POSTER,Carol

Summer 2005, pages 31 - 74

Framing Theaetetus: Plato and Rhetorical (Mis)representation

ABSTRACT: This essay is divided into two parts, the first part showing how certain disciplinary and historiographical habits and ideologies have formed obstacles to rhetorical reading of Plato by many scholars in rhetoric. The second part reads rhetorically a dramatically related group of four Platonic dialogues, Theaetetus, Euthyphro, Sophist, and Statesman, arguing that Plato's commitment to Heraclitean ontology determines certain rhetorical, temporal, and argumentative patterns of these works.