Reason's dark champions : constructive strategies of Sophistic argument / / Christopher W. Tindale

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910813216403321
• Autore: Tindale Christopher W (Christopher William)
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Columbia, S.C., : University of South Carolina Press, c2010
• ISBN: 1-283-61127-9; 9786613923721; 1-61117-233-0
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (193 p.)
• Collana: Studies in rhetoric/communication
• Disciplina: 183/.1
• Soggetti: Sophists (Greek philosophy); Reasoning
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. [165]-172) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Sophistic argument and the early tradition -- Introduction -- The category 'Sophist': who counts? -- The figure of socrates -- Sophistic argument: contrasting views -- Against the Sophists -- Figures of influence -- Positive views of Sophistic argument -- Resistance to revision -- Making the weak argument the stronger -- A problem of translation -- Eristics and the Euthydemus -- Antiphon the Sophist -- Protagorean rhetoric -- Plato's Sophists -- Platonic and Sophistic argument and the 'Sophist dialogues' -- Public and private argument -- Plato's view of argument -- A question of method -- Imitation and method: eristic and the Peritrope -- The veracity of Plato's testimony -- The Sophists and fallacious argument: aristotle's legacy -- The sophists and fallacy -- The sophistical refutations -- Fallacy in the Euthydemus -- Lessons from the Euthydemus -- Contrasting refutations -- Sophistic strategies of argumentation -- Rhetoric and argumentation -- Rhetoric and sophistry -- Extending Sophistic argument: Alcidamas and Isocrates -- What is Eikos?: the argument from likelihood -- The meaning of likelihood -- Examples from Antiphon -- The range of Eikos arguments -- Evaluating Eikos arguments -- Contemporary appearances: Walton and the plausibility argument -- Turning tables: roots and varieties of the Peritrope -- What trope is the Peritrope? -- Defining the Peritrope -- Reversal arguments in Gorgias and Antiphon ; -- Socratic and Sophistic refutations again -- Contemporary reversals -- Evaluation -- Contrasting arguments: Antilogoi or Antithesis -- The concepts of Antilogoi and Antithesis -- History of the Antilogoi -- The dissoi logoi -- Antithesis and the counterfactual -- Examples of Antilogoi: Gorgias, Antiphon, Prodicus, Thucydides, Antisthenes -- Purpose and evaluation -- Contemporary echoes -- Signs, commonplaces, and allusions -- Modes of proof -- Arguing from signs -- Commonplaces -- Allusions -- More recent echoes -- Ethotic argument: witness testimony and the appeal to character -- Ethos -- The appeal to one's own character -- Witnesses -- Funeral speeches -- Promotion of character -- Attacking character -- The use of ethotic argument and the modern ad hominem -- Justice and the value of Sophistic argument -- Truth and morality: reasoning in the dark -- A human justice -- Sophistic argument and justice -- Kinds of Sophist -- Sophistic argument in the present.
• Sommario/riassunto: What emerges is a complex reappraisal of Sophism that reorients criticism of this mode of argumentation, expands understanding of Sophistic contributions to classical rhetoric, and opens avenues for further scholarship.