Distinguished Professor Philippe-Joseph Salazar

French philosopher Philippe-Joseph Salazar is a distinguished professor in Rhetoric and Humane Letters in the Law Faculty at the University of Cape Town.

An alumnus of Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, he holds a Doctorate in anthropology and a senior Doctorate in human sciences (Sorbonne). He studied semiology with Roland Barthes, metaphysics with Emmanuel Levinas, and rhetoric with Marc Fumaroli.

A former Dean of Arts at UCT, he founded in 1995 the Centre for Rhetoric Studies, pioneering the discipline in Africa. He directed for ten years the African Yearbook of Rhetoric.

In 1998 he was elected Research Director in Rhetoric and Democracy at Jacques Derrida’s Collège International de Philosophie, Paris. In 2008 he received the Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship. He has held an A-rating from the NRF since 2002.

He has authored 26 scholarly books, some 400 chapters, articles and essays, across the entire field of rhetoric, both ancient and modern, European and non-European, in the arts, philosophy, religion and politics. He publishes in English, French, German, Italian, Slavic languages, Spanish and Arabic.

In 2022 international colleagues presented him with a jubilee volume, The Critical Rhetoric of Philippe-Joseph Salazar.