The Rediscovering of Protreptic Method in the Social Sciences

Philosophers writing on Plato’s work during Hellenism and later on in Antiq-uity would often be inclined to view his basic project as a protreptic one, even if Plato did not write a separate protreptic manual. However his pupil, Aristotle did write such an “eincheiridion”, a handbook for using dialogue to help another person to be master of his own life. The “Protreptikos”, the text of which was reconstructed recently, was famous among the so called “exoteric ” works of Aristotle, and in line with Epicurus ’ famous “Letter to Menoikeus”, Cicero’s “Hortensius”, Epictetus ’ “Encheiridion”, and “Se-neca’s “De clementia”, to mention just a few. In short protreptic is the art of turning, “trépo”, another person to the es-sence of his life, and strengthening his awareness of the good. The dialogical capacities of the protreptic speaker spur the listener to reform his life, but not, like the Christian tradition through a revealed and all-excluding “kerygma”, but through a non-dogmatic philosophical discourse using the person’s own desire to transform himself – St. Augustine was spurred by Cicero’s protrep-tic treatise, “Hortensius ” to convert, “conversion ” being the Latin translation of the Greek word “epistrephein”, a word with the same root as “protreptic”. However, protreptic, eagerly pursued by great rhetoricians like Isokrates, has no trace of persuasiveness in it, it works at the level of conviction. Th