ABSTRACT
The sophistic search for truth and ethical communication in a relativistic world relies on the choices and balances between competing, conflicting logoi. Poulakos suggests two roles for kairos in guiding these choices in Gorgianic rhetoric: first, the need for "temporality of the situation" in which the rhetorical act occurs and, second, the "impetus for discourse, the tension in the situation" (Poulakos 39-41). These roles expand on a generative kairos that breaks up opposing elements in a rhetorical situation and allows rhetors to persuade themselves and others of the difference between right and wrong (Kinneavy 1979:14). Thus kairos exhibits rich ethical implications in addition to its epistemological and rhetorical facets.
