Exhortations to Philosophy: The Protreptics of Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle by James Henderson Collins II (review)

This book examines the origin of the genre of philosophical and rhetorical protreptics (“turnings toward”) in the classical period. The topic is timely, despite the latest insurgent scholarly interest in physics as opposed to the traditionally predominant study of ethics. Although the question of recruitment strategies, as used by philosophy and rhetoric, carries in itself deep ethical connotations about the wares the two disciplines have to offer, Collins’ examination is not, nor does it intend to be, a philosophical analysis of their ethical nature. Instead, it falls—and markedly so—in the category of Quellenforschung and the theorization of literary genres such as F. Cairns’ Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry (Edinburgh 1972) and M. M. Bakhtin’s Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (Austin 1986). Bringing his predecessors’ course of study up to date, Collins applies to his investigation the trendy repertoire of intellectual culture as “a marketplace of ideas” wherein philosophic discourse becomes “philosophic advertising,” students are “prospective clients” and “consumers,” and philosophers and rhetoricians are “professional intellectuals” and “competitors” with “marketing campaigns” (ix–xiv). While the above branding may seem to some excessive, the book makes an original contribution to the study of the origin of philosophical (and, secondarily, of rhetorical) protreptics in fourth-century Athens.

After a hefty introduction (hefty both in length and theoretical content), the book is divided into two parts, featuring the Platonic and the Isocratean sides of exhortative literature (parts 1 and 2, respectively), followed by an epilogue on the stabilization of the genre in Aristotle. For economy of space, I will highlight the main course of the argument in the individual parts, not in the individual chapters.

The core argument is presented in the introduction. In it, Collins introduces what he refers to as “my theory of protreptic” (3) or “our more fluid model” (33) as configured against the background of the aforementioned studies and Aristotle’s rhetorical theory. Collins’ theory/model proposes that in the fourth century philosophy and rhetoric compete with each other to attract students as consumers of the different lifestyles they have to offer. While this competition gives the two disciplines an at first unique, and later a characteristic, protreptic bent (33), the protreptic genre itself does not mature in its fully-fledged form until Aristotle. The fluidity of the genre, Collins argues, is based on the interaction between external and internal levels of discourse. With time, this dynamic interaction, the author concludes, defines the form and content of the protreptic genre as found in Aristotle.

The two parts of the main body illustrate the above thesis. Part 1 dissects the discursive levels of Plato’s dialogues into the categories of the intra- and extra-diegetic, the metaleptic, and the pro- and apotreptic. Collins correctly understands these levels as mutually embedded in the structure of the individual works, as, for example, in Plato’s Euthydemus. The dialogue aims at attracting and ultimately at converting an external audience to philosophy, in direct competition with the wares of the rhetoric-based model, by narrating its own internal “conversion” story. Part 2 turns to the Isocratean model. In comparison and in competition with the Platonic model, the rhetorical model is more flexible, according to Collins. It stems from “lived experience” and allows the audience to voice its beliefs—beliefs that are only afterwards corrected by professional teachers. The epilogue examines the stabilization of the genre in Aristotle’s Protrepticus, now lost but indirectly documented through its rich reception.

The organization of the work is unbalanced, and the inclusion of Aristotle in its title is an overstatement. The book is about the origin of the protreptic genre in the Platonic dialogue, with Isocrates’ speeches as a corollary, and Aristotle’s contribution as an aftermath. This imbalance, however, works well in proving the main thesis of the book: that, in the fourth century, there is no protreptic...