Workshop: Edward Schiappa, with a response from David Mirhady

Dr. Edward Schiappa, John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities (MIT), is generously offering us a preview of his current book in progress: From Logos to Rhētorikē: A Lexical History of the Emergence of Rhetoric as a Discipline in Classical Greece. Dr. David Mirhady (Simon Fraser University) will offer a response:

• Abstract: From Logos to Rhētorikē offers a lexical and conceptual history of how rhetoric emerged as a distinct discipline in classical Greece. Challenging retrospective narratives that project “rhetoric” back onto the fifth century, the book argues that persuasive discourse long preceded the disciplinary abstraction rhētorikē, which probably originated with Plato’s Gorgias. Adopting a lexical-historical nominalist approach influenced by Havelock, Kuhn, and Moore, the study traces how recurring speech practices gradually acquired names, technical vocabularies, theoretical organization, and institutional form. Through detailed semantic histories of terms related to logos, persuasion, genre, argument, arrangement, style, and education, the book reconstructs the competing paradigms of logos-education associated with Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Anaximenes, and Aristotle. It argues that rhetoric was not "invented" suddenly, but disciplined progressively through naming, classification, pedagogical practice, and philosophical systematization, culminating in Aristotle's Rhetoric, where rhētorikē finally becomes a formally defined technē.

Registered participants will receive a confirmation with a link to the PDF chapter. Please write to us if you have any questions!