Filósofos y oradores. Filosofía en la retórica, retórica en la filosofía

Abstract

The exposition is based on a double question: “If there is philosophy in rhetorics and if there is rhetorics in philosophy, and in what sense this existence occurs”. The question may cause surprise, because between philosophy and rhetorics there has always been antagonism. The confrontation between philosophers and orators is essentially centered in the relation between thinking and language and its respective conception of bene: the “wellspeaking” of philosophers and the “wellspeaking” of orators/rhetors. For the philosopher bene dicendi consists of saying the truthful and the just; for the orator it consists of communicating in a persuasive way. Truth, “naked truth”, should speak by itself without needing rhetorical tinsels. However, an historical and theorical consideration proves that rhetorics is not excluded from philosophy. It also can be held that each philosophical argument is inevitabily rhetorical and that rhetorics is a way of philosophy. For all these things, saying it in a way of aphoristic way: it is necessary to be right and to say rightly, but it is not enough: is is also necessary to be able to make it being recognised.