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What is rhetoric?Is it the capacity to persuade? Or is it 'mere' rhetoric: the ability to get others to do what the speaker wants, regardless of what they want? This is the rhetoric of ideological manipulation and political seduction. Rhetoric is for some a distinctive mode of communication; for others, whenever someone speaks, rhetoric is present.This book is devoted to helping readers understand these rival accounts, by showing how it has happened that there are so many conceptions of rhetoric. Any such approach must be rooted in classical antiquity, since our ideas of rhetoric are the product of a complicated historical process starting in ancient Greece. Greek rhetoric was born in bitter controversy. The figure of Gorgias is at the centre of that debate and of this book: he invites us to confront the terrifying, exhilarating possibility that persuasion is just power.
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THE BIRTH OF RHETORIC
ISSUES IN ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY General editor: Malcolm Schofield GOD IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY Studies in the early history of natural theology L.P.Gerson ANCIENT CONCEPTS OF PHILOSOPHY William Jordan LANGUAGE, THOUGHT AND FALSEHOOD IN ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY Nicholas Denyer MENTAL CONFLICT Anthony Price
THE BIRTH OF RHETORIC Gorgias, Plato and their successors
Robert Wardy
London and New York
First published 1996 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 First published in paperback 1998 © 1996 Robert Wardy All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Wardy, Robert. The birth of rhetoric: Gorgias, Plato, and their successors/ Robert Wardy. p. cm.—(Issues in ancient philsophy) Includes bibliographical rerferences (p. ) and index. 1. Plato. Gorgias. 2. Rhetoric, Ancient. 3. Gorgias, of Leontini. I. Title. II. Series. PA4279.G7W37 1996 170–dc20 95–48938 ISBN 0-203-98196-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-14643-7 (pbk)
Uxori carissimae eloquentissimaeque maritus loquax uxoriusque
CONTENTS
1
2
INTRODUCTION
1
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: GORGIAS’ ON WHAT IS NOT
6
Who was Gorgias?
6
The challenge of Parmenides
9
The impossibility of communication
14
Could this be philosophy?
21
IN PRAISE OF FALLEN WOMEN: GORGIAS’ ENCOMIUM OF HELEN
25
Who was Helen?
25
Cosmetic truth
29
In praise of Helen
31
Pleasure
32
Causes and excuses
33
In praise of logos
35
Poetical effects
39
Magic
40
Slippery opinions
41
Force and persuasion
42
Logos is logos is logos…
44
Psychotropic drugs
45
Erotic visions
46
vii
3
4
5
IN DEFENCE OF REASON: PLATO’S GORGIAS
51
Rhetorical feasting, philosophical plain fare?
51
Power revisited
57
For the sake of the logos
62
Crowds