Abstract
This paper reviews modern scholarship on the Older Sophists that began in the early nineteenth-century. At this time, philosophers and philologists took important steps to salvage the Sophists from the obscurity of history. However, these scholars did so in a way that continued to confuse sophistic fragments and contributions. The tendency of these scholars to view the Sophists from the vantage point of disciplinary perspectives has colored subsequent scholarship, as evidenced in the concept of "sophistic rhetoric."
This essay, extending from the work of Edward Schiappa (1991a, 1991b), reviews (and critiques) the modern scholarship which constructs theories of "sophistic rhetoric." As developed in the work of such scholars as Poulakos (1983, 1987) and Neel (1988), "sophistic rhetoric" involves the notion that rhetoric, as a distinct art, was practiced prior to rime of Plato, and that it is "a study of how to make choices and a study of how choices form character and make good citizens" (Neel, 1988, 211).
In particular, I argue that, while the Sophists engaged in important pre-disciplinary thought, their importance in the history of consciousness does not necessarily warrant the construction of a sophistic rhetorical theory. This claim is made by Schiappa (1991b), who argues that '"sophistic rhetoric” is, for the most part, a mirage - something we see because we want and need to see it - which vaporizes once carefully scrutinized" (5). My argument, continuing from Schiappa's, explores some of the dimensions of Schiappa's position that have not been fully elaborated upon.
In the following, I review the period of modern scholarship on the Older Sophists that began in the early nineteenth-century. At this time, philosophers and philologists took important steps to salvage the Sophists from the obscurity of history. However, these scholars (most notably Cope, Grote, Hegel, and Sidgwick) did so in a way that continued to confuse sophistic fragments and contributions. The tendency of these scholars to view the Sophists from the vantage point of disciplinary perspectives, however inevitable, has colored subsequent scholarship, as evidenced in the concept of "sophistic rhetoric."
Journal Title
Iowa Journal of Communication
Volume
29
Issue
1
First Page
51
Last Page
61
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Swartz, Omar
(1997)
"The Linguistic Invention of "Sophistic Rhetoric","
Iowa Journal of Communication: Vol. 29:
No.
1, Article 5.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ijc/vol29/iss1/5
Copyright
©1997 Iowa Communication Association
