Poroi May 2020 Open Access

Rhetoric, Dialectic, and Dogmatism: A Colloquy on Deirdre Nansen McCloskey’s “Free Speech, Rhetoric, and a Free Economy”

Deirdre N McCloskey ; Winton Bates ; Kent Rainey Biler ; Elizabeth Bissell ; Roger E Bissell ; Troy Camplin ; Philippe Chamy ; Roderick Tracy Long ; Jason Walker ; Chris Matthew Sciabarra

Abstract

Long: I do have a quarrel with what McCloskey's chapter says about Plato's Gorgias, one of my favorite Platonic dialogues.One of the aims of that dialogue is to distinguish between two modes of speech -one that aims at truth and one that aims at power.Plato identifies the former with philosophy and the latter with rhetoric, thus drawing McCloskey's ire because she is a longtime defender of the importance of rhetoric.McCloskey: Yes, Plato is charming, and Gorgias most of all.But we must not, I am sure you agree, love his eloquence so much that we fall for his authoritarian tastes, the tastes of an aristocrat hostile to democracy.I do defend rhetoric, and long have.My reasons are two: (1) It is the basis of a free society, as its inventors in Sicily understood, and, as the essay argues, (2) There is no "dialectic" that can yield Truth, capital T, only an honest rhetorical discourse getting agreed truth for the nonce.Both of these reasons are assaulted by Plato, everywhere in the writings we have.Roderick Tracy Long: But in her critique of Gorgias she says that Plato is defending a state-imposed standard of truth.I don't see that in Gorgias at all.Maybe

Journal
Poroi
Published
2020-05-23
DOI
10.13008/2151-2957.1307
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
OA PDF Gold
Topics
classical rhetoric rhetorical criticism discourse analysis
Export
BibTeX RIS

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

References (0)

No references on file for this article.

CrossRef global citation count: 0 View in citation network → Build reading path →

Related Articles

  1. Res Rhetorica Apr 2026
    Logos in ancient Greek discourse on rhetoric: An overview ↗
    Arkadiusz Sokolnicki
    classical rhetoric rhetorical criticism discourse analysis argument
  2. Poroi Feb 2026
    Using Stasis Theory as a Heuristic for Examining Epistemological Dilemmas in a Post-Truth Landscape ↗
    Bruce Bowles
    classical rhetoric modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism discourse analysis argument
  3. Rhetorica Jan 2026
    The Daimonion of Isocrates: Anti-Socratic Polemics and the Power of Politikoi Logoi in the Philippos ↗
    Tobias Hirsch
    classical rhetoric rhetorical criticism discourse analysis argument
  4. Argumentation Oct 2025
    Ex Uno Plures: Synecdoche as Argumentative Structure in Roman Defenses of Rhetoric ↗
    Shawn Ramsey
    classical rhetoric rhetorical criticism discourse analysis
  5. Philosophy & Rhetoric Oct 2025
    The Intellectual and Cultural Origins of Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s New Rhetoric Project: Commentaries on and Translations of Seven Foundational Articles, 1933–1958 ↗
    Christopher W. Tindale
    classical rhetoric modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism genre theory discourse analysis revision argument collaborative writing editorial matter