Abstract

Although sophistry has been characterized as separable from real philosophy, formal analysis does not work without it and one cannot always identify just where philosophy leaves off and sophistry begins. Whether sophistry offers anything to thinking reason has to do with what parties in dialogue do with sophistries. Sophistries can close down or open up philosophical perspectives, depending on the local work that sophistic strategies accomplish. Such local work of philosophers is rarely available to analyses of docile texts, but they can be furthered by ethnomethodological studies of illustrative philosophical argumentation presented and analyzed in videotaped format