Abstract

Many modern-day teachers of rhetoric are turning from formalist to epistemic principles in defining and carrying out their work. Instead of regarding their discipline as exclusively or primarily concerned with the superficial packaging of thought, according to standards of correctness and formal symmetry, they are coming to regard it as something bigger, deeply involving the very fabric of knowledge and meaning. According to the epistemic model of rhetoric, discourse does not merely clothe or embody thought or knowledge, it actively creates and constitutes them. ;This study examines early Greek precedents for such a view of rhetoric and language. Included in its purview are several related issues and themes, involving positions that are corollary to the central principle of epistemic rhetoric. Prominent among these are a view of rhetoric as universal rather than as a distinct specialty, and a corresponding tendency to regard the teaching of rhetoric in terms more of nurture than of the imparting of discrete skills. Themes of community and consensus are also central, since the epistemic power of discourse necesarily operates socially. ;Following a chronological scheme, the study begins with Homer, and continues with Hesiod. From there it turns to pre-Socratic cosmology, specifically the work of Parmenides. Parmenides' near contemporary Corax of Syracuse, and his reputed pupil Tisias, are next considered along with their traditional status as the founders of rhetoric. From there the study moves to the great sophists Protagoras and Gorgias, with particular emphasis on their contributions to ontology and epistemology. A final chapter reexamines Plato's response to the problems the sophists raised in these areas. Plato appears to have succeeded in arresting the development of the radical skepticism, agnosticism, and relativism that these early sophists promoted, and thus in arresting for millennia the development of epistemic rhetoric; but the arguments he uses for the purpose beg the major questions that the sophists had raised.