Philosophy, rhetoric, and cultural memory

Rereading Plato's Menexenus and Isocrates’ Panegyricus

Bibliographic Data

ID9357883
AuthorsEkaterina V Haskins (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume35
Issue1
Pages25-45
Publication date2005-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueRhetoric Society Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0277-3945 • E-ISSN: 1930-322X
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/02773940509391302
OpenAlexW2044537422
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited24

The rivalry between Plato and Isocrates has begun to receive scholarly attention, primarily because both Plato and Isocrates used the term philosophia to describe their occupation. However, the efforts to distinguish their respective uses and definitions of the term typically ignore the performative dimension of both Plato's and Isocrates’ writings and their relationship with other discourses of Athenian public culture. This essay argues that both Plato and Isocrates constructed the domain of philosophy by performing the speech genres constitutive of Greek cultural memory. To support this claim, I offer a reading of Plato's Menexenus and Isocrates’ Panegyricus, both of which were crafted in response to the same historical event, the Peace of Antalkidas. The essay demonstrates the distinct ways in which Plato and Isocrates appropriated generic conventions of the Athenian funeral oration and panegyric in order to construct the identity of a “philosopher” vis‐à‐vis his polis and to model the relationship between students of “philosophy” and discourses of their culture

Aesthetics · Art · Construct (python library · Dimension (graph theory · Epistemology · Identity (music · Linguistics · Literature · Order (exchange · Panegyric · Performative utterance · Poetry · Reading (process · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Mathematics · Philosophy

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