Sophistical practice : toward a consistent relativism / Barbara Cassin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cassin, Barbara, author.

Standardized Title:

Essays. Selections. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sophists (Greek philosophy).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (384 p.)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Sophistics is the paradigm of a discourse that does things with words. It is not pure rhetoric, as Plato wants us to believe, but it provides an alternative to the philosophical mainstream. A sophistic history of philosophy questions the orthodox philosophical history of philosophy: that of ontology and truth in itself.In this book, we discover unusual Presocratics, wreaking havoc with the fetish of true and false. Their logoi perform politics and perform reality. Their sophistic practice can shed crucial light on contemporary events, such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, where, to "e Desmond Tutu, “words,language, and rhetoric do things,” creating things like the new “rainbow people.” Transitional justice requires a consistent and sustainable relativism: not Truth, but truth for, and enough of the truth for there to be a community.Philosophy itself is about words before it is about concepts. Language manifests itself in reality only as multiplicity; different languages perform different types of worlds; and difficulties of translation are but symptoms of these differences. This desacralized untranslatability undermines and deconstructs the Heideggerian statement that there is a historical language of philosophy that is Greek by essence (being the only language able to say what “is”) and today is German.Sophistical Practice constitutes a major contribution to the debate among philosophical pluralism, unitarism, and pragmatism. It will change how we discuss such words as city, truth, and politics. Philologically and philosophically rethinking the sophistical gesture, relying on performance and translation, it proposes a newparadigm for the human sciences.

Contents:

Introduction: Toward a new topology of philosophy

I. Unusual presocratics

Who's afraid of the sophists? Against ethical correctness

Speak if you are a man, or the transcendental exclusion

Seeing Helen in every woman: woman and word

II. Sophistics, rhetorics, politics

Rhetorical turns in ancient Greece

Topos/Kairos: two modes of invention

Time of deliberation and space of power: Athens and Rome, the first conflict

III. Sophistical trends in political philosophy

From organism to picnic: which consensus for which city?

Aristotle with and against Kant on the idea of human nature

Greeks and Romans: paradigms of the past in Arendt and Heidegger

IV. Performance and performative

How to really do things with words: performance before the performative

The performative without condition: a university sans appel

Genres and genders. Woman/philosopher: identity as strategy

Philosophizing in tongues

V. "Enough of the truth for ..."

"Enough of the truth for ... ": on the truth and reconciliation commission

Politics of memory: on the treatment of hate

Google and cultural democracy

The relativity of translation and relativism.

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780823256419

0823256413

9780823256396

0823256391

9780823256426

0823256421

9780823261352

0823261352

9780823256402

0823256405

OCLC:

878144572