Seeming & Being in Plato’s Rhetorical Theory

Seeming & Being in Plato’s Rhetorical Theory PDF Author: Robin Reames
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022656715X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
The widespread understanding of language in the West is that it represents the world. This view, however, has not always been commonplace. In fact, it is a theory of language conceived by Plato, culminating in The Sophist. In that dialogue Plato introduced the idea of statements as being either true or false, where the distinction between falsity and truth rests on a deeper discrepancy between appearance and reality, or seeming and being. Robin Reames’s Seeming & Being in Plato’s Rhetorical Theory marks a shift in Plato scholarship. Reames argues that an appropriate understanding of rhetorical theory in Plato’s dialogues illuminates how he developed the technical vocabulary needed to construct the very distinctions between seeming and being that separate true from false speech. By engaging with three key movements of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Plato scholarship—the rise and subsequent marginalization of “orality and literacy theory,” Heidegger’s controversial critique of Platonist metaphysics, and the influence of literary or dramatic readings of the dialogues—Reames demonstrates how the development of Plato’s rhetorical theory across several of his dialogues (Gorgias, Phaedrus, Protagoras, Theaetetus, Cratylus, Republic, and Sophist) has been both neglected and misunderstood.

Seeming & Being in Plato’s Rhetorical Theory

Seeming & Being in Plato’s Rhetorical Theory PDF Author: Robin Reames
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022656715X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
The widespread understanding of language in the West is that it represents the world. This view, however, has not always been commonplace. In fact, it is a theory of language conceived by Plato, culminating in The Sophist. In that dialogue Plato introduced the idea of statements as being either true or false, where the distinction between falsity and truth rests on a deeper discrepancy between appearance and reality, or seeming and being. Robin Reames’s Seeming & Being in Plato’s Rhetorical Theory marks a shift in Plato scholarship. Reames argues that an appropriate understanding of rhetorical theory in Plato’s dialogues illuminates how he developed the technical vocabulary needed to construct the very distinctions between seeming and being that separate true from false speech. By engaging with three key movements of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Plato scholarship—the rise and subsequent marginalization of “orality and literacy theory,” Heidegger’s controversial critique of Platonist metaphysics, and the influence of literary or dramatic readings of the dialogues—Reames demonstrates how the development of Plato’s rhetorical theory across several of his dialogues (Gorgias, Phaedrus, Protagoras, Theaetetus, Cratylus, Republic, and Sophist) has been both neglected and misunderstood.

The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece

The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece PDF Author: Edward Schiappa
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
In this book, Edward Schiappa argues that rhetorical theory did not originate with the Sophists in the fifth century B.C.E. as is commonly believed, but came into being a century later. Schiappa examines closely the terminology of the Sophists (such as Gorgias and Protagoras) and of their reporters and opponents (especially Plato and Aristotle) and contends that the terms and problems constituting what we think of as rhetorical theory had not yet been formed in the era of the early Sophists. His revision of rhetoric's early history changes the way we read the Sophists, Aristotle, and Plato. His book will be of interest to students of classics, communications, philosophy, and rhetoric.

Classical Greek Rhetorical Theory and the Disciplining of Discourse

Classical Greek Rhetorical Theory and the Disciplining of Discourse PDF Author: David M. Timmerman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139485997
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This book contributes to the history of classical rhetoric by focusing on how key terms helped to conceptualize and organize the study and teaching of oratory. David Timmerman and Edward Schiappa demonstrate that the intellectual and political history of Greek rhetorical theory can be enhanced by a better understanding of the emergence of 'terms of art' in texts about persuasive speaking and argumentation. The authors provide a series of studies to support their argument. They describe Plato's disciplining of dialgesthai into the Art of Dialectic, Socrates' alternative vision of philosophia, and Aristotle's account of demegoria and symboule as terms for political deliberation. The authors also revisit competing receptions of the Rhetoric to Alexander. Additionally, they examine the argument over when the different parts of oration were formalized in rhetorical theory, illustrating how an 'old school' focus on vocabulary can provide fresh perspectives on persistent questions.

Logos without Rhetoric

Logos without Rhetoric PDF Author: Robin Reames
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611177693
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
A germinal examination of rhetoric's beginnings through pre-fourth-century Greek texts How did rhetoric begin and what was it before it was called "rhetoric"? Must art have a name to be considered art? What is the difference between eloquence and rhetoric? And what were the differences, if any, among poets, philosophers, sophists, and rhetoricians before Plato emphasized—or perhaps invented—their differences? In Logos without Rhetoric: The Arts of Language before Plato, Robin Reames attempts to intervene in these and other questions by examining the status of rhetorical theory in texts that predate Plato's coining of the term rhetoric (c. 380 B.C.E.). From Homer and Hesiod to Parmenides and Heraclitus to Gorgias, Theodorus, and Isocrates, the case studies contained here examine the status of the discipline of rhetoric prior to and therefore in the absence of the influence of Plato and Aristotle's full-fledged development of rhetorical theory in the fourth century B.C.E. The essays in this volume make a case for a porous boundary between theory and practice and promote skepticism about anachronistic distinctions between myth and reason and between philosophy and rhetoric in the historiography of rhetoric's beginning. The result is an enlarged understanding of the rhetorical content of pre-fourth-century Greek texts. Edward Schiappa, head of Comparative Media Studies/Writing and the John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, provides an afterword

Plato's Epistemology

Plato's Epistemology PDF Author: Jessica Moss
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198867409
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Plato's Epistemology presents an original interpretation of one of the central topics in Plato's work: epistemology. Moss argues, against the grain of much modern scholarship, that Plato's epistemology is radically different from our own.

Landmark Essays on Aristotelian Rhetoric

Landmark Essays on Aristotelian Rhetoric PDF Author: Richard Leo Enos
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9781880393321
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Classical Greek Rhetorical Theory and the Disciplining of Discourse

Classical Greek Rhetorical Theory and the Disciplining of Discourse PDF Author: David M. Timmerman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Greek language
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description


Reason, Rhetoric, and the Philosophical Life in Plato's Phaedrus

Reason, Rhetoric, and the Philosophical Life in Plato's Phaedrus PDF Author: Tiago Lier
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498562795
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Plato is a well-known critic of rhetoric, but in the Phaedrus, he defends the art of rhetoric, arguing that it can be perfected with the aid of philosophy. In Reason, Rhetoric, and the Philosophical Life in Plato’s Phaedrus, Tiago Lier provides a new and comprehensive interpretation of this important dialogue. He argues that Plato’s defense of rhetoric is based on philosophy’s ethical nature, and that philosophy is a way of life rather than a body of knowledge. For Plato, an essential element of both rhetoric and the philosophical life is that every use of speech, whether to persuade or to learn, depends upon the psychology of the speaker and the audience. Lier shows how Socrates develops a dynamic account of this psychology over the course of the dialogue in order to help Phaedrus understand how he is personally engaged in, and shaped by, every act of communication. Only when we grasp the tension between eros and logos will we discover the limitations of the art of rhetoric and that rhetoric alone cannot show us what we truly desire. Instead, Lier concludes, the greatest power of speech is to reveal to ourselves our own desires and understanding of our place in the world. This continual self-reflection is the philosophical life around which Socrates and Plato fashion their distinctive forms of rhetoric. The insights developed in this book will be of particular relevance to students and scholars of ancient philosophy, classics, and rhetorical theory, but it will also be of interest to those working in political science, literary studies, and communication studies.

Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists

Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists PDF Author: Marina McCoy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521175371
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
In this book, Marina McCoy explores Plato's treatment of the rhetoric of philosophers and sophists through a thematic treatment of six different Platonic dialogues, including Apology, Protagoras, Gorgias, Republic, Sophist, and Phaedras. She argues that Plato presents the philosopher and the sophist as difficult to distinguish, insofar as both use rhetoric as part of their arguments. Plato does not present philosophy as rhetoric-free, but rather shows that rhetoric is an integral part of the practice of philosophy.

Classical Rhetorical Theory

Classical Rhetorical Theory PDF Author: John Poulakos
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
A clear and integrated discussion of how classical rhetoric influences contemporary practices. Poulakos/Poulakos identify ten themes common to the sophistical, Isocratean, Platonic, and Aristotelian approaches to classical rhetoric, providing students with a clear framework for understanding the four approaches.