The Greeks, Pragmatism, and the Endless Mediation of Rhetoric and Philosophy

This article begins by revisiting the Greek origins of the terms "rhetoric" and "philosophy" from a nominalist and antiessentialist perspective. Though both terms were given early shape by Plato, Isocrates offered a different take on philosophia that arguably is equally legitimate, even if largely neglected historically. In contemporary scholarship, the question is not what is rhetoric or what is philosophy, but what can be gained by deploying rhetorical and philosophical vocabularies to describe and understand the world. Given the problems facing us today, philosophers and rhetoric scholars should engage each other to address challenges where our interests converge.