Abstract

Whether Plato coined the word rhetoric, what is striking is that he was the first to attempt to make it disappear.' My argument may well add some strength to Schiappa's contention that Plato may have coined the word by suggesting that to make something disappear, one would need to be dealing with something like a well-defined object (though entering directly into the heart of these often heated debates is not the focus of this essay) (Did Plato Coin the Word Rhetorike?; Neo-Sophistic Rhetorical Criticism). If Plato desires to make disappear, as I shall argue he did at least in the Gorgias, then it behooves him to have a well-articulated target of concern. If it is the case that naming a set of practices helps to constitute those practices as an object domain, then it makes sense to suggest that Plato has cause to name a set of practices rhetoric so as to be able to deal with them.