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- Title
Cosmopolitan Sophistry: Grounding Politics in Disorder and Uncertainty.
- Authors
Marshall, Jonathan
- Abstract
Conceptions of the State, Nation and politics, in play in 'the West', usually descend from totalitarian models which are primarily Platonic in origin. They aim for unity, harmony, wholeness, legitimate authority and the rejection of conflict, however much they claim to represent multiplicity. By expressing a vision of order, such models drive an idea of planning by prophecy as opposed to divination, as if the future was certain within limits and the trajectory was smooth. Chaos theory and evolutionary ecology shows us that this conception of both society and the future is inaccurate. I will argue that it is useful to look at the pre-Platonic philosophers, in particular the so-called sophists Gorgias and Protagoras and Heraclitus with their sense of ongoing flux, the truth of the moment, and the necessary power of rhetoric in the leading forth of temporary functional consensus within the flux. This ongoing oscillation of conflict provides social movement and life rather than social death.
- Subjects
LOGICAL fallacies; TOTALITARIANISM; CONCORD; PROPHECY; DIVINATION; CHAOS theory
- Publication
Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2011, Vol 3, Issue 3, p197
- ISSN
1837-5391
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5130/ccs.v3i3.2314