Gorgias's Thought


Book Description

Gorgias’s Thought: An Epistemological Reading is the first monograph published in English entirely devoted to Gorgias’s epistemological thought and provides a new perspective on Gorgias’s thought more broadly. The book aims to undermine the common idea that Gorgias is either an orator uncommitted to any conception of truth, or a thinker whose interest is confined to the philosophy of language. It considers his major texts—On What is Not, or On Nature, The Apology of Palamedes and The Encomium of Helen—emphasising the originality and specificity of Gorgias’ thought. In combining a philological analysis with substantive use of contemporary epistemological approaches, Di Iulio shows that Gorgias is to be considered first and foremost an epistemologist. Gorgias’s Thought: An Epistemological Reading is of interest to students, scholars and specialists in ancient thought, epistemology, history of philosophy and rhetoric.




Gorgias


Book Description

In several of the dialogues of Plato, doubts have arisen among his interpreters as to which of the various subjects discussed in them is the main thesis. The speakers have the freedom of conversation; no severe rules of art restrict them, and sometimes we are inclined to think, with one of the dramatis personae in the Theaetetus, that the digressions have the greater interest. Yet in the most irregular of the dialogues there is also a certain natural growth or unity; the beginning is not forgotten at the end, and numerous allusions and references are interspersed, which form the loose connecting links of the whole. We must not neglect this unity, but neither must we attempt to confine the Platonic dialogue on the Procrustean bed of a single idea. (Compare Introduction to the Phaedrus.)




The Unity of Plato's 'Gorgias'


Book Description

This book demonstrates the complex unity of Plato's Gorgias, showing how seemingly disparate themes are woven together.




Gorgias


Book Description

Reproduction of the original.




Talks With Socrates About Life


Book Description

Excerpt from Talks With Socrates About Life: Translations From the Gorgias and the Republic of Plato Our information concerning the Scope and nature of the art, one of whose most famous representatives we are about to meet, is chiefly derived from our knowledge of t hists, with whom, Plato tells cmmcommonmidenfified. The very closeness of the relationship between rhetorician and Sophist would seem, it is true, only to have-enhanced the contempt in which each held the other. Callicles, for instance, though figuring here as the host and admirer of Gor gias, speaks of the sophists as men of no account whatever; while the rhetorician Isocrates heaps upon them even fiercer invectives than those contained in the pages of Plato, their arch-enemy, as he is called by Grote. Nor were the Sophists more measured in the contempt they expressed for the art wh no cognizance either of theory or principle, itself to one narrow aim, that of persuasion. Nevertheless. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.




Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants


Book Description

In recent years, most political theorists have agreed that shame shouldn't play any role in democratic politics because it threatens the mutual respect necessary for participation and deliberation. But Christina Tarnopolsky argues that not every kind of shame hurts democracy. In fact, she makes a powerful case that there is a form of shame essential to any critical, moderate, and self-reflexive democratic practice. Through a careful study of Plato's Gorgias, Tarnopolsky shows that contemporary conceptions of shame are far too narrow. For Plato, three kinds of shame and shaming practices were possible in democracies, and only one of these is similar to the form condemned by contemporary thinkers. Following Plato, Tarnopolsky develops an account of a different kind of shame, which she calls "respectful shame." This practice involves the painful but beneficial shaming of one's fellow citizens as part of the ongoing process of collective deliberation. And, as Tarnopolsky argues, this type of shame is just as important to contemporary democracy as it was to its ancient form. Tarnopolsky also challenges the view that the Gorgias inaugurates the problematic oppositions between emotion and reason, and rhetoric and philosophy. Instead, she shows that, for Plato, rationality and emotion belong together, and she argues that political science and democratic theory are impoverished when they relegate the study of emotions such as shame to other disciplines.







Gorgias, Sophist and Artist


Book Description

Aristophanes depicted him as a barbaric sycophant, Plato as a shallow opportunist, and Aristotle as an inept stylist, but the Greek teacher of rhetoric Gorgias of Leontini (483-375 BCE) has been again attracting attention from scholars. Consigny (English, Iowa State U.) articulates a coherent account of the enigmatic thinker and writer. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric


Book Description

In Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric, Bruce McComiskey achieves three rhetorical goals: he treats a single sophist's rhetorical technê (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 technê 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.




Plato on the Value of Philosophy


Book Description

This book explores Plato's views on what an 'art of argument' should look like, investigating the relationship between psychology and rhetoric.