ZENO AND ANTILOGIC
ZENO AND ANTILOGIC

Summary/Abstract: This paper sheds light on Plato’s represen-tation of Zeno in the Phaedrus as a master of antilogic.It examines the evidence in the Phaedrus drawingattention to a certain distribution of labour between thefollowers of Palamedes, who practice antilogic, on theone hand and those of Nestor and Odysseus, who prac-tice logography, on the other. I suggest that the reasonfor which Plato prefers to associate Zeno with antilogicrather than Protagoras, who might strike us as an obvi-ous choice, is that the former, unlike the latter, wouldserve the purposes of his Socratic apologetics, remov-ing from his teacher the reputation that Aristophanes’Clouds had bequeathed him. This reading ties in withand draws support from Zeno’s remarks concerningthe nature of his book in the Parmenides, a dialoguethat Plato intends us to understand as a prequel that—again along the lines of an apologetic agenda—claimsSocrates’ philosophical pedigree establishing his tieswith the Eleatic tradition.

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