Abstract

This chapter contends that Oscar Wilde’s use of the Platonic dialogue is not just a playful provocation: rather, he recognizes and refashions the contradictions between rationalism and empiricism internal to the dialectical method in order to develop both his theory of art and his mode of criticism with utmost seriousness. In its reading of Wilde’s “The Decay of Lying,” the chapter argues that Wilde’s notoriously ironic and hyperbolic approach to rhetoric (on the page and in public) enables his claims—through their performative effects on interlocutors and audience—to serve as their own quasi-empirical evidence.