Stanley fish and the old quarrel between rhetoric and philosophy

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Abstract
In Doing What Comes Naturally, Stanley Fish argues on behalf of rhetoric and against philosophy. The latter assumes an independent reality that can be perceived without distortion and then reported in a transparent verbal medium. The former insists that this is impossible. As Fish acknowledges, this debate is a version of the “old quarrel” that has raged since the dialogues of Plato and the orations of the sophists. The present paper first examines how the Greek sophist Isocrates actually formulated the terms of the debate. Then it turns to Plato in order to demonstrate that his treatment of the old quarrel is superior to Fish's postmodern update.

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