Yet it is in philosophical texts that we first hear of this discipline; and the word rhetoric itself bears every clear indication of being a Platonic invention. There is no trace of it in Greek before the point in the Gorgias (449a) where the famous Sophist - after hesitation and (possibly) a certain amount of prompting from Socrates - decides to call the art he teaches the "rhetorly" - that is, rhetor's or "speaker's" - "art" (rhetorike techne)... Even in the next generation the orator and educator Isocrates (c. 436-338 BC), usually credited with the creation of on of the two major "traditions" in ancient rhetorical theory, never uses the word - nor does any other Attic orator. Down to the end of the fourth century, all occurrences are, with a single exception, confined to Plato and Aristotle... It fell to them... to establish the basic categories and definitions that, here as everywhere, were to remain authoritative throughout antiquity and beyond...
Rhetoric is the "artificer of persuasion" (Plato in the Gorgias 453a) or the "influencing and swaying of the mind (psychagogia) through words" (Phaedrus 261a). More cautiously, it is the "capacity for seeing how to be as persuasive as subject and situation will permit" (Aristotle in the Rhetoric 1355b25)... The conviction that persuasion produces may be true or false, but it ranks as belief, not knowledge - hence the Platonic distinction (Gorgias 454-55) between persuasion and teaching, and Aristotle's insistence (1356-57) that rhetoric is called for in situations where rigorous, conclusive demonstration is either unavailable, or incapable of being taken in by an audience.
Thomas Cole
***
The very existence of panhellenic festivals testifies to the fact that the Greeks perceived themselves as members of a single religious group… This vision of Greek unity and kinship - which formed the very core of the politics of panhellenism - was in fact regularly promoted by the rhetorical speeches composed for these festivals (for example Gorgias' Olympicus and Pythicus and Lysias' Olympicus…). As Isocrates says in the Panegyricus:
Those who founded the great festivals are rightly praised for handling down a custom whereby, proclaiming a truce and resolving our existing quarrels, we come together in one place; then, as we perform our prayers and sacrifices in common, we recall the kinship that exists between us and are made to feel more friendly towards each other in the future (43).
To be sure, Isocrates articulates an idealizing portrait of panhellenism... As we have seen, Greek religious practices never completely transcended politics. In fact, individuals from different cities often competed at these festivals in contest that pitted one city against another. As Cartledge suggests "[athletic] competition at Olympia was a paramilitary exercise", where the competitors "channeled their competitive aggression into action that only just stayed this side of outright martial violence". Not surprisingly, political tensions ran high at panhellenic gatherings, especially when individuals at these festivals came from cities that were at war with each other. An example of political hostility at an Olympian festival is recounted by Dionysius of Halicarnassus:
In his Panegyric, the orator [Lysias] summoned the Greeks to expel Dionysius of Syracuse from power and free Sicily, and to start the hostilities at once by plundering the ruler's tent with its adornments of gold, purple finery and many other riches… For the tyrant of Syracuse had sent theoroi to attend festival and offer sacrifice to the god. Their arrival at the sanctuary had been staged on an impressive and lavish scale to enhance the dynast's prestige among the Greeks (Lysias, 29).
Andrea Nightingale
***
Who were these men whom we still, even today, refer to as 'the Sophists'?
The meaning of the term 'Sophist' was in principle relatively wide. It could be applied to anyone thoroughly qualified to exercise his profession, be he a diviner or a poet. In this sense, the term was sometimes applied to men such as Plato or Socrates. But it soon came to denote in particular the group of men who are the subject of this book and it remained associated with the kind of teaching that they provided. It was a result of the reactions provoked by this teaching that the word, as used by Plato and Aristotle, acquired the derogatory undertones that it still has today.
Much later on, notwithstanding, a group of teachers keen to draw inspiration from their example also adopted their name: this was the 'Second Sophistic', under the Roman Empire…
They emerged in many different parts of Greece at about the same time; and they all taught for a while in Athens. It is in Athens, only, that we come across them and learn of them.
The greatest of them were Protagoras, who came from Abdera, in northern Greece, on the borders of Thrace; Gorgias, who was from Sicily; Prodicus, from the small island of Ceos; Hippias from Elis, in the Peloponnese; and Thrasymachus, from Chalcedon, in Asia Minor. Others are known just as names and hardly count. Among all these foreigners there were only two men who were natives of Athens, Antiphon and Critias, and neither - certainly not Critias - appears to have been a professional itinerant teacher. There were certainly other Sophists such as the two brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, whom Plato brings to life in his very comical dialogue named after the former…
The only Sophists we really know anything about are the ones in that first group, whose teaching and writing, quite apart from their performance as professionals, made them figure-heads.
Jacqueline de Romilly
***
By far the greater part of the first book of The Republic is devoted to expounding and critisizing the views of the sophist Trasymachus... It has never been doubted, that the opening statement by Trasymachus represents the position actually held by him as a historical person...
When he first enters the discussion Thrasymachus says that Justice is the interest of the stronger and superior... Forced to choose between two positions, that justice consists in obeying the laws, and that justice consists in seeking the interest of the rulers, Thrasymachus refuses to accept the first...and argues that true rulers never make mistakes as to their interests, even though actual rulers do on occasion make mistakes as to their own interests...
This leads on to Thrasymachus' long speech in which he provides the second and the more extended statement of his position. He now states that justice consists in pursuing another's good... Injustice on the other hand consists in seeking one's own good, and so for the ruler the interest of the stronger who is himself, and for the ruled the interest of the weaker, who are themselves, namely the ruled...
Thrasymachus claims two things... First the just ruled are foolish in seeking the interest of the ruler and the just ruler is foolish in seeking the interest of the ruled. A sensible and wise man seeks only his own interest... Secondly it is injustice which is the true virtue for man since it is by pursuing injustice that men achieve arete and so eudaimonia, since it is by this path alone that they fulfil their needs...
Thrasymachus has raised the question why should I restrict the pursuit of my own interests for the sake of others, and, ever since, this has been one of the central questions in ethics... Plato... proceeds by an analysis of the structure and functioning of the individual human soul, to argue that the source of what is right is indeed not a heteronomous prescription, but autonomous because it is a prescription arising from within our own natures.
Gеorge B. Kerferd
The only positive indications that we have concerning Protagoras' view about nature of human societies are to be found in the myth put into his mouth in the Protagoras 320c onwards, of which I have already made considerable use in earlier chapters...
The first men to be born lived a life that was disorderly and beastlike... Gradually, with need as a teacher, the arts were discovered as well as the things that were useful. This was possible, because man was well endowed by nature, and was further assisted by his hands, his power of speech and his shrewdness of intelligence...
According to the myth of Protagoras, when men did 'come together' the result was continued acts of injustice between them, all because they lacked the techne of living together in a city, the art of politics, which meant that they soon scattered again. So Zeus sent Hermes to give men aidos and dike to be ordering principles of cities and bonds drawing people together in friendship... Earlier in the myth, skills in the various arts and crafts had been distributed among them by the activity of Prometheus in their defence, not the same crafts to all men, but different crafts to different people. The present distribution arranged by Zeus is on a different basis in that aidos and dike are to be given to all men, and all men are to share in them...
First does Protagoras mean, as has often been asserted, that all men possess aidos and dike by nature? It seems clear that the powers of animals are regarded as possessed by nature. It is possible that the skill in crafts is also possessed by human beings. It is given to mankind before they began their life on this earth, and it is to men what the powers are to animals. But aidos and dike are in a different position - they are something acquired after man has been living in the world.
Secondly it is important to realise that it is not the view of Protagoras that all men are to be regarded as sharing equally in aidos and dike... So it is perfectly possible for a man to act unjustly in any particular case. But social expectations differ in the cases of justice and of the special skills. In the case of the latter no one individual is expected necessarily to possess any share of his own, and when he lacks the skill he is expected to admit is. But in the first case he necessarily does possess a share, and so has the capacity of acting justly in the particular case in question, whatever it may be. So when he fails, there is a social expectation that he will endeavour to conceal his failure by claiming that in fact he has been acting justly...
The importance of this doctrine of Protagoras in the history of political thought can hardly be exaggerated. For Protagoras has produced for the first time in human history a theoretical basis for participatory democracy. All men through the educational process of living in families and in societies acquire some degree of political and moral insight. This insight can be improved by various formal programmes in schools and under particular teachers and also by the operation of laws deliberately devised by the polis in order to supplement the earlier education of its citizens...
But in moral and political questions it is not the case that all opinions and all pieces of advice are of equal value... Thus an ideal Protagorean society is not ultimately egalitarian - it is to be guided by those with the most wisdom on each and any occasion. Will such people be somehow separatedly identifiable and so constitute a ruling elite of wise advisers who can provide what is known as 'a led democracy'? This has sometimes been said.
Gеorge B. Kerferd
***
Dottori: Then one can persuade someone of the true without being able to prove it?
Gadamer: Of course. And this does not mean that the proof would be meaningless or that the point is not to prove something. Rhetoric, of course, implies that one wants to persuade someone of one takes to be true - this is also rhetoric, and this is what we are constantly doing. It's inherent in our speaking with one another and in our mutual understanding.
D.: On the other hand, I think rhetoric for Gorgias consisted in the sheer desire to persuade and in nothing else, thus disregarding the problem of truth. That is to say, that Aristotle, in the first book of his Rhetoric, says that we are not dealing here with the true, but only with the eikos, the "veri-similar", and that rhetoric teaches to us how to defend ourselves; for it is unworthy for a human being to be able to defend himself only with the body and not with speech.
G.: No - that wouldn't hold for the Gorgias who is handled with such great respect in Plato. Now, Prodicus and Protagoras - whom we consider to be precursors of Nietzsche rather than Rorty - they're different. Gorgias, who was a highly gifted man and whose reputation was apparently enormous because he had such enormous eloquence, is respected and praised by Plato because he is reputed to be honest. But, just as we misunderstand Gorgias, we also misunderstand the true sense of Platonic-Aristotelian rhetoric because we remain trapped in a false estimation of rhetoric that we have dragged alone with us through the intervening centuries in which the schools of rhetoric have dominated. The rhetoric that we can call the art of speech or persuasion does not, as we have believed for centuries, consist in a body of rules according to whose application and adherence we can achieve victory over our opponent or our partner in public debates or simply in conversation with one another. The art of speech or persuasion consist, rather, in the innate ability - which we cal also, of course, develop and perfect - of being able to actually communicate with others and even persuade them of the true without being able to prove it (assuming that we are no longer able to). It's really a matter of our actually being able to speak to others, and this means that we must appeal to their emotions and their passions (this is why the second book of Aristotle's Rhetoric deals with the passions of the human soul), but not in order to deceive others or to profit by it personally, but, instead, to allow what is true to appear and to reveal what we ourselves are persuaded by and what, otherwise (through the usual methods of proof) could not appear as such. This is why Aristotle calls the domain of rhetoric eikos - for it is a question of a truth that could not appear only in our speech and that otherwise would not be manifest as such…
We can now conclude that he philosopher and the Sophist are not to be distinguished sheerly by their argumentation. The mode of arguing is the same, and the difference consist only in the fact that, in the one case, we seek only what is just, and we want to convince the other that it is also what is true; in the other case, we seek only that which appears to us to be more advantageous and more useful. And, in this case, perhaps we also try to make our own advantage appear to be what is just. as long as it can appear (according to the eikos, thus apparently) to be such a thing.
Hans-Georg Gadamer
***
The important things we know for sure about the author of the works collected under the name 'Plato' are roughly these: that he was born in the early 420s BC to a wealthy father by the name of Ariston (his mother's name is in some doubt); that he had a close relationship, at least on a intellectual level, with Socrates; that he spent the larger part of his life in Athens, without interference from the authoritites, despite the profoundly anti-democratic nature of his extensive political writings; that he founded a philosophical 'school', the Academy, which was to survive as an institution for research and reflection, and for teching; that from 367 until his death, he had Aristotle with him in the Academy; and that he died in 347.
However elusive Plato may be, and have been, from a biographer's point of view, there is no doubting the difference he made, as a single individual, to the history of philosophy. Even Stoicism, the great rival of Platonism in the early days of both, can be detected rifling Platonic dialogues to provide material for its own systematic constructions.
Christopher Rowe
***
The speakers of the first group (Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus) draw a fundamental distinction between a good and a bad variety of love, while those of the second group do not. This development comes to a head with Diotima's teaching that love in any of its manifestations is directed towards good.
Pausanias draw the obvious contrast with lovers who are more concerned with the body than the soul, and who therefore do not take virtue into account. Phaedrus does not; but the contrast is implicit in his claim to know of no greater good for a young boy than a "decent" or "worthy" lover.
Aristophanes announces a break with Pausanias and Еryximachus's scheme of things… The break is to see love not sundered into good and bad, but as a single aspiration, common to all and directed (despite differences of sexual orientation) at the same generic object - wholeness…
Agathon failed to see that love's nature is to seek the good, rather than to possess it; but it turns out, that he was not wrong to claim that love is praiseworthy in its very nature; for to seek the good is praiseworthy. And this is to reinstate the message of Aristophanes'tale: that love is above all a search for what has been lost.
Diotima returns to the topic of specific love. Specific love is in fact not, as Socrates (and Agathon) suppose, love of the beautiful, but rather "of begetting and giving birth in the beautiful". In the specific case beauty takes the role of midwife to generation, prompting those fertile in body, both animal and human, to engender offspring who can renew their line and (for humans) keep their name alive, while those men who are more fertile in soul than body will be inspired by a boy who combines bodily beauty and beauty of character to give birth to fine discourse about civic virtue with a view to his education. At the level of Lesser Mysteries she describes the ultimate good - the goal of generic love, toward which all human actions are directed - as "immortal virtue and the glorious fame that follows". The "love of honor" is the highest human aspiration here. But when introducing the topic of generic love, Diotima has prepared us to accept the "love of wisdom" as one of its manifestations; and in the Greater Mysteries it will be philosophy that leads us to the ultimate goal.
The philosophic initiate begins, then, at level lower than that attained by the honor lover in the Lesser Mysteries (whom he will overtake in due course). His starting point is higher than the level of the fertile merely in body, however; for their love engenders human offspring, whereas his produces discourse… We next find him having come to prize beauty of soul over beauty of body. We are not told how he made the transition, but only that these are stages along the way that he "must" visit if he is to achieve the highest goal… Compelled, in his role as mentor, to consider beauty of activities and laws, he comes to a conclusion about it that is independent of his educative purpose (just as he spent more thought on bodily beauty in general than was necessary for the purpose of seduction). The lover will think the beauty of bodies a thing of no importance...
At the next stage of his development, accordingly, he is not attached to an individual, but is attracted rather by the beauty of knowledge in its various forms, which causes him to give birth once again to beautiful discourse - now the discourse of philosophy.
His (of Alcibiades) is the version on a heroic scale of the danger that Apollodorus, hawking memberships to the Socratic fan club, had illustrated in the prologue on the level of farce: Instead of loving wisdom he falls in love with the wisdom lover - exactly the danger that Diotima attempts to exclude from her ladder of love by banishing individual from the centre of attention when the rung of philosophy has been reached.
G.R.F. Ferrari
***
In the Republic the role of ordinary people in the state corresponds to that of appetite in the soul… In the Laws the positive development of desirable habits and traits takes the place of this restraint. The common people are encouraged to live in accordance to virtue and both education and the laws are to nurture them in this way of life. But when they live in accordance with the precepts of virtue, it is because they have been conditioned into and habituated to such a way of life, and not because they understand the point of it. That understanding is still restricted to the rulers. This emerges most clearly in discussion of the question of the existence of the gods or god… In the Republic explicit references to the divine are sporadic… In the Laws, however, the existence of the divine has become the cornerstone of morals and politics… The divine is important in the Laws because it is identified with law; to be obedient before the law is to be obedient before god…
But the rulers are to be men who have “toiled to acquire complete confidence in the existence of the gods” by intellectual effort… Suppose, however, that a member of the ruling group comes to think that he has found a flaw in the required proof – what then? Plato gives a clear answer in Book XII. If this doubter keeps his doubts to himself, then well and good. But if he insists on disseminating them, then the Nocturnal Council, the supreme authority in the hierarchy of Magnesia, will condemn him to death. The absence of Socrates from the dialogue is underlined by this episode… But it is also clear that Plato’s political philosophy is not merely only justifiable if, but is only intelligible if, some theory of values as residing in a transcendent realm to which there can be access only for an intellectually trained elite can be shown to be plausible. This is the connection between the nonpolitical vision of the Symposium and the entirely political vision of the Laws. But what is the turn in Plato’s thought which transformed Socrates from hero into potential victim?
Alasdair MacIntyre
***
Thomas Cole. The Origins of Rhetoric in Ancient Greece. The John Hopkins UP, 1991-1995.
Andrea W. Nightingale. The politics of panhellenism. In: Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy. Cambridge UP, 2004-2006.
Jacqueline de Romilly. The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992-2002.
George. B. Kerferd. The nomos-physis controversy; The theory of society. In: G.B. Kerferd. The Sophistic Movement. Cambridge UP, 1981-1999.
Hans-Georg Gadamer. A Century of Philosophy. A Conversation with Riccardo Dottori. Transl. by Rod Coltman with Sigrid Koepke. Continuum, 2003.
Christopher Rowe. Plato. In: David Sedley ed. The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Philosophy. Cambridge UP 2003-2004.
G.R.F. Ferrari. Platonic Love. In: Richard Kraut ed. The Cambridge Companion to Plato. Cambridge UP, 1992-2005
Alasdair MacIntyre. Postscript to Plato. In: A Short History of Ethics. A history of moral philosophy from the Homeric Age to the twentieth century. Routledge 1967-2006.
No comments:
Post a Comment