Philosophical dialogue as genre has a time-honoured history. In classical and late antiquity, from the early Socratic dialogues of Plato, through writings of Plutarch, Cicero, Tacitus, to Saint Augustine`s De Magistro, the genre had already undergone several mutations. It remained a dominant discourse from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment and was popular among such diverse writers as Castiglione, Galileo, More, Hobbes, Hume, Berkeley, Locke, Diderot, and Voltaire.
Although philosophical dialogue is generally regarded as a `non-literary` genre or, as one writer puts it, `virtual theatre,` it nonetheless is capable of displaying some fundamental features of language in social use. The genre has received special attention from hermeneuticians like Gadamer and language philosophers in the wake of Wittgenstein. Linguistics aside, three main approaches can be identified, respectively from the perspectives of pragmatics, logic, and rhetoric; and much light has been shed on such important issues as discursive subjectivity, power relation, and truth-claim.
A similar genre, called `host and guest queries and answers` (zhuke wennan), can be found in Chinese philosophical discourse. Both the Great Debate over name and substance in the Warring States Period and the later Buddhist Gongan are often represented in dramatic and dialogic form. Zhuangzi and Gongsun Longzi are two prominent examples.
This course will inquire into the logical and rhetorical implications of philosophical dialogue. It will examine three clusters of writing: (1) Plato`s elenchic dialogues before Meno, with special reference to Gorgias and its relation to the origin of rhetoric; (2) late classical dialogues, including Cicero`s Academica, De Natura Deorum, Plutarch`s Stoicorum repugnantiis, and Saint Augustine`s De Magistro, in order to see if the Socratic elenchus is still in operation, albeit disguised; (3) the dialogues in Zhuangzi and Gongsun Longzi, for semiotic and rhetorical parallels.




SUGGESTED READINGS
Augustine, Saint. Concerning the Teacher (De Magistro). In Basic Writings. Ed.
Whitney J. Oates. 2 vols. New York: Random House, 1948. 1: 361-95.
Benson, Hugh H. `The Dissolution of the Problem of the Elenchus.` Oxford Studies
in Ancient Philosophy 13 (1995), 45-112. Hereinafter cited as OSAP.
Brickhouse, Thomas C. and Smith, Nicholas D., `Socrates` Elenchic Mission.`
OSAP 9 (1991): 131-159.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. De Natura Deorum and Academica. Trans. R. Rackham.
The Loeb Classical Library 268. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1994 [1933].
Dascal, Marcelo, ed. Dialogue: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins, 1985.
Dubois, J., Edeline, F., Klinkenberg, J.M, Mingut, P., Pire, F., and Trinon H.
(Groupe m). A General Rhetoric. Trans. Paul B. Burrell and Edgar M. Slotkin.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1981.
Hintikka, Jaakko. Selected Papers. 5 vols. Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer, 1999.
Jacques, Francis. Difference and Subjectivity: Dialogue and Personal Identity. Trans.
Andrew Rothwell. New Haven: Yale UP, 1991.
Kahn, Charles H. Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a
Literary Form. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.
Maranhao, Tullio, ed. The Interpretation of Dialogue. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990. Meyer, Michel. From Logic to Rhetoric. Trans. Paul Pauwels and others. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins, 1986.
Perelman, Chaim, and Olbrechts-Tyteca, Lucie. The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on
Argumentation. Trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver. Nore Dame: Notre
Dame UP, 1969.
Plato. Gorgias. Trans. W. R. M. Lamb. Vol. 5 of 7 vols. The Loeb Classical Library.
London: Heinemann, 1953.
Plutarch. Moralia. 16 vols. 13:2. Trans. and ed. Harold Cherniss. The Loeb Classical
Library 470. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1976.
Ryle, Gilbert. Plato`s Progress. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1966.
Smiley, Timothy, ed. Philosophical Dialogues: Plato, Hume, Wittgenstein.
Proceedings of the British Academy 85. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995.
Stokes, Michael C. Plato`s Socratic Conversations: Drama and Dialectic in Three Dialogues. London: Athlone P, 1986.
Vaina, Lucia, and Hintikka, Jaakko, eds. Cognitive Constraints on Communication:Representations and Processes. Doredrecht and Boston: D. Reidel, 1984.
Vlastos, Gregory. Socratic Studies. Ed. Myles.Burnyeat. Cambridge: CambridgeUP, 1994.


※Please note that the class will meet in the SECOND WEEK, i.e.
28th September 2001.