Peithò o l’argomentazione relazionale al servizio della comunità nella Grecia antica

In the Greek world, in the face of the dialectical argument of ‘intellectuals’, which unfolds in the discussion ideally without time limits with individuals (present or virtual) and plays with their agreement all steps deemed necessary to arrive at “truth”, the persuasive argument of political rhetoric, expressed monologically in a limited time and in the face of a collective audience, always has the need to maintain a good relation with this last one. The main features of this type of argument are absence of hierarchy, community dimension, pluralism, negotiation and mediation skills, and reception of the listener. And as the risk of dialectics is the eristic (but also the authoritarian pretense of impartiality disguised as science), so that of rhetoric is the populist seduction: to overcome this difficulty, the Greeks have tried to indicate some rules.