The Concept of "Persuasive" in Ancient Greece: Historicising Greek Rhetorical Theory through the Sociohistorical Conditions of the Power of Speech
We take for granted that speech can be “persuasive.” Yet the concept of “persuasive” is neither timeless nor universal—it is a product of history. The uncanniness of the "post-truth politics" introduced with Donald Trump in the 2010s may lie precisely in this: the principles that once were presumed to guide public judgment of a claim’s validity now seem arbitrary, fragile, and fleeting.
This project tackles a key challenge posed by “post-truth politics" for rhetorical scholarship: its reliance on ancient frameworks presumed to hold universal validity. By historicizing the presuppositions undergirding rhetorical theory, it reinterprets Ancient Greek rhetoric—not as the discovery of timeless linguistic power but as a reflection of the social transformations of 6th- to 4th-century BCE Greece that gave speech its conditional authority.
At its center is the adjective "pithanos" (“persuasive”), a foundational yet neglected concept in rhetoric's history. By tracing pithanos through Greek literature and its interplay with shifting socio-political structures, the project explores how speech was endowed with power—not in isolation, but as a product of the shifting norms and hierarchies that shaped its use. It examines how language’s authority was both enabled and constrained by these structures, particularly through the emerging ideal of freedom from contradiction, offering insights into how norms regulating public discourse arise, evolve, and dissolve with changing social conditions.
This project tackles a key challenge posed by “post-truth politics" for rhetorical scholarship: its reliance on ancient frameworks presumed to hold universal validity. By historicizing the presuppositions undergirding rhetorical theory, it reinterprets Ancient Greek rhetoric—not as the discovery of timeless linguistic power but as a reflection of the social transformations of 6th- to 4th-century BCE Greece that gave speech its conditional authority.
At its center is the adjective "pithanos" (“persuasive”), a foundational yet neglected concept in rhetoric's history. By tracing pithanos through Greek literature and its interplay with shifting socio-political structures, the project explores how speech was endowed with power—not in isolation, but as a product of the shifting norms and hierarchies that shaped its use. It examines how language’s authority was both enabled and constrained by these structures, particularly through the emerging ideal of freedom from contradiction, offering insights into how norms regulating public discourse arise, evolve, and dissolve with changing social conditions.