In this course, we examine a persistent "quarrel" between two rival ways of thinking that are central to Western thought and culture. This quarrel or debate is one that Plato characterizes as an "ancient quarrel" between philosophy and rhetoric. In its classical formulation in fifth- and fourth-century Greece, the quarrel was between the Sophists, a group of itinerant educators and orators, and their philosophical Athenian rivals Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. In the contemporary period, the debate continues in the arenas of knowledge, value and the arts.

In the first five weeks of the course we focus on questions of knowledge, examining how rhetorical and philosophical thinkers characterize knowledge, truth and language. We find that the classical "philosophers" tend to see knowledge as the apprehension of context-invariant truths, the nature of which may communicated to others in a transparent language. Their rhetorical rivals, in contrast, tend to characterize language as a family of "games" played by situated, contingent individua ls; they depict knowledge as fabricated within those games; and they see "truth" as a term of praise or endorsement with which communities or audiences honor persuasive assertions. We examine the way the rhetorical position is delineated in Gorgias' Not- Being and Helen, and in Protagoras' fragments. We then read the philosophical critiques raised in Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus, and in Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations and Rhetoric. We then read contemporary theorists engaged in this debate. We rea d the neosophistic thinkers Derrida, Rorty, Kuhn and Fish, and their critics Searle, Sokal, and Nussbaum.

In the second part of the course, we examine the way rhetorical and philosophical thinkers tend to see ethical and political issues such as the nature of goodness, virtue and justice. We read Gorgias' Palamedes and Socrates' Apology, revisit Plato's Gorgias, and read sections of Plato's Republic. We then turn to the contemporary version of this debate, reading the debates between Fish and D'Souza, Rorty and Blackburn (among others), and essays by Eagleton and Chomsky.

In the third part of the course, we examine the quarrel between rhetoricians and philosophers about the nature of art. We read Plato's Ion, in which Plato depicts the poet as being "inspired" by the muses, and in turn inspiring a rhapsodic interpreter and ultimately an audience; and we read Aristotle's Poetics. We then read the Art of Poetry, in which Horace depicts the poet as a rhetorician who draws on the texts and strategies of other authors in order to please, teach and move his or her audience. We then turn to the contemporary debates about the nature and function of art, reading essays by Rorty, Eagleton, Jameson and others.

Students will write two five-page papers and a 12 page final paper.

Competing views about the nature of morality, the "good life," and justice.

Paper 2.

The culture wars: the challenge of the postmodern ; the nature of the artist, the work of art, and the audience; education and culture; postmodern pastiche and parody; obscenity and art; popular and high culture

Paper 3.