How does one construct a role for oneself in the fourth-century democratic city? This commentary on Isocrates' Antidosis , which includes a full translation as well as an extensive introduction, demonstrates that a rhetorician may do so by assuming roles that subvert many of the conventions invoked by the genre - a non-speaker in a rhetorical community, a rhetorician in a world where rhetorical performativity has derogatory connotations, a philosopher following the trial of Socrates. Moreover, Yun Lee Too demonstrates how the narrative of 'self' in the Antidosis is to be understood as a sophisticated amalgam of literary, rhetorical, philosophical, and legal discourses.

Crucial to the question of self-characterization is how one can present a sympathetic persona through rhetoric, spoken or written, when rhetorical performance itself has derogatory connotations as a result of association with the professional speechmakers of classical Greece, the sophists."--BOOK JACKET.

The Rhetoric of Identity in Isocrates provides an interpretation of an important, but largely neglected and disregarded, fourth-century Athenian author to show how he uses writing to provide a model of political engagement that is distinct from his own contemporaries' (especially Plato's) and from our own notions of political involvement. It demonstrates that ancient rhetorical discourse raises issues of contemporary relevance, especially regarding the status of the written word and current debates on canon and curriculum in education.

Logos and Power in Isocrates and Aristotle presents Isocrates' vision of discourse as a worthy rival, rather than a mere precursor, of Aristotle's Rhetoric. It argues that much of what Aristotle said about the status of rhetoric and the role of discourse may have been a reaction to Isocrates.

The Essential Isocrates is a comprehensive introduction to Isocrates, one of ancient Greece’s foremost orators. Jon D. Mikalson presents Isocrates largely in his own words, with original English translations of selections of his writings on his life and times and on morality, religion, philosophy, rhetoric, education, political theory, and Greek and Athenian history. In Mikalson’s treatment, Isocrates receives his due not only as a major thinker but as one whose work has resonated across time, influencing even modern education practices and theory. Isocrates wrote extensively about Athens in the fourth century BCE and before, and his speeches, letters, and essays provide a trove of insights concerning the intellectual, political, and social currents of his time. Mikalson details what we know about Isocrates’s long, eventful, and complicated life, and much can be gleaned on the personal level from his own writings, as Isocrates was one of the most introspective authors of the Classical Period. By collecting the most representative and important passages of Isocrates’s writings, arranging them topically, and placing them in historical context, The Essential Isocrates invites general and expert readers alike to engage with one of antiquity’s most compelling men of ideas.

This volume contains the first scholarly commentary on the puzzling work Busiris – part mythological jeu d’esprit, part rhetorical treatise and part self-promoting polemic – by the Greek educator and rhetorician Isocrates (436-338 BC). The commentary reveals Isocrates’ strategies in advertising his own political rhetoric as a middle way between amoral ‘sophistic’ education and the abstruse studies of Plato’s Academy. Introductory chapters situate Busiris within the lively intellectual marketplace of 4th-century Athens, showing how the work parodies Plato’s Republic, and how its revisionist treatment of the monster-king Busiris reflects Athenian fascination with the ‘alien wisdom’ of Egypt. As a whole, the book casts new light both on Isocrates himself, revealed as an agile and witty polemicist, and on the struggle between rhetoric and philosophy from which Hellenism and modern humanities were born.

Edited by a small group of students—including Alain Badiou, Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault—at the Ecole normale supérieure in Paris, the Cahiers pour l’Analyse appeared in ten volumes between 1966 to 1969. The journal was conceived as a contribution to a philosophy based on the primacy of concepts and the rigor of logic and formalization, as opposed to lived experience or the interpretation of meaning. The Cahiers published landmark texts by the most influential thinkers of the day, including Derrida, Foucault, Irigaray, and Lacan, and were soon recognized as one of the most significant and innovative philosophical projects of the time. The two volumes of Concept and Form offer the first systematic presentation and assessment of the Cahiers legacy in any language. The first volume translates a selection of original Cahiers texts.

Aristotle, Rhetoric II: A Commentary completes the acclaimed work undertaken by the author in his first (1980) volume on Aristotle's Rhetoric. The first Commentary on the Rhetoric in more than a century, it is not likely to be superseded for at least another hundred years.

Despite the significance of its contents, the so-called Demades papyrus (P.Berol. inv. 13045) has received scarce scholarly attention since the 1923 editio princeps by Karl Kunst. This unique late second-century BCE document of almost 430 lines was found in the Egyptian chora, but it is supposed to have been written in Alexandria, where it probably served as a textbook for the highest level of rhetorical education. Besides shedding new light on its find circumstances and physical aspects, the volume offers a full re-edition and commentary of the two adespota texts contained in it, namely a eulogy of the Lagid monarchy and a historical work consisting of a dialogue between Demades and his prosecutor in the trial of 319 BCE at the court of Pella. The aim of the accompanying introduction is to address the question of the origin, nature and purpose of such fragments and of the collection itself, as well as to show to what extent the papyrus contributes to a better understanding of some of the main historical events of the early Hellenistic period. This book is thus meant to fill a significant gap in Classical scholarship, all the more so as a close investigation of most of the topics dealt with therein has hitherto been lacking.