I guess I will start this one!
I thought the Poster article made a lot of good points and addressed a lot of the concerns we have been discussing in class. One of the angles I was particularly interested was Poster’s statement:
“Even more worrisome is a tendency that some rhetoricians share with traditionalist and analytic interpreters to assume that any statement made by the Socratic character in a dialogue can be excerpted from its context and prefaced by the phrases “Plato says” or “Plato believes.” But the words uttered by the Socratic character in a dialogue can no more be assumed to be the “beliefs” of Plato than those uttered by a character in Shakespeare’s plays can be assumed to represent Shakespeare’s beliefs.”
On reflection I realize that I often find myself writing those same statements that Poster cautions against. It is an easy assumption to make, particularly when you are not intimately familiar with these texts. After all, as modelers of the way rhetoric should work, these Socratic figures often make forceful statements and back them up with solid support. I think part of this tendency to mistake these statements as Platonic opinion is a result of the style of discourse Plato used—being more an oral tradition rather than a written one. It would have been much more difficult to make this mistake if heard aloud. Another problem is the tendency of people to approach these texts with the intent to define and analyze. As Poster said, it would be better to look at the work as a whole (or the entire body of works) before making any judgments. Unfortunately, I think this is very hard to do, particularly in a setting such as academia where scholars are encouraged to make judgments on nuances and subtext as or more frequency than the big picture. In this class certainly, I believe it would be difficult to completely take Poster’s approach to reading Plato and other rhetoricians. It is a great approach, but one that would require much longer study than we have, and much more familiarity with the subject. As much as I agree with Poster’s caution over making these types of analysis, I can also see how making these assumptions, and then realizing their shortcomings, is both an inevitable and valuable component to understanding the texts on a deeper level.
8 comments:
As an extremely preliminary response, of which I am sure there will be more, in the arts, when we write a story or poem, we have a different set of suspensions of belief we ask our audience to do than we do if we are writing nonfiction, which I think, despite Poster and the metaphorical content of the Phaedrus, is what we are looking at. While art attempts to persuade and woo just as much as any piece of rhetoric might, and frequently using the same techniques, it (usually) makes no claims on final truth or philosophical probity. That might have been intended, but the custom is to allow the audience to be the final arbiter of what a piece does or does not contain. As such, the suspension of belief Poster is calling for is a little odd for me. It is exactly the kind of suspension we make as readers of fiction; namely that the author may, in the course of getting the point across, have characters who spout beliefs abhorrent to them. In SocraPlato's case, I'm not buying it.
This is not precisely cogent to the entirety of Poster, but I can distinctly remember reading the Phaedrus for the first time and concluding, in opposition to Havelock, that Socrates and/or Plato's concern with the slippage of meaning and of falsity was the concern of a highly oral culture with the way that words, once delivered in the context of writing and allowed to be disseminated without the context of a knowledge of the ethos of the speaker, something Socrates and/or Plato seem to be deeply concerned with.
Sarcasm is a great example of this. If you do not know the speaker, the sarcasm is entirely likely to escape you, making, as it does, an argument against being interpreted directly based on the person of the speaker (or the absurdity of the claims.)
In the simplest sense, the written word relies on conventions to be understood (since it is generally presented, and definitely in the case of the Phaedrus and Poster, in the absence of the writer or any knowledge of the writer's ethos), and as we have discussed with commonplaces, those conventions are frequently unexamined, meaning that slippage occurs (in one of the many places in can occur) in the unexamined differences in the reader's understanding of their commonplaces. As you cannot shift the soul in the absence of the ability to know it, the preponderance of the written word is Socrates and/or Plato's enemy, despite the use of it. Writing is a second best medium, if that, to the physical presence of the philosopher.
I also underlined the lines from Poster that Alyssa did, ending with the “words uttered by the Socratic character in a dialogue can no more be assumed to be the ‘beliefs’ of Plato than those uttered by a character in Shakespeare’s plays can be assumed to represent Shakespeare’s beliefs” (37). I think my reticence to ascribe the beliefs of characters to their author, such as Phaedrus to Plato goes back to my thoughts on approaching texts wary of being diverted by authorial intent. But I wonder if Poster distinguishes “beliefs” from “subjects.” Here she separates the beliefs of Plato from his characters.
And then I noticed a section in which Poster seems to contradict herself, where “given the difficulties of dialogue form, it is possible to determine what subjects are of greatest concern to Plato and which thinkers he considers most important by examining the degree to which Plato engaged their ideas, either by including them as characters in his dialogues or by having the participants in the dialogues discuss their words and ideas” (39). Now she sounds at odds with her prior claim, unless she proves the difference between beliefs and subjects, and I missed it.
I agree with Poster about the importance of looking at the body of Plato’s work, but ironically, I’m left to wrangle more with Poster’s ideas on Plato and less with Plato himself. Even finishing Phaedrus, I’ve still read more Poster than Plato at this point. My lament about grad school is that the amount of primary text I am assigned with is much smaller compared to the amount of secondary or scholarly text I also have to read. Getting situated with Plato though Poster only removes me as much from the text as a translation does.
However, I do agree with Edward Schiappa, as quoted by Poster, with his idea that “scholarship advances not through metadisciplinary wrangling … but through the production of exemplary work” (40). This fits with my post last week, in which I wrote that I think the current field of rhetoric seems to be suffering an identity crisis—metadisciplinary wrangling. Poster’s article works as a survey of much twentieth century thought on Plato, which helps to provide an overview of the different camps of rhetorical scholars, situating me with Kirby, Jowett, and Welch, but discouraging me from determining my own authority on Plato.
Thank you, Gerry! Poster might as well have written this article in Greek, for as much of it as I understood and cared about at all. The only part that intrigued me to any extent is when she said, “contemporary theorists like Victor Vitanza …conclude that since we cannot gain perfect and uncontested knowledge or interpretation of ancient
philosophy and rhetoric, and that since classicists who claim objectivity can
be shown to be motivated by factors not exclusively objective, there is no point
trying to attain the best knowledge we can by careful analysis of ancient texts
and contexts.” I was so hoping that some extra study of Vitanza would allow me to make a case against reading this crap at all, but I haven’t yet been able to uncover scholarly agreement with this position.
That didn’t work out, so I returned to my initial hope that Poster’s mention of pedagogical “entry points into the Platonic corpus” would lead to actual discussion of entry points. But I don’t see any that are working for me; or, maybe, there are so many that I can’t get a grip on a single one. I have pages full of notes to myself to look up unfamiliar words and concepts, such as apodictic proofs and the Platonic principle of becoming.
Essentially, I have nothing useful to post about this article. I wonder if others would like to see my list of definitions when it’s complete? Yes, I’ll apply myself to that, and get back to you.
Poster’s caveats about readings of Plato echo somewhat the remarks of Socrates in the Phaedrus about discerning the truth before seeking to persuade. However, if we are going to engage with this text at all we are going to have to indulge in some—dare we say it?—probabilities. Given that Socrates here never concretely defines truth, justice, the soul, or what sort of speaking and acting is “acceptable to God” (mind that Plato's word for God “Dios” is not as generic as it sounds, but actually is an epithet of Zeus), but only asserts that these are good things—a very basic and generally acceptable position, I hazard it quite reasonable to assume that Socrates is, in fact, a mouthpiece for Plato (the SocraPlato thesis), and that it is hardly comparable to say that his words have no more to do with Plato’s beliefs than Hamlet’s might with Shakespeare’s…(This is despite a temptation toward ironic/self-deconstructing readings).
This reading is problematized, of course, by the fact that we have in this Platonic dialogue written rhetorical speeches contraindicating the wanton use of written rhetorical speeches in favor of dialectical transmission of the “living word,” specifically through the philosophical initiation that Socrates alludes to between the mystic Anaxagoras and the politician Pericles. Yet the dialogue does not uniformly condemn writing but only compositions that are not “based on knowledge of the truth,” so it would seem that the view of the esoterists whom Poster mentions really solves this dilemma by suggesting that Plato’s dialogues were exoteric, designed for an uninitiated audience in the vulgar idiom that the masses appreciated—‘the play’s the thing in which to catch the conscience of the groundling’ (the chairos of adapting "modes of discourse [...] to different natures”)—so as to draw them in. It would follow then that Plato’s more significant teachings/doctrines were esoteric, orally administered initiations.
Hermeneutic: interpretive; explanatory. “Hermeneutics may be described as the development and study of theories of the interpretation and understanding of texts” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutics).
Polemical utility: (this phrase produces 44 -!- results on Google) See polemic – “a controversial argument, especially one refuting or attacking a specific opinion or doctrine; …of or relating to a controversy, argument, or refutation” (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/polemic).
Apodictic proofs: (28 results on Google!) See apodictic – “necessarily or demonstrably true; incontrovertible” (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/apodictic).
Tetralogic arrangement: I thought this would probably be self-evident, which it was – see tetralogy, “a series of four related dramatic, operatic, or literary works” – but it turns out to have a medical meaning as well – “a complex of four symptoms” – which may be applicable to SocraPlato’s comparisons of rhetoric with medicine (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/tetralogy).
Elenchus: “logical refutation by proving the opposite… an argument that refutes a proposition by proving the opposite of its conclusions” (http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861607919/elenchus.html).
Adumbrate: “1. To give a sketchy outline of;
2. To prefigure indistinctly, foreshadow;
3. To disclose partially or guardedly;
4. To overshadow; shadow or obscure” (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/adumbrate).
Maieutic: “of or relating to the aspect of the Socratic method that induces a respondent to formulate latent concepts through a dialectic or logical sequence of questions” (http://www.answers.com/topic/maieutic).
Diegesis: “a narrative or history; a recital or relation” (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Diegesis); but I like this one – “A narrative's time-space continuum, to borrow a term from Star Trek. The diegesis of a narrative is its entire created world. Any narrative includes a diegesis, whether you are reading science fiction, fantasy, mimetic realism, or psychological realism. However, each kind of story will render that time-space continuum in different ways. The suspension of disbelief that we all perform before entering into a fictional world entails an acceptance of a story's diegesis” (http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/narratology/terms/diegesis.html).
Mimesis: (more medical stuff) “1: the imitative representation of nature and human behavior in art and literature;
2: any disease that shows symptoms characteristic of another disease;
3: the representation of another person's words in a speech” (http://dict.die.net/mimesis/).
Aisthesis: (more medical stuff!) “sensation or perception” (http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=8445); “…the basis for our word 'aesthetics', refers to the whole realm of sensations and is identified with the body. The body, or the 'flesh', or the senses, are understood entirely according to the way in which they are experienced in consciousness” (http://web.ukonline.co.uk/pbrooke/bptdg/programmes/0509-/spirituality/talk).
Thank you, Stephanie!!!
Just a brief comment here, not nearly as fleshed out as the ones preceding . . .
I agree with Poster that it isn't intellectually responsible to assume that Socrates speaks for Plato, or that anything that comes out of S's mouth can be judged as Plato's beliefs. But think there is enough to suggest that S is very often speaking for Plato: enough, anyway, that the burden of proof should rest on those who wish to argue that S doesn't speak for P. S is clearly the "hero" of these dialogues, in that he either convinces the person with whom he speakes of his (S's) rightness (Phaedrus) or makes him look like a fool (Gorgias and Polus). Allowing that there are contradictions in S's words from one dialogue to another, and within dialogues, why would P, who is concerned with using dialectic as a tool to uncover Truth, allow S to occupy so much time and space in his writings (which, whatever he thinks of writing, he knows to be his only link to posterity) if S is a mouthpiece for beliefs other than his own?
Also, I think Poster's Shakespeare analogy isn't quite right. As Robbie pointed out (in response to a not-quite-right comparison that I was making), these dialogues are different kinds of writing that popular plays, and Shakespeare most definitely was writing popular plays. As Poster analyzes different translations in light of their audience and purpose to expose their differences, so she should apply that to her Shakespeare/Plato analogy. Plato was, I think, looking to share and flesh out his own beliefs, his own search for truth, while Shakespeare was trying to fill a theater. Shakespeare was free to play the part of the rhetorician, the trickster, whatever he wished, while Plato's dogma narrowly focuses him on Truth.
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