The Rhetoric of Plato's Republic

Download or read book The Rhetoric of Plato's Republic written by James L. Kastely and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J. Kastely makes the case for Plato’s Republic as a self-consciously rhetorical work exploring a fundamental problem for philosophy. He argues that the Republic is a mimetic poem responding to a discursive crisis within democracy, namely, the absence of a genuinely persuasive defense of justice. Understanding the Republic as a work that raises persuasion as a key problem for philosophy requires us to rethink Plato’s understanding of the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric. This is a major and provocative reconsideration of the relationship of philosophy and rhetoric and raises issues central to a wide range of scholarly fields, from political theory to psychology to aesthetics.