Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric.

• Author: Johnstone, Christopher Lyle
• Position: Book Review

Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric. By Bruce McComisky. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002; pp. xiii + 159. $35.00.

The past half-century has witnessed a growing interest in the Sophists of 5th-century Athens. This interest is particularly noteworthy because it involves a determination to consider the Sophists on their own terms rather than through Plato's eyes, as had been customary in most 19th and early 20th-century sophistic studies. Though Grote's (1846) effort to challenge the Platonist bias in historical treatments of the Sophists set an early precedent, it was such scholars as Untersteiner (1949, 1954), Cornford (1950), Kerferd (1950, 1981a, 1981b), and Guthrie (1968, 1971) who inspired current re-visioned histories of sophistic ideas. Recent studies have sought to illuminate the philosophical foundations of these ideas and their implications for the theory and practice of rhetoric. J. Poulakos (1983a, 1983b, 1984, 1990, 1995), Schiappa (1990, 1991a, 1991b, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999), DeRomilly (1992), and others have reconstructed and elaborated the views of Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, and other 5th-century teachers and practitioners of the logon techne--the art of speech.

Bruce McComisky's examination of Gorgias makes interesting and useful contributions to this body of sophistic scholarship. Indeed, he acknowledges his indebtedness to Poulakos and Schiappa, as well as to others who have lately examined sophistic doctrines (Crowley, 1979, 1989; Enos, 1992, 1993; Jarratt, 1987a, 1987b, 1991; Neel, 1988; T. Poulakos, 1988, 1989; Vitanza, 1991, 1997), and then seeks to situate his own investigation within the broad context of sophistic studies. McComisky introduces the book by identifying four critical approaches to studying the sophists: one that "takes Plato at his word, disparaging the sophists as greedy cheaters"; a second that "accept[s] what Plato says about the sophists" but that revalues the doctrines Plato ascribes to them; a third that dismisses Plato's "misrepresentation of the sophists," focusing on sophistic texts themselves in order to "discover common threads" among them; and a fourth that disregards Plato's "misrepresentations," examines the texts themselves, and seeks to understand "the unique contributions of each individual sophist in the context of Pre-Socratic thought" (p. 5). It is this last approach that McComisky embraces in his own examination of Gorgias.

The author also notes a recent controversy concerning the methods and aims of sophistic scholarship. In a 1990 Philosophy and Rhetoric essay, Schiappa differentiates between the "historical reconstruction" of sophistic doctrines and the "[rational] reconstruction of neo-sophistic rhetorical theory and criticism" (193). Whereas the former aims to "recapture the past insofar as possible on it own terms" (194), the latter seeks to "draw on sophistic thinking in order to contribute to contemporary theory and practice" (195; italics in original). Although McComisky endorses this distinction, he provides a corrective: "the practice of neosophistic appropriation does not fall into the category of [either] rational [or historical] reconstruction, but instead ... requires its own category" (p. 8). Thus, he writes, "assuming a clear separation between historical interpretation (with historical ... and rational reconstruction functioning as points on a continuum) and neosophistic appropriation, I proceed ... with caution" to pursue both objectives (p. 11). Accordingly, he divides the book into two parts in order to emphasize his distinct purposes.

The first part of the work is devoted to the historical interpretation of "Gorgianic rhetoric,"...