Blackwell Reference Online

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Interactions between rhetoric and philosophy have always been marked by concerns (and sometimes controversy) about the scope, status, and interdependence of the two disciplines. The reason is that while both disciplines are concerned with →  Discourse , their aims are different. Philosophy is chiefly concerned with discourse as a medium to express and test knowledge, whereas rhetoric is chiefly concerned with discourse as a medium of influence on minds of individuals and collectives. As a historical matter, contacts between rhetoric and philosophy have differed according to intellectual and cultural circumstances within the ancient, medieval, renaissance, modern, and contemporary eras. The earliest relations between rhetoric and philosophy concerned whether principles of speaking constituted an art. Theoretical precepts about speech-making existed before mid-fifth century bce , beginning evidently with Tisias (and possibly Corax) of Syracuse (→  Rhetoric, Pre-Socratic ). By the early fourth century, a body of precepts had developed on public speaking that many conceived as an art. The status of the “art of speeches” was first questioned by Isocrates c. 390 bce , when he insisted that speaking was not governed by an invariable, exact art, but rather a variable, productive art ( Against the sophists 10–12). Shortly afterward, Plato enlarged the argument in his Gorgias (c. 387 ... log in or subscribe to read full text