Reconsidering sophistic rhetoric in light of skeptical epistemology

Abstract

The latest rehabilitation of the sophists, begun by Hegel and carried out with increasing dedication during this century (see Crowley, Enos, Guthrie, Hunt, Jarratt, Kerferd, Poulakos, De Romilly, Schiappa, Untersteiner), has improved our understanding of rhetorical theory and history. Despite, and in some ways because of, the nebulous quality of what they have left us, the sophists have become important primarily because they predate Plato and Aristotle and thus would seem to offer at least a fragmentary glimpse of rhetoric prior to its hypostatization in the classical period. The traditional thinking is that Platonic and Aristotelian rhetorical theory disciplined the sophists' extravagant practices, substantiated their unsubstantiated claims, and transformed their dithyrambic, mythic, magical, poetic discourse into a logical, rational theory of argumentation. In other words, Plato and Aristotle transformed mythos into logos; thus they were the fathers of rhetoric insofar as rhetoric was a respectable techno for the production of reasonable discourse. The philosophers rejected sophistic rhetoric on the grounds that it had no philosophical foundations from which its principles could be logically derived and safely taught. Thus they set about constructing a sound, philosophically based rhetoric by linking it carefully to, while dividing it just as carefully from, absolute knowledge (episteme). In both the Platonic and the Aristotelian rhetorical schemes, episteme provides the limits of rhetoric. In the Platonic case, absolute knowledge is a prerequisite for the application of rhetorical lore-one must employ dialectic in the service of absolute truth before one may use rhetoric to disseminate the truth (Phaedrus 265-66). In the Aristotelian case, rhetorical lore must be based on the first principles of persuasion, but must be employed when knowable matters are discussed-the closer one gets to fundamental principles, the further one gets from enthymemes, and thus the further one gets from rhetoric in the direction of scientific knowledge (Freese 1359b). If knowledge provides the limits for rhetorical theory and practice, then, in Platonic and Aristotelian terms, without both knowledge and a theory of knowledge, systematic rhetoric is impossible. This is why they dismissed sophistic rhetoric on the grounds that it ha(d) no rational account to give of the nature of the various things which it offer(ed) (Gorgias 465) and that it presented not an but the results of an art (Forster 183b). Because