ABSTRACT
Logos now stands accused, more alone than it ever has been. Armed with such a hope, logos can still press forward, no longer with its previous assertiveness, but at least with some confidence. Clearly, the type of dialogue logos now hopes for, that between itself and Cleitophon, or itself and the poet, qualifies as philosophical, for there is fundamental disagreement. Logos next approached its enemies in the hope of at least having a dialogue with them. Jacques Derrida acknowledges in Of Grammatology that an enormous gulf separates him from the traditional version of logos or significant discourse, which he calls “phono-centrism” or “logocentrism”. Well-crafted and self-conscious poetry, that which invokes a muse, gives voice to a vision of a world not fully accessible to the rational workings of logos. Protreptic is the effort to encourage others to play the Socratic game, to enter the conversation, to accept the techne-analogy, to embrace logos.
