Robin Reames
Biographic Data
| ID | 737341 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robin Reames |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robin |
| FAMILY NAME | Reames |
| SIGNATURE | REAMES R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Illinois Chicago |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
“We Live in a Society”
Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter/X are widely blamed for the spread of mis- and disinformation, surveillance capitalism, thought manipulation, and the decay of critical discourse, leading critics to argue vociferously for regulation. This essay argues that Hannah Arendt’s conception of “the social” realm reframes the problem of social media not as a contest between free speech and regulation but as a problem of conformism, the dom…
Becoming and Negation, Protagoras and Nāgārjuna
This essay explores a curious point of intersection in the historical pairing of becoming and negation, between two thinkers and two traditions: the Sophist Protagoras of fifth-century BCE Greece and the second-century CE South Asian Buddhist thinker Nāgārjuna. I offer a speculative account of how becoming and negation are linked in Protagoras—speculative because only so much can be deduced from the extant fragments and testimony. I compare that …
Speech in Pursuit of Silence
In the West’s Will to Know and its attendant rhetorical forms, speech has been related to silence in primarily three ways. In rhetoric and dialectic, speech pursues speech; in rhetorical education, silence pursues speech; and in sacred, ascetic rhetoric, silence pursues silence. These three relations of speech to silence as a form of knowledge in the Western rhetorical tradition leave a fourth untraversed. Yet to be explored is speech in pursuit …
The Metaphysics of Sophistry
There is no category of thought more deliberately or explicitly relegated to a subordinate role in Plato’s dialogues than Sophists and sophistry. It is due to Plato’s influence that terms “sophist” and “sophistry” handed down to us have unilaterally negative associations—synonymous with lies and deception, obscurantism and false reasoning. There are several reasons to be dubious of this standard view of the Sophists and their practices. The prima…
Writing the Manic Subject
This essay questions the reading of Plato's Phaedrus according to which writing is understood as a mechanism of objectivity and critical distance. Plato's denomination of writing as a “pharmakon” (a poison/cure) indicates a deep ambiguity in his definition of writing—an ambiguity embodied in Phaedrus's written speech. The speech triggers both critical analysis and a simultaneous “rhetorical passivity,” whereby upon hearing the speech Socrates is …
Epilogue The Past and Future of Plato’s Rhetorical Theory
This chapter reflects on the larger significance of the book’s arguments. Plato’s theory of language-as-statement and the split of seeming from being, which culminates in the Sophist, would come to dominate all theories of language and metaphysics in the West from the late classical to the contemporary era. But Plato’s innovation does not ensure that logos is in fact representational or signifying. By that same token, it also does not ensure that…
Imitators of Truth
This chapter illuminates how, in the Sophist dialogue, Plato finally completes his theory of logos by developing his rhetorical theories of onoma and rhêma. Plato’s novel use of these terms defines them not as they typically but erroneously translated, as noun and verb, but as single word and longer phrase, the combination of which forms a complete logos. Plato formulates his theory of the statement by emphasizing the archaic meaning of the term …
The Rhetoric of Mimêsis
This chapter reconsiders Plato’s monolithic concept of mimêsis. To develop this concept mimêsis, Plato invents two altogether novel senses of the term, which had previously meant simply “imitation.” In Book 3 of the Republic Plato defines mimêsis as a specific kind of poetic speech and in Book 10 he defines it as a kind of falseness. In this way, he has created the two concepts—mimetic language and mimetic falseness—that lay the groundwork for de…
Sophistry without Measure, Dialectic without Rhetoric
This chapter examines Plato’s treatment of the interpretation of Simonides’s poem in the Protagoras dialogue. Although this part of the dialogue is commonly neglected as a parody of bad interpretation, it nevertheless illustrates the discursive consequences of Socrates’s inability to formulate a theory of logos that is adequate to overcome the epistemic paradoxes that result from Protagoras’s doctrines. As Protagoras and Socrates offer rival inte…
The “Cosmetics” of Sophistry
This chapter examines the “most famous passage” of Plato’s Gorgias dialogue—the analogy where Socrates compares rhetoric to cookery and sophistry to “kommôtikê” (464b–66a), commonly translated as “cosmetics.” The analogy marks the decisive moment when rhetoric and sophistry are associated with seeming and appearance and therefore distanced from being and reality. I examine the complexity of the term “kommôtikê,” which has baffled commentators sin…
Introduction Literacy, Dramatic Form, Metaphysics
This chapter summarizes the three major movements in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Plato scholarship that inform the methodology of the book: “orality and literacy” theory to explain the origins of the arts of rhetoric in ancient Greece; Martin Heidegger’s critique of Western metaphysics to underscore the birth of the distinction between seeming and being; and literary-dramatic interpretation to problematize doctrinal readings of the dialog…
Heraclitean Opposition and Parmenidean Contradiction
This chapter examines three of Plato’s dialogues that deal with Protagoras’s doctrines: the Cratylus, Theaetetus, and Euthydemus. In those dialogues, Plato portrays the sophist Protagoras’s thought as being derivative of pre-Socratic ontology, particularly Heraclitus’s doctrine of flux and Parmenides’s doctrine of nonbeing. The paradoxical pre Socratic origins of Protagoras’s thought create profound epistemic problems for Socrates. This is shown …
Seeming and Being in Plato’s Rhetorical Theory
Seeming and Being in Plato's Rhetorical Theory
Seeming and Being in Plato's Rhetorical Theory
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Epilogue The Past and Future of Plato’s Rhetorical Theory
This chapter reflects on the larger significance of the book’s arguments. Plato’s theory of language-as-statement and the split of seeming from being, which culminates in the Sophist, would come to dominate all theories of language and metaphysics in the West from the late classical to the contemporary era. But Plato’s innovation does not ensure that logos is in fact representational or signifying. By that same token, it also does not ensure that…
Imitators of Truth
This chapter illuminates how, in the Sophist dialogue, Plato finally completes his theory of logos by developing his rhetorical theories of onoma and rhêma. Plato’s novel use of these terms defines them not as they typically but erroneously translated, as noun and verb, but as single word and longer phrase, the combination of which forms a complete logos. Plato formulates his theory of the statement by emphasizing the archaic meaning of the term …
The Rhetoric of Mimêsis
This chapter reconsiders Plato’s monolithic concept of mimêsis. To develop this concept mimêsis, Plato invents two altogether novel senses of the term, which had previously meant simply “imitation.” In Book 3 of the Republic Plato defines mimêsis as a specific kind of poetic speech and in Book 10 he defines it as a kind of falseness. In this way, he has created the two concepts—mimetic language and mimetic falseness—that lay the groundwork for de…
Sophistry without Measure, Dialectic without Rhetoric
This chapter examines Plato’s treatment of the interpretation of Simonides’s poem in the Protagoras dialogue. Although this part of the dialogue is commonly neglected as a parody of bad interpretation, it nevertheless illustrates the discursive consequences of Socrates’s inability to formulate a theory of logos that is adequate to overcome the epistemic paradoxes that result from Protagoras’s doctrines. As Protagoras and Socrates offer rival inte…
The “Cosmetics” of Sophistry
This chapter examines the “most famous passage” of Plato’s Gorgias dialogue—the analogy where Socrates compares rhetoric to cookery and sophistry to “kommôtikê” (464b–66a), commonly translated as “cosmetics.” The analogy marks the decisive moment when rhetoric and sophistry are associated with seeming and appearance and therefore distanced from being and reality. I examine the complexity of the term “kommôtikê,” which has baffled commentators sin…
Introduction Literacy, Dramatic Form, Metaphysics
This chapter summarizes the three major movements in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Plato scholarship that inform the methodology of the book: “orality and literacy” theory to explain the origins of the arts of rhetoric in ancient Greece; Martin Heidegger’s critique of Western metaphysics to underscore the birth of the distinction between seeming and being; and literary-dramatic interpretation to problematize doctrinal readings of the dialog…
Heraclitean Opposition and Parmenidean Contradiction
This chapter examines three of Plato’s dialogues that deal with Protagoras’s doctrines: the Cratylus, Theaetetus, and Euthydemus. In those dialogues, Plato portrays the sophist Protagoras’s thought as being derivative of pre-Socratic ontology, particularly Heraclitus’s doctrine of flux and Parmenides’s doctrine of nonbeing. The paradoxical pre Socratic origins of Protagoras’s thought create profound epistemic problems for Socrates. This is shown …
Seeming and Being in Plato’s Rhetorical Theory
Seeming and Being in Plato's Rhetorical Theory
Seeming and Being in Plato's Rhetorical Theory
Writing the Manic Subject
This essay questions the reading of Plato's Phaedrus according to which writing is understood as a mechanism of objectivity and critical distance. Plato's denomination of writing as a “pharmakon” (a poison/cure) indicates a deep ambiguity in his definition of writing—an ambiguity embodied in Phaedrus's written speech. The speech triggers both critical analysis and a simultaneous “rhetorical passivity,” whereby upon hearing the speech Socrates is …
Becoming and Negation, Protagoras and Nāgārjuna
This essay explores a curious point of intersection in the historical pairing of becoming and negation, between two thinkers and two traditions: the Sophist Protagoras of fifth-century BCE Greece and the second-century CE South Asian Buddhist thinker Nāgārjuna. I offer a speculative account of how becoming and negation are linked in Protagoras—speculative because only so much can be deduced from the extant fragments and testimony. I compare that …
Speech in Pursuit of Silence
In the West’s Will to Know and its attendant rhetorical forms, speech has been related to silence in primarily three ways. In rhetoric and dialectic, speech pursues speech; in rhetorical education, silence pursues speech; and in sacred, ascetic rhetoric, silence pursues silence. These three relations of speech to silence as a form of knowledge in the Western rhetorical tradition leave a fourth untraversed. Yet to be explored is speech in pursuit …
The Metaphysics of Sophistry
There is no category of thought more deliberately or explicitly relegated to a subordinate role in Plato’s dialogues than Sophists and sophistry. It is due to Plato’s influence that terms “sophist” and “sophistry” handed down to us have unilaterally negative associations—synonymous with lies and deception, obscurantism and false reasoning. There are several reasons to be dubious of this standard view of the Sophists and their practices. The prima…
“We Live in a Society”
Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter/X are widely blamed for the spread of mis- and disinformation, surveillance capitalism, thought manipulation, and the decay of critical discourse, leading critics to argue vociferously for regulation. This essay argues that Hannah Arendt’s conception of “the social” realm reframes the problem of social media not as a contest between free speech and regulation but as a problem of conformism, the dom…
Epistemology (12 works) · Literature (12 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Art (11 works) · Classical Philosophy and Thought (11 works) · Linguistics (11 works) · Sophist (7 works) · Rhetoric (6 works) · Logos Bible Software (5 works) · Rhetorical question (5 works)