Philosophical rhetoric and sophistical dialectic: some implications of Plato’s critique of rhetoric in the Phaedrus and the Sophist

My PhD research concentrates on the philosophical backgrounds of the relationship between dialectic and rhetoric. In order to pinpoint the discord between both disciplines, I studied their genesis and early history. In this paper, some characteristics of both disciplines will be outlined by sketching the ""invention"" of dialectic by Zeno, that of rhetoric by the Sophists, and the different ways in which Plato and Aristotle have conceived both disciplines and their relationship