Abstract

This dissertation discusses the consequences of adopting an antifoundationalist approach by examining the intersections of dialectic and rhetoric. There are forms of dialectics specific to the ancient Greek sophists; the distinction between philosophy and sophistry, and the privileging of the former, only are supported by covert appeals to the ostensibly rejected sophistic discourse. Rhetoric, for Aristotle, is concerned to persuade persons to accept premises already known by the rhetor; if this concept of rhetoric is rejected, then rhetoric also is concerned with reaching decisions when knowledge is unattainable. While the resources for conceptualizing philosophy as proceeding rhetorically may be found in Blumenberg's writings, his approach has limitations which must be criticized to develop an understanding of philosophy that remains rhetorical. Coherentism and foundationalism differ only in their understandings of the nature of foundations; coherentism is incoherent by its own criteria of coherence; coherence should not be privileged over incoherence in every context. Although Hegel assumes that the end of communication is agreement, consensus is not the goal of communication, but rather its death; discourse remains alive because dissensus is its end. A version of nostalgia can be reconstructed in light of Kant's discussions of the mathematical sublime that allows a bearing witness to what escapes representation