorical features that draw upon tradition as taken-for-granted values, judgments, and calculations. It illustrates how popular political arguments draw upon this "rhetoric of right," unique to each political community, to establish the "correctness" or "rightness" of a policy proposal.

It then uses that illustration to argue first that tradition in political arguments is not only present, but important; second, that tradition operates through time in a contextual rather than evolutionary manner, and third, that political theorists must take seriously the presence of tradition in political arguments in both its substance and its formal aspects."--BOOK JACKET.

"The book is based upon a study of political arguments in the Indian religious/political movement that grew up around the Indian mystic Aurobindo Ghose and his collaborator Mirra Richard."--BOOK JACKET.