My research is on rhetorical theory both past and present---but mostly past. I'm fascinated by language and the visceral power of speech, and I see rhetorical theory as an apparatus for exposing, explaining, exploiting, and controlling that power. For a time, this interest led me to research projects on religious glossolalia and Wittgenstein, but Wittgenstein led me to Heidegger, glossolalia led me to Paul, and both Heidegger and Paul led me to the Greeks and, ultimately, to Plato, who has been my long home. My work has been published in Philosophy and Rhetoric, Rhetorica, and the Journal of Communication and Religion. My edited volume on rhetoric before Plato is published with the University of South Carolina Press (2017). My book on rhetorical theory in Plato's dialogues is forthcoming with University of Chicago Press in the Summer of 2018.
This essay traces a line of connection among various historical uses of apostrophe—oratorical, po... more This essay traces a line of connection among various historical uses of apostrophe—oratorical, poetic, and narratological. Despite appearances, these uses of apostrophe enclose a history of the knowing subject and a template for its attenuation that is relevant to twentieth- and twenty-first century thought, critiques of subjectivity, and critical theory. In this way I examine what residue of the history of subjectivity calls out to us from the figure of the apostrophe. The apostrophe, and perhaps many other figures besides, thus truly are as G. O. Hutchison describes: “like boxes waiting to be opened, full of [underinterpreted] significance.”
In the West’s Will to Know and its attendant rhetorical forms, speech has been related to silence... more 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 of silence. This essay turns to the Buddhist tradition of rhetoric and dialectic to identify a form of knowledge where speech—negation—pursues silence. I then trace the same model of negatory speech in pursuit of silence in the long-repressed practice of sophistic antilogos.
How did rhetoric begin and what was it before it was called “rhetoric”? Must art have a name to b... more How did rhetoric begin and what was it before it was called “rhetoric”? Must art have a name to be considered art? What is the difference between eloquence and rhetoric? And what were the differences among poets, philosophers, sophists, and rhetoricians before Plato emphasized―or perhaps invented―their differences? In Logos without Rhetoric: The Arts of Language before Plato, Robin Reames attempts to intervene in these and other questions by examining the status of rhetorical theory in texts that predate Plato’s coining of the term “rhetoric” (c. 380 B.C.E.). From Homer and Hesiod to Parmenides and Heraclitus to Gorgias, Theodorus, and Isocrates, the case studies contained here examine the status of the discipline of rhetoric prior to and therefore in the absence of the influence of Plato and Aristotle’s full-fledged development of rhetorical theory in the fourth century B.C.E. The essays in this volume make a case for a porous boundary between theory and practice and promote skepticism about anachronistic distinctions between myth and reason and between philosophy and rhetoric in the historiography of rhetoric’s beginning. The result is an enlarged understanding of the rhetorical content of pre-fourth-century Greek texts.
In her 2006 article "The Task of the Bow" Carol Poster shows through an analysis of the... more In her 2006 article "The Task of the Bow" Carol Poster shows through an analysis of the fragment "For the bow, its name is life but its task is death" that for Heraclitus the instability of the material world also infects language and that investigating the unstable logos—its hidden, double, oblique meanings—discloses this extralinguistic world instability. This article conducts similar analysis of the wordplay in Heraclitus's opening lines, challenging the long-standing debate over the meaning of logos in the first fragment. Through reconsidering the context of Aristotle's references to Heraclitus's paradoxes, this article develops a set of hermeneutic criteria that may be applied to contemporary interpretations of the first fragment. Understood as a paradox, the hidden meaning of this logos must be sought through its primary meaning (speech or discourse), and its fuller interpretation requires an expansion (not contraction) of its possible significa...
The earliest record of the term “kommōtikē,” commonly translated as “cosmetics” or “self-adornmen... more The earliest record of the term “kommōtikē,” commonly translated as “cosmetics” or “self-adornment,” occurs in the “most famous passage” of Plato's dialogue Gorgias (Kennedy 1994, 37). There, Socrates compares rhetoric to cookery and sophistry to “kommōtikē” (464b–66a). This marks a decisive moment in the Platonic corpus, a moment when rhetoric and sophistry are associated with seeming and appearance and therefore distanced from being and reality. I outline the reasons why this translation is incomplete if not misleading. I propose an adjustment that pulls both the analogy and the dialogue away from a Platonist distinction between seeming and being and toward a distinction between foreign profligacy and domestic austerity. This transformation discharges the vulgarization of appearance as mere appearance and mere seeming that has long infected and hampered both our understanding of Plato's thought and of early rhetoric.
Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, 2012
This essay argues that Plato's use of narrative conceals within Socrates' explicit reject... more This essay argues that Plato's use of narrative conceals within Socrates' explicit rejection of rhetoric an implicit authorial endorsement, manifested in the dialectical and rhetorical failures surrounding Socrates' deliberations over logos. I suggest that Aristotle's Rhetoric is consonant with Plato's view in its general affirmation of rhetoric's power, utility, and necessity as well as in its specific recommendations regarding logos. I employ Martin Heidegger's explication of logos in Aristotle to illuminate how the term conforms to Plato's implicit position regarding logos and rhetoric. This interpretation entails an expanded meaning of logos as it is found in Rhetoric, assigning it a more primary, pre-logical, oral content.
There is no category of thought more deliberately or explicitly relegated to a subordinate role i... more 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 primary reason addressed in this essay is that the surviving fragments of the Sophists do not accord with this standard view, a discrepancy that is particularly acute in the case of the 5th-century sophist Protagoras. This essay attends to Protagoras’s doctrines concerning antilogos, the sophistic practice of contradiction and negation. I contend that sophistic antilogos was a paradoxical practice that embodied metaphysical stakes for language and discourse. I challenge the standard view of Sophists and their antilogos by reconstructing a specula...
The earliest record of the term kommōtikē, commonly translated as cosmetics or self-adornment, oc... more The earliest record of the term kommōtikē, commonly translated as cosmetics or self-adornment, occurs in the “most famous passage” (Kennedy 1994, 37) of Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, where Socrates compares rhetoric to cookery and sophistry to cosmetics (464b-466a). This marks the decisive moment in the Platonic corpus where rhetoric and sophistry are associated with seeming and appearance, and therefore distanced from being and reality. I outline the reasons why this translation is incomplete if not misleading. I propose an adjustment that pulls both the analogy and the dialogue away from a Platonist distinction between seeming and being, and toward a distinction between foreign profligacy and domestic austerity. This transformation discharges the vulgarization of appearance as mere appearance and mere seeming that have long infected and hampered both our understanding of Plato’s thought and of early rhetoric.
This paper applies rhetorical theory (specifically the rhetorical theorist Michael Leff's concept... more This paper applies rhetorical theory (specifically the rhetorical theorist Michael Leff's concept of hermeneutical rhetoric) to the " gay debate " in American evangelicalism. Given that liberal and conservative positions arise from contrasting interpretations of the Christian scriptures, which in turn arise from a contest of hermeneutical priorities, I suggest that hermeneutical rhetoric potentially creates interpretive common ground because it does not prioritize historical data over scriptural authority—a hermeneutic method that has been resisted consistently by American evangelicals. Through the specific case study of the 2006 Soulforce Equality Ride at Wheaton College, I demonstrate how hermeneutical rhetoric circumvents stakeholders' implicit observance of the hermeneutical fault line between liberal-historicism and evangelical-biblicism.
In her 2006 article “The Task of the Bow: Heraclitus’ Rhetorical Critique of Epic Language” Carol... more In her 2006 article “The Task of the Bow: Heraclitus’ Rhetorical Critique of Epic Language” Carol Poster shows through an analysis of fragment DK22b48 that for Heraclitus the instability of the material world also infects language, and that investigating the unstable logos—its hidden, double, oblique meanings—discloses this extra-linguistic world-instability. This paper conducts an analysis similar to Poster’s analysis of the wordplay and observations about the critique of language in DK22b48, and suggests that a similar investigation of the wordplay in Heraclitus’ opening lines (DK22b1) challenges the longstanding debate over the meaning of logos in the first fragment. Through reconsidering the context of Aristotle’s references to Heraclitus’ paradoxes, this paper develops a set of hermeneutic criteria that may be applied to contemporary interpretations of DK22b1. Accordingly, understood as a paradox, the hidden meaning of the logos of DK22b1 must be sought through its primary meaning—speech or discourse. Furthermore, as a paradox, its proper interpretation requires an expansion rather than a contraction of its possible signification. By such an interpretation, the logos-as-speech of DK22b1 is concomitant with and implicated in the volatile flux of phusis itself.
This essay argues that Plato’s use of narrative conceals within Socrates’ explicit rejection of r... more This essay argues that Plato’s use of narrative conceals within Socrates’ explicit rejection of rhetorican implicit authorial endorsement, manifested in the dialectical and rhetorical failures surrounding Socrates’ deliberations over logos. I suggest that Aristo- tle’s Rhetoric is consonant with Plato’s view in its general affirmation of rhetoric’s power,utility, and necessity as well as in its specific recommendations regarding logos. I employ Martin Heidegger’s explication of logos in Aristotle to illuminate how the term conforms to Plato’s implicit position regarding logos and rhetoric. This inter- pretation entails an expanded meaning of logos as it is found in Rhetoric, assigning it a more primary, pre-logical, oral content.
How did rhetoric begin and what was it before it was called “rhetoric”? Must art have a name to b... more How did rhetoric begin and what was it before it was called “rhetoric”? Must art have a name to be considered art? What is the difference between eloquence and rhetoric? And what were the differences among poets, philosophers, sophists, and rhetoricians before Plato emphasized―or perhaps invented―their differences? In Logos without Rhetoric: The Arts of Language before Plato, Robin Reames attempts to intervene in these and other questions by examining the status of rhetorical theory in texts that predate Plato’s coining of the term “rhetoric” (c. 380 B.C.E.). From Homer and Hesiod to Parmenides and Heraclitus to Gorgias, Theodorus, and Isocrates, the case studies contained here examine the status of the discipline of rhetoric prior to and therefore in the absence of the influence of Plato and Aristotle’s full-fledged development of rhetorical theory in the fourth century B.C.E.
The essays in this volume make a case for a porous boundary between theory and practice and promote skepticism about anachronistic distinctions between myth and reason and between philosophy and rhetoric in the historiography of rhetoric’s beginning. The result is an enlarged understanding of the rhetorical content of pre-fourth-century Greek texts.
The widespread understanding of language in the West is that it represents the world. This view, ... more The widespread understanding of language in the West is that it represents the world. This view, however, has not always been commonplace. In fact, it is a theory of language conceived by Plato, culminating in The Sophist. In that dialogue Plato introduced the idea of statements as being either true or false, where the distinction between falsity and truth rests on a deeper discrepancy between appearance and reality, or seeming and being.
This essay traces a line of connection among various historical uses of apostrophe—oratorical, po... more This essay traces a line of connection among various historical uses of apostrophe—oratorical, poetic, and narratological. Despite appearances, these uses of apostrophe enclose a history of the knowing subject and a template for its attenuation that is relevant to twentieth- and twenty-first century thought, critiques of subjectivity, and critical theory. In this way I examine what residue of the history of subjectivity calls out to us from the figure of the apostrophe. The apostrophe, and perhaps many other figures besides, thus truly are as G. O. Hutchison describes: “like boxes waiting to be opened, full of [underinterpreted] significance.”
In the West’s Will to Know and its attendant rhetorical forms, speech has been related to silence... more 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 of silence. This essay turns to the Buddhist tradition of rhetoric and dialectic to identify a form of knowledge where speech—negation—pursues silence. I then trace the same model of negatory speech in pursuit of silence in the long-repressed practice of sophistic antilogos.
How did rhetoric begin and what was it before it was called “rhetoric”? Must art have a name to b... more How did rhetoric begin and what was it before it was called “rhetoric”? Must art have a name to be considered art? What is the difference between eloquence and rhetoric? And what were the differences among poets, philosophers, sophists, and rhetoricians before Plato emphasized―or perhaps invented―their differences? In Logos without Rhetoric: The Arts of Language before Plato, Robin Reames attempts to intervene in these and other questions by examining the status of rhetorical theory in texts that predate Plato’s coining of the term “rhetoric” (c. 380 B.C.E.). From Homer and Hesiod to Parmenides and Heraclitus to Gorgias, Theodorus, and Isocrates, the case studies contained here examine the status of the discipline of rhetoric prior to and therefore in the absence of the influence of Plato and Aristotle’s full-fledged development of rhetorical theory in the fourth century B.C.E. The essays in this volume make a case for a porous boundary between theory and practice and promote skepticism about anachronistic distinctions between myth and reason and between philosophy and rhetoric in the historiography of rhetoric’s beginning. The result is an enlarged understanding of the rhetorical content of pre-fourth-century Greek texts.
In her 2006 article "The Task of the Bow" Carol Poster shows through an analysis of the... more In her 2006 article "The Task of the Bow" Carol Poster shows through an analysis of the fragment "For the bow, its name is life but its task is death" that for Heraclitus the instability of the material world also infects language and that investigating the unstable logos—its hidden, double, oblique meanings—discloses this extralinguistic world instability. This article conducts similar analysis of the wordplay in Heraclitus's opening lines, challenging the long-standing debate over the meaning of logos in the first fragment. Through reconsidering the context of Aristotle's references to Heraclitus's paradoxes, this article develops a set of hermeneutic criteria that may be applied to contemporary interpretations of the first fragment. Understood as a paradox, the hidden meaning of this logos must be sought through its primary meaning (speech or discourse), and its fuller interpretation requires an expansion (not contraction) of its possible significa...
The earliest record of the term “kommōtikē,” commonly translated as “cosmetics” or “self-adornmen... more The earliest record of the term “kommōtikē,” commonly translated as “cosmetics” or “self-adornment,” occurs in the “most famous passage” of Plato's dialogue Gorgias (Kennedy 1994, 37). There, Socrates compares rhetoric to cookery and sophistry to “kommōtikē” (464b–66a). This marks a decisive moment in the Platonic corpus, a moment when rhetoric and sophistry are associated with seeming and appearance and therefore distanced from being and reality. I outline the reasons why this translation is incomplete if not misleading. I propose an adjustment that pulls both the analogy and the dialogue away from a Platonist distinction between seeming and being and toward a distinction between foreign profligacy and domestic austerity. This transformation discharges the vulgarization of appearance as mere appearance and mere seeming that has long infected and hampered both our understanding of Plato's thought and of early rhetoric.
Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, 2012
This essay argues that Plato's use of narrative conceals within Socrates' explicit reject... more This essay argues that Plato's use of narrative conceals within Socrates' explicit rejection of rhetoric an implicit authorial endorsement, manifested in the dialectical and rhetorical failures surrounding Socrates' deliberations over logos. I suggest that Aristotle's Rhetoric is consonant with Plato's view in its general affirmation of rhetoric's power, utility, and necessity as well as in its specific recommendations regarding logos. I employ Martin Heidegger's explication of logos in Aristotle to illuminate how the term conforms to Plato's implicit position regarding logos and rhetoric. This interpretation entails an expanded meaning of logos as it is found in Rhetoric, assigning it a more primary, pre-logical, oral content.
There is no category of thought more deliberately or explicitly relegated to a subordinate role i... more 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 primary reason addressed in this essay is that the surviving fragments of the Sophists do not accord with this standard view, a discrepancy that is particularly acute in the case of the 5th-century sophist Protagoras. This essay attends to Protagoras’s doctrines concerning antilogos, the sophistic practice of contradiction and negation. I contend that sophistic antilogos was a paradoxical practice that embodied metaphysical stakes for language and discourse. I challenge the standard view of Sophists and their antilogos by reconstructing a specula...
The earliest record of the term kommōtikē, commonly translated as cosmetics or self-adornment, oc... more The earliest record of the term kommōtikē, commonly translated as cosmetics or self-adornment, occurs in the “most famous passage” (Kennedy 1994, 37) of Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, where Socrates compares rhetoric to cookery and sophistry to cosmetics (464b-466a). This marks the decisive moment in the Platonic corpus where rhetoric and sophistry are associated with seeming and appearance, and therefore distanced from being and reality. I outline the reasons why this translation is incomplete if not misleading. I propose an adjustment that pulls both the analogy and the dialogue away from a Platonist distinction between seeming and being, and toward a distinction between foreign profligacy and domestic austerity. This transformation discharges the vulgarization of appearance as mere appearance and mere seeming that have long infected and hampered both our understanding of Plato’s thought and of early rhetoric.
This paper applies rhetorical theory (specifically the rhetorical theorist Michael Leff's concept... more This paper applies rhetorical theory (specifically the rhetorical theorist Michael Leff's concept of hermeneutical rhetoric) to the " gay debate " in American evangelicalism. Given that liberal and conservative positions arise from contrasting interpretations of the Christian scriptures, which in turn arise from a contest of hermeneutical priorities, I suggest that hermeneutical rhetoric potentially creates interpretive common ground because it does not prioritize historical data over scriptural authority—a hermeneutic method that has been resisted consistently by American evangelicals. Through the specific case study of the 2006 Soulforce Equality Ride at Wheaton College, I demonstrate how hermeneutical rhetoric circumvents stakeholders' implicit observance of the hermeneutical fault line between liberal-historicism and evangelical-biblicism.
In her 2006 article “The Task of the Bow: Heraclitus’ Rhetorical Critique of Epic Language” Carol... more In her 2006 article “The Task of the Bow: Heraclitus’ Rhetorical Critique of Epic Language” Carol Poster shows through an analysis of fragment DK22b48 that for Heraclitus the instability of the material world also infects language, and that investigating the unstable logos—its hidden, double, oblique meanings—discloses this extra-linguistic world-instability. This paper conducts an analysis similar to Poster’s analysis of the wordplay and observations about the critique of language in DK22b48, and suggests that a similar investigation of the wordplay in Heraclitus’ opening lines (DK22b1) challenges the longstanding debate over the meaning of logos in the first fragment. Through reconsidering the context of Aristotle’s references to Heraclitus’ paradoxes, this paper develops a set of hermeneutic criteria that may be applied to contemporary interpretations of DK22b1. Accordingly, understood as a paradox, the hidden meaning of the logos of DK22b1 must be sought through its primary meaning—speech or discourse. Furthermore, as a paradox, its proper interpretation requires an expansion rather than a contraction of its possible signification. By such an interpretation, the logos-as-speech of DK22b1 is concomitant with and implicated in the volatile flux of phusis itself.
This essay argues that Plato’s use of narrative conceals within Socrates’ explicit rejection of r... more This essay argues that Plato’s use of narrative conceals within Socrates’ explicit rejection of rhetorican implicit authorial endorsement, manifested in the dialectical and rhetorical failures surrounding Socrates’ deliberations over logos. I suggest that Aristo- tle’s Rhetoric is consonant with Plato’s view in its general affirmation of rhetoric’s power,utility, and necessity as well as in its specific recommendations regarding logos. I employ Martin Heidegger’s explication of logos in Aristotle to illuminate how the term conforms to Plato’s implicit position regarding logos and rhetoric. This inter- pretation entails an expanded meaning of logos as it is found in Rhetoric, assigning it a more primary, pre-logical, oral content.
How did rhetoric begin and what was it before it was called “rhetoric”? Must art have a name to b... more How did rhetoric begin and what was it before it was called “rhetoric”? Must art have a name to be considered art? What is the difference between eloquence and rhetoric? And what were the differences among poets, philosophers, sophists, and rhetoricians before Plato emphasized―or perhaps invented―their differences? In Logos without Rhetoric: The Arts of Language before Plato, Robin Reames attempts to intervene in these and other questions by examining the status of rhetorical theory in texts that predate Plato’s coining of the term “rhetoric” (c. 380 B.C.E.). From Homer and Hesiod to Parmenides and Heraclitus to Gorgias, Theodorus, and Isocrates, the case studies contained here examine the status of the discipline of rhetoric prior to and therefore in the absence of the influence of Plato and Aristotle’s full-fledged development of rhetorical theory in the fourth century B.C.E.
The essays in this volume make a case for a porous boundary between theory and practice and promote skepticism about anachronistic distinctions between myth and reason and between philosophy and rhetoric in the historiography of rhetoric’s beginning. The result is an enlarged understanding of the rhetorical content of pre-fourth-century Greek texts.
The widespread understanding of language in the West is that it represents the world. This view, ... more The widespread understanding of language in the West is that it represents the world. This view, however, has not always been commonplace. In fact, it is a theory of language conceived by Plato, culminating in The Sophist. In that dialogue Plato introduced the idea of statements as being either true or false, where the distinction between falsity and truth rests on a deeper discrepancy between appearance and reality, or seeming and being.
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The essays in this volume make a case for a porous boundary between theory and practice and promote skepticism about anachronistic distinctions between myth and reason and between philosophy and rhetoric in the historiography of rhetoric’s beginning. The result is an enlarged understanding of the rhetorical content of pre-fourth-century Greek texts.
The essays in this volume make a case for a porous boundary between theory and practice and promote skepticism about anachronistic distinctions between myth and reason and between philosophy and rhetoric in the historiography of rhetoric’s beginning. The result is an enlarged understanding of the rhetorical content of pre-fourth-century Greek texts.