Preface
Introduction Literacy, Dramatic Form, Metaphysics: Rereading Plato’s Rhetoric
Orality, Literacy, and Rhetorical Beginnings
Martin Heidegger and the Critique of Metaphysics in the West
Literary-Dramatic Interpretations of Plato
Sophists and Sophistry in Plato
Plan of the Book
1 The “Cosmetics” of Sophistry: Seeming and Being in the
Gorgias
The Gorgias Dialogue and the Role of the Analogy
The Problem of the Double Mu
The Kommi in Kommôtikê: Athenians and Luxury
War: The Historic Context and the Thematic Unity of the Gorgias
Conclusion
2 The Oral Poet and the Literate Sophist: Divine Madness and Rhetorical Inoculation in the
Phaedrus
Rhetorical Disunity in the Phaedrus
The Speeches in Contrast
The Palinode as Epic: Themes, Formulae, Symbols
Writing and Rhetoric
Conclusion
3 Heraclitean Opposition and Parmenidean Contradiction: Pre-Socratic Ontology and Protagorean Sophistry in the
Cratylus, the
Theaetetus, and the
Euthydemus
Heraclitean Etymologies and Protagorean Relativism in the Cratylus
The “Man-Measure” Doctrine and Heraclitean Flux in the Theaetetus
The “Impossibility of Contradiction” and Parmenidean Nonbeing in the Euthydemus
Conclusion
4 Sophistry without Measure, Dialectic without Rhetoric: The Interpretive Dispute in the
Protagoras
Antilogic, Eristic, Dialectic, and the Protagoras
Socrates versus Protagoras: Simonides’s Poem in Its Dialectical Context
Socratic Sophistry, Eristic, and Antilogic in the Interpretation of Simonides
Conclusion
5 The Rhetoric of
Mimêsis: Sophistic Imitation and Seeming in the
Republic
Mimêsis as Language
Mimêsis as Falseness
The Dubious Metaphysics of Mimêsis
Conclusion
6 Imitators of Truth: The Rhetorical Theories of
Onoma and
Rhêma in the
Sophist and the
Cratylus
The Stranger’s Method of Division and the Sophist’s Heracliteanism
Louis Bassett and the Problem of Onoma and Rhêma
Onoma,Rhêma, and the Logos of Mimêsis
Onoma and Rhêma, Logos and Mimêsis in the Sophist
Conclusion
Epilogue The Past and Future of Plato’s Rhetorical Theory
Notes
Bibliography
Index