Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note to the reader
- Introduction
- PART I THE PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
- PART II THREE DIALOGUES BETWEEN HYLAS AND PHILONOUS
- 5 The opportunities of dialogue
- 6 The character of the elenchus
- 7 Comic characters
- 8 Comic form
- PART III ALCIPHRON
- PART IV SIRIS
- Conclusion
- Select bibliography
- Index
6 - The character of the elenchus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note to the reader
- Introduction
- PART I THE PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
- PART II THREE DIALOGUES BETWEEN HYLAS AND PHILONOUS
- 5 The opportunities of dialogue
- 6 The character of the elenchus
- 7 Comic characters
- 8 Comic form
- PART III ALCIPHRON
- PART IV SIRIS
- Conclusion
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
There were, then, several characteristics of dialogue that made it particularly suitable for the kind of argument Berkeley wanted to make. He came to the form with an epistemological proof best made in a fully realized setting, and with methodological and stylistic proclivities which the dialogue could easily accommodate. Above all, Berkeley wanted to win an audience and hoped he could do so with dialogue's promise of instruction mingled with delight. But however much the conventions of the genre satisfy Berkeley's rhetorical demands, he is far from complacent in employing the genre. The style of the Three Dialogues is strikingly unlike that of other dialogues of his time. In general, Ciceronian models prevailed, such as the formal debate of De natura deorum, where one character presents all his view on an issue at length before another, with opposing views, replies. This seems to be the form adopted in Dryden's Of Dramatick Poesie with its extended speeches. A more popular style of dialogue was that of Cicero's De republica, in which a character who holds a mistaken opinion is corrected at length by an opponent, but is permitted to interrupt now and again with objections or demands for clarification. Such is the method of Boyle's Discourse of Things Above Reason, More's Divine Dialogues, and Charles Leslie's The Truth of Christianity Demonstrated. Likewise, in Walter Charleton's Immortality of the Human Soul the objections raised by the materialist Lucretius are merely occasions for Athanasius's further elaboration of his case for the incorporeity of the soul. The repartee of the first and second of the Three Dialogues sets it apart from these more discursive debates.
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- Information
- The Rhetoric of Berkeley's Philosophy , pp. 68 - 81Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990