I was thinking today about the quote Vera provided below, while reading a different discussion that used a similar rhetoric of genealogy. In an article on Nietzsche’s genealogy of the Sophists, similar issues about language, knowledge and their relation to rhetoric are brought up; paraphrasing Nietzsche, Scott Consigny writes,
“Protagoras would hold that every use of language is made within a ‘game,’ wherin the validity of any assertion is determined by arbitrary protocols of each game, as they are interpreted by the participants and observers of that game, and not by reference to an ‘independent’ or universal criterion that governs all games.”
Since the game (and its players) is always changing, we’re continually asking about knowledge: “Is this offspring legitimate?” And our answer almost always depends, as Condit, I think, rightly points out, on the evolving, hereditary ways of understanding.