Essays on Argumentation in Antiquity, 1st ed. 2021 Argumentation Library Series, Vol. 39

This book provides a collection of essays representing the state of the art in the research into argumentation in classical antiquity. It contains essays from leading and up and coming scholars on figures as diverse as Parmenides, Gorgias, Seneca, and Classical Chinese "wandering persuaders." 

The book includes contributions from specialists in the history of philosophy as well as specialists in contemporary argumentation theory, and stimulates the dialogue between scholars studying issues relating to argumentation theory in ancient philosophy and contemporary argumentation theorists. Furthermore, the book sets the direction for research into argumentation in antiquity by encouraging an engagement with a broader range of historical figures, and closer collaboration between contemporary concerns and the history of philosophy.

Truth Attending Persuasion.- Gorgias and the Weakness of Logos.- Reasoning without Reasons – Gorgias, Isocrates and Plato’s Concept of Reasoning and Argumentation.- Argumentation and Persuasion in Classical Chinese Literature.- βραχυλογία: Sophistic, Platonic, Aristotelian.- The Trouble of Hosting a Debate: Callicles’ Anger and Socrates’ Lack of Manners.- Dialectic and Argumentation in Plato’s Dialogues.- What a god of refutation knows: Elegchos and dialektike in Plato’s Sophist.- The Prospects of Rhetoric in the Late Platonic Dialogues.- Platonic Epagōgē and the ‘Purification’ of the Method of Collection.- Evaluation and Truth in Topics 8.11.- Endoxa and Epistemology in Aristotle.- Sextus on Argumentation: Dialectic, Therapy and Inquiry.- Seneca’s Epistemological Critique of Zeno’s Dialectic.- Was Aristotle a Virtue Argumentation Theorist?.- Aristotelian Dialectic and Formal Dialogue Systems for Argumentation. 

Joseph Bjelde holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 2013, he has been an assistant professor at Humboldt University, Berlin. His work chiefly focuses on Plato’s epistemology.

David Merry holds a Ph.D. from Humboldt University in Berlin, and an M.A. from the University of Auckland, was a visiting graduate student at the University of Cambridge in 2016, and has held postdoc appointments at Heidelberg University and Humboldt University. His work focuses on how disagreements in theories of argumentation can lead to disagreements in practical philosophy, and on tensions between seeing arguments as a way to live well, and as a way of discovering truth. His work has appeared in History and Philosophy of Logic, the Journal of Medical Ethics, and Bioethics.

Christopher Roser is a doctoral student at Humboldt University, Berlin, and holds an M.Phil. in Classics from the University of Cambridge. He has been a visiting student and scholar at the Universityof Oxford, the University of Toronto, and Columbia University in New York. His work focuses on how Plato’s understanding of the relationship between argumentation and rationality developed as a response to rhetoricians such as Gorgias and Isocrates.