Plato's dream of sophistry
By: Richard Marback.
Series: Studies in rhetoric/communication
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Columbia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 163
Subjects: Plato -- Influence.; Plato.; Sophists (Greek philosophy); Philosophy -- History.; Rhetoric, Ancient.; Rhetoric -- History.
Description: On his deathbed, Plato envisioned his dialogues becoming sophistic texts open to a variety of interpretations, none by itself true to the original. Contemporary histories of rhetoric largely dismiss Plato's anxiety, portraying the dialogues as successful in asserting a constant meaning through all of rhetoric's history.

In Plato's Dream of Sophistry, Richard Marback shows that Plato's vision was remarkably accurate. Against histories of rhetoric that described Plato's influence mainly in terms of his overarching dominance, Marback argues that Plato's lasting influence results not from the force of the dialogues themselves but from continued investments in arguing about the dialogues.

Having documented the many uses to which Plato has been put in the Western rhetorical tradition, Marback concludes Plato's Dream of Sophistry with a discussion of how a more nuanced history of Plato's influence on rhetoric helps transcend current debates that pit the Platonic against the sophistic.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [149]-159) and index.
Table of contents: title: Philostratus and Eunapius on philosopher-sophists; title: Desire for sophistry; title: Proclus on the magic of rhetoric; title: Context for redefining pagan sophistry; title: Augustine's Christian rhetoric; title: Sophistry and civic humanism; title: Ficino's hermetic Plato; title: The sophistry of love; title: Challenges to Diotimean sophistry; title: The end of ancient wisdom; title: Bacon's allegorical ambivalences; title: Philosopher-kings in the seventeenth century; title: Parker's Baconian Plato; title: Rejecting the mysteries of Plato's allegories; title: A new Plato for a new age; title: Brucker's revision of Plato; title: A critique of sophistic (and Platonic) reason; title: Arguing and obeying; title: Universal history with a cosmopolitan intent; title: Hegel on sophistry.