Logic and Rhetor ic in Philosophical Dialogue
Date Issued
2002-07-31
Date
2002-07-31
Author(s)
張漢良
DOI
902411H002062
Abstract
Philosophical dialogue as genre has a
time-honoured history. In classical and late
antiquity, from the early Socratic dialogues of
Plato, through writings of Plutarch, Cicero,
Tacitus, to Saint Augustine’s De Magistro and
Contra Academicos, the genre had already
undergone several mutations. It remained a
dominant discourse from the Renaissance to
the Enlightenment and was popular among
such diverse writers as Castiglione, Galileo,
More, Hobbes, Hume, Berkeley, Locke,
Diderot, and Voltaire.
Although philosophical dialogue is
generally regarded as a “non-literary” genre
or, as one writer puts it, “virtual theatre,” it
nonetheless is capable of displaying some
fundamental features of language in social
use. The genre has received special attention
from hermeneuticians like Gadamer and
language philosophers in the wake of
Wittgenstein. Linguistics aside, three main
approaches can be identified, respectively
from the perspectives of pragmatics, logic,
and rhetoric; and much light has been shed on
such important issues as discursive
subjectivity, power relation, and truth-claim.
A similar genre, called “host and guest
queries and answers” (zhuke wennan), can be
found in Chinese philosophical discourse.
Both the Great Debate over name and
substance in the Warring States Period and
the later Buddhist Gongan are often
2
represented in dramatic and dialogic form.
Zhuangzi and Gongsun Longzi are two
prominent examples.
This project will enquire into the logical
and rhetorical implications of philosophical
dialogue. It will examine three clusters of
writing: (1) Plato’s elenchic dialogues before
Meno, with special reference to Gorgias and
its relation to the origin of rhetoric; (2) late
classical dialogues, including Cicero’s
Academica , De Natura Deorum, Plutarch’s
Stoicorum repugnantiis, and Saint
Augustine’s De Magistro, in order to see if
the Socratic elenchus is still in operation,
albeit disguised; (3) the dialogues in Zhuangzi
and Gongsun Longzi, for semiotic and
rhetorical parallels.
Subjects
哲學對話
論辯
語用學
修辭學
Publisher
臺北市：國立臺灣大學外國語文學系暨研究所
Type
report
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