Gorgias and the art of rhetoric: Toward a holistic reading of the extant Gorgianic fragments

McComiskey, Bruce

doi:10.1080/02773949709391103

Rhetoric Society Quarterly

1997

DOI: 10.1080/02773949709391103

|View full text |Cite

Gorgias and the art of rhetoric: Toward a holistic reading of the extant Gorgianic fragments

Bruce McComiskey

Help me understand this report

Search citation statements

Order By: Relevance

Paper Sections

Select...

Citation Types

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Year Published

2017

2022

Publication Types

Select...

Article5

Relationship

Self Cite0

Independent5

Authors

Journals

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 8 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…"10 The belief that there is a sharp separation between philosophy and 'sophistic rhetoric' guides readings of Gorgias to this day(Segal 1962; Kennedy 1980: 29-31; Wardy 1996: 6-51;Pfau 2000). Even scholars sympathetic to Gorgias do not question whether he is engaged in rhetoric(Poulakos 1983;Consigny 1992Consigny , 2001McComiskey 1997McComiskey , 2002. By taking sides with 'the sophists' instead of 'the philosophers', many such 'neosophistic' interpretations reproduce the dichotomy of philosophy and sophistry.11 SeePratt (2015) or Buchheim (2012: XXVI-XXXI).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Alētheia in Gorgias of Leontini. An Excerpt from the History of Truth

Leeten

2022

peitho

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It is often assumed that the concept of alētheia, or ‘truth’, in Gorgias of Leontini belongs to the art of rhetoric. Along these lines, it is usually understood as an aesthetic concept or even a mere ‘adornment’ of speech. In this paper, it is argued, by contrast, that Gorgianic alētheia is a definable criterion of speech figuring in the practice of moral education. While the ‘truth’ of a logos indeed has to be assessed on aesthetic grounds, the underlying concept of alētheia is predominantly ethical. For Gorgias, speech is ‘true’ when it promotes virtue (aretē) by being expressive of virtue. The principle stated in the opening passage of the Encomium of Helen, that a speaker has ‘to praise what is praiseworthy and to blame what is blameworthy’, explains precisely this understanding of alētheia.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Alētheia in Gorgias of Leontini. An Excerpt from the History of Truth

Leeten

2022

peitho

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…the introduction on the part of the interpreter of arbitrary distinctions, divisions or hierarchies as tools to make the textual diversity manageable). In order to avoid committing such arbitrariness, I will attempt to develop a holistic reading (McComiskey 1997) of Gorgias' main extant texts (On Not-Being, the Defense of Palamedes, 3 Among those who consider On Not Being an ironic refutation of Eleatic views that does not portray worthy arguments, are Robinson (1973, 58); Dillon & Gergel (2003, 352n1); Valiavitcharska (2006, 152-153); see also Graham (2010, 725);McKirahan (2010, 393). For an interesting dissenting view see Wardy (1996).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Truth and falsehood for non-representationalists: Gorgias on the normativity of language

Bermúdez

2017

J. anc. philos. (Engl. ed.)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sophists and rhetoricians like Gorgias are often accused of disregarding truth and rationality: their speeches seem to aim only at effective persuasion, and be constrained by nothing but persuasiveness itself. In his extant texts Gorgias claims that language does not represent external objects or communicate internal states, but merely generates behavioural responses in people. It has been argued that this perspective erodes the possibility of rationally assessing speeches by making persuasiveness the only norm, and persuasive power the only virtue, of speech. Against this view, I show how Gorgias' texts support a robust normativity of language that goes well beyond persuasion while remaining nonrepresentational. Gorgias' claims that a speech can be persuasive and false, or true and unpersuasive, reveal pragmatic, epistemic, and agonistic constraints on the validity of speech that are neither representational nor reducible to sheer persuasiveness.The claim that truth is merely whatever our peers let us get away with saying has made Richard Rorty (1979,(175)(176) well known. The underlying suggestion is that the only judges of the correctness of our claims are the members of our human community of justification, and that no non-human reality ('objects themselves' or 'the nature of things') could or should play a part in its assessment. There is nothing more to truth than justification, since the distinction between truth-as-correspondence and truth-as-justification is not relevant in practice. Thus we might as well drop the former and uphold the latter.

show abstract

The Hypothetical Witness in Gorgias and Antiphon

Gatt

2021

SUC

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The paper below focuses on the shadowy figure of the hypothetical witness found in two mock-forensic works of the late 5th century: Gorgias’ Defence of Palamedes and Antiphon’s First Tetralogy. I argue that these witnesses, who only exist within the εἰκός arguments found in these speeches, are consistently characterized in impersonal ways, as individuals with knowledge pertinent to the resolution of the case. The issue of their will is also broached, particularly in last rebuttal speech of the First Tetralogy. Though such witnesses, being logical figments, could never appear in court, their characterization sheds important light on the ancient Greek notion of ‘witnessing’. Indeed, the very ability of Gorgias and Antiphon to deploy such arguments shows that witnessing was, at least in this cases, not thought to be tied to the witness’s prestige or character which remain entirely undefined. Rather, their characterization of a ‘witness’ as an individual who knows and who is motivated to testify implies that these were the features thought to fundamental to witnesses, whether real or fictive.

show abstract

scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.

Contact Info

hi@scite.ai

10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614

Henderson, NV 89052, USA

Blog Terms and Conditions API Terms Privacy Policy Contact Cookie Preferences Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

Made with 💙 for researchers

Part of the Research Solutions Family.

Gorgias and the art of rhetoric: Toward a holistic reading of the extant Gorgianic fragments

Cited by 5 publications

References 8 publications

Alētheia in Gorgias of Leontini. An Excerpt from the History of Truth

Alētheia in Gorgias of Leontini. An Excerpt from the History of Truth

Truth and falsehood for non-representationalists: Gorgias on the normativity of language

The Hypothetical Witness in Gorgias and Antiphon

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About