Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric (Rhetorical Philosophy & Theory) - Hardcover

McComiskey, Bruce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0809323974 ISBN 13: 9780809323975

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002

Synopsis

In Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric, Bruce McComiskey achieves three rhetorical goals: he treats a single sophist's rhetorical techne (art) in the context of the intellectual upheavals of fifth-century BCE Greece, thus avoiding the problem of generalizing about a disparate group of individuals; he argues that we must abandon Platonic assumptions regarding the sophists in general and Gorgias in particular, opting instead for a holistic reading of the Gorgianic fragments; and he reexamines the practice of appropriating sophistic doctrines, particularly those of Gorgias, in light of the new interpretation of Gorgianic rhetoric offered in this book. In the first two chapters, McComiskey deals with a misconception based on selective and Platonic readings of the extant fragments: that Gorgias's rhetorical techne involves the deceptive practice of manipulating public opinion. This popular and ultimately misleading interpretation of Gorgianic doctrines has been the basis for many neosophistic appropriations. The final three chapters deal with the nature and scope of neosophistic rhetoric in light of the non-Platonic and holistic interpretation of Gorgianic rhetoric McComiskey postulates in his opening chapters. He concludes by examining the future of communication studies to discover what roles neosophistic doctrines might play in the twenty-first century. McComiskey also provides a selective bibliography of scholarship on sophistic rhetoric and philosophy in English since 1900.

About this title

About the Author

Bruce McComiskey, a Kinneavy Award-winning scholar and the author of Teaching Composition as a Social Process, administers the advanced writing program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Edition details

• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0809323974
• ISBN 13: 9780809323975
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 144