The Commonplaces

I found this article very accessible, and I can see how rhetoricians can find commonplaces useful. (I thought the comment about rhetoricians needing to be skilled at tracking down suitable proofs for their arguments, like hunters and fishermen tracking down prey, an amusing and apt comparison!) I also thought that the distinction made between modern topics and rhetorical commonplaces went a long way to helping me understand how commonplaces worked--and I agree, having ideas familiar to an entire community/country/etc to draw from when making a argument can be extremely effective. The examples presented by the authors also worked well to illustrate their ideas. I am also glad that the authors made the statement that commonplaces do not have to be true to exist or to be powerful in language.

While commonplaces are clearly useful, I also see how they could be over-used by a rhetorician because of their high accessibility. An argument based entirely on these commonplaces, particularly the ones used most frequently, would lose effectiveness quickly and would put the arguer in danger of being seen as a fraud. Cliché comes to mind. Perhaps in Greece the frequent use of commonplaces was encouraged as a result of the repetitive oral tradition of the time, but I have a feeling that many of today's audiences would oppose the idea of commonplaces if they realized the frequency in which they are used, particularly in manipulation.

slight backtracking, I hope

This is a little late, hopefully not too late.

In Book One, last week on Tuesday (I think; time blurs), we discussed the passage on my page 30, about enthymatic proofs, handbook writers and the court system. In my translation (an older version of Kennedy) "... these writers say nothing about enthymemes, which is the 'body' of persuasion, while they give most of their attention to matters external to the subject; for verbal attack and pity and anger and such emotions of the soul do not relate to fact but are appeals to the juryman."

I believe this section to be about the inability of casual thinkers and teachers (and I believe Aristotle is comparing handbook writers to casual or careless thinkers and teachers) to consider the societal and further-reaching consequences of immediate manipulation. To my understanding enthymemes themselves do contain a significant appeal to ethos or pathos, meaning that they will appeal to the emotions of the jurists, but that there is also a limited appeal to logos (Aristotle's favorite of the species of appeal), specifically in the fact that a manipulation of enthymemes requires societal analysis. In order to recognize the species of logic used in a particular enthymeme (which does not, itself, have to be logical; logic is a relationship between premises and conclusion, logical is the net result of the argument), the examiner has to be very aware of what does appeal to the audience (which Aristotle appears to believe is an important part of enthymatic thinking) and also what kind of reason underlies the particular societal reasoning cited by the arguer. Aristotle loves to go into lists anytime he can with types of appeals, so things like 'for the greater good' or 'the benefit of many' arguments might serve here, if the arguer was capable of identifying the specific interests involved and what assumptions they make about group members (in this case, of people who will be benefited by the good in question and members of the many.) Aristotle does mock the emotional appeal which 'warps' a jury (and who would warp a ruler before using it; though, in the case of a judge and jury, he has little faith in their ability to discern truth in any objective sense), but enthymatic argument, given that it maintains the ability to deal in abstractions (like the location of the warrant of any argument, for a group of people, and more importantly for him, the long-view of the effects of any particular decisions-- he picks up his Plato here, because law-maker can decide and no one else is objective enough) does not have to suffer his onus as long as it can predict beyond the first stirrings of emotional effect on the target audience.

Of course, this means that enthymemes are a species of argument that manipulates pathos and ethos using logos, and since Aristotle believes logos to be the better of that triad, I think this is accurate.

But I reserve the right to be wrong, at any time, but hopefully not fatally so.

Aristotle: Language and the Sophists

Reading through book 2 (I'm about halfway done) I'm particularly struck by two things. First, Aristotle seems to believe that everything is classifiable. In doing this, and in his belief that rhetoric is powerful and useful and worth teaching, he shows a great faith in language. It's as though language can account for everything—for our emotions; for any situation in which people find themselves; for the many different kinds of people, their thoughts and their reasons for feeling the way they do. But I can't help feeling this exhaustive approach is limiting, because while the outline of the work is logical, the way that it proceeds is very digressive, to the point where much of it is hardly about rhetoric at all, at least to a modern reader. Of course this is a very old text, and its intended audience and purpose will always be a question. Writing then was different than it is now, though speech was certainly systemetized; perhaps if we could hear him talk all of this would seem more logical and less digressive. Or maybe digression was considered part of A's brilliance; different cultures at different times value different modes of expression. Like the way some middle and far eastern languages value metaphor more highly than the spare, direct style that we prefer in American English.

Second, A generalizes freely, and often uses the words "all" and "everyone" to prove a point by claiming concensus. I'm sure this is cultural, the Greeks view of the individual in society being much different from our own. But it struck me as very un-sophistic, while his faith in language seems sophistic. A has certainly come some distance toward the sophists from Plato by acknowledging rhetoric's practicality and separating it from morality, but he doesn't have their sense of contingency. For A, even though he's not an Athenian and would've had an "outsider's" perspective to some degree, there don't seem to be cultural differences that would demand a speaker to practice his art differently. Even in the way he drifts so far away from rhetoric and into general human observation, A doesn't acknowledge other cultures or points of view. Maybe this is because this was written with the more narrow purpose of teaching an Athenian man to speak in the Athenian assembly, where there are only other Athenian men. But surely if these other perspectives were part of his consciousness he would've mentioned something outside of Athens, or at least its possibility.

Aristotle

Please prepare for Tuesday's class (October 23) by selecting a chapter from Book 1, a phrase, a term, or set of terms that interest you and formulating a question or comment that either illuminates the text, brings it into the 21st century, or asks us to help puzzle it out.

Post these AND bring your short post to class; we'll use these to make our way "into" Aristotle, Book 1.

Making Sense of the Sophists

Sorry for the long post—it made most sense to me to include all my observations on what Jarrat says about the Sophists, since my intent was to clarify their image in my mind.

As we have encountered before, the Sophists’ practice of teaching for pay was a new concept in Greece, and one not viewed with favor (selling one’s work being perilously close to servitude or slavery, states not desired by the wealthy upper class who were involved in the new exploration of knowledge). The focus of their teaching—political science, speechmaking, and questioning of ideas—isn’t new either, nor is the idea that these lessons had practical applications in the public sphere. There were however, some concepts explained in the Jarratt reading that made things even more clear to me, and helped me put the Sophists in context.

The first of these concepts was the idea that the Sophists were responsible for a change in the political landscape. To make it short: Sophists’ charging for education created a wealthy class of educated people, which caused a shift in power from blood and birthright to wealth, and later a shift from wealth to intelligence. I am not sure I can go as far as Jarratt and say that the Sophists were the complete reason for the shift, nor can I say that the Sophists’ actions were entirely responsible for bringing about the beginnings of democracy, but I can certainly see the logic in thinking that these actions did have an impact.

Another concept attributed to the Sophists by Jarratt was a concept of individuality. This isn’t the same concept as today, where the individual is the superior state to the community. In this situation, individuality was the admission that people could contribute to the community in unique and specific ways—the key here bring that the community was still the superior focus. Supposedly, the influence of the individual was formed through a combination of increased civic participation from the public, and the Sophists’ consideration of natural ability? Again, I am not sure if the Sophists can be considered a sole founder of individuality, but their being labeled as such definitely grounds their image in my mind.

The view of the Sophists as technical was particularly interesting to me, particularly their focus on delivery techniques such as arrangement, argument, form, and figures and parts of speech. In modern education both concerns of ideas and the methods of delivery are seen as equally important, but I think the Sophistic rhetorical influence on education has been downplayed in favor of the Platonic idea. Plato tried to diminish the importance of the technical focus in favor of the metaphysical, but those elements served to increase the practical use of rhetoric in political life—the practicality being the saving quality of their methods. Later Jarratt points out: “In Protagoras, Socrates himself admits the multiple forms of discourse that the Sophist is adept. ‘Our friend Protagoras cannot only make a good long speech, as he has already shown, but when he is asked a question he can answer briefly; and when he asks he will wait and hear the answer’ ” (105).

Clearly Sophistic teaching was focused on democratic and political life. That was the practical application of argument and speechmaking. But how much of this was innovative and influential though, and how much was already a cultural focus? Despite the huge focus here then, maybe the Sophists consideration of other subjects such as literature and music as other aspects of an ideal education are the more significant contributions? I don’t know—just trying to take a different view.

Parataxis and Hypotaxis

Susan Jarratt uses the concept of parataxis as a means of explaining how sophistic historiography differs from “logical” history, so I thought it might be useful to look up parataxis and hypotaxis in my notes from Shea’s prose style class. Here’s what I found:

Parataxis
Usually a series of short sentences that leave the relative significance and ranking of events up to the reader; almost a list. Uses simple polysyndeton (using lots of connectors: and…and…and) to create compound sentences without signifying importance, but due to the lack of meaning implied by the connectors, it reads more like asyndeton. Parataxis gives the reader the freedom (or the onus) to do the thinking, to draw inferences, to make connections.

Hypotaxis
Usually longer sentences with dependant clauses that define the relative significance of events, the order of importance, and the relationships between events. In other words, hypotaxis tries to do the thinking for the audience. Uses conjunctive adverbs, subordinate conjunctions, and other connectors to create compound/complex sentences that illustrate relationships explicitly. Although parataxis uses some simple and repetitive connectors, hypotaxis relates more to polysyndeton because the connectors used are more complex and receive more emphasis, and because they establish a hierarchy of information.

As with most stylistic oppositions, hypotaxis and parataxis are at opposite ends of a continuum, rather than in clearly separated arenas. In my notes, I wrote that a rough way to identify parataxis/hypotaxis is to analyze how much care the author gives to the audience. More care = more hypotaxis. This makes sense when you think about the paternal nature of the Greek culture that has handed down our rational, logical concepts of how history should be recorded. But in its “caring,” the traditional model is like an overprotective parent, shielding the audience from a full knowledge or understanding of all the “branches” (apologies for the mixed analogies). However, I would not characterize the speaker/author in a paratactic historiography as uncaring. I think the caring in this situation is demonstrated by the author’s faith in the audience to have the intelligence to help determine the outcome. Hierarchy is not required in order for a relationship to be caring.

Rhetoric and historiography

After reading the first chapter of Rereading the Sophists, a few comments and questions come to mind. On page 13, Jarratt writes, “Rhetoric at its most fruitful has historically functioned as a meta-discipline through which a whole spectrum of language uses and their outcomes as social action can be refracted for analysis and combination.” Jarratt notes that the rhetorician has been a generalist. The goal for the historian is agility in moving between disciplines, standing back from them with the critical perspective characteristic of both history and rhetoric for the purpose of illuminating meaningful connections, disjunctions, overlaps, or exclusions.” I see such a perspective as important for understanding not only historical facts, but the context and culture of those facts and how they connect with the past and the future. But who decides what is meaningful, and how do they decide what is meaningful? Jarratt goes on to say. “The choice of texts for any particular history will become an expression of ethos; the historian makes a case for the relevance of a particular combination of materials based on her practical understanding of the issues involved, an ethical commitment, and good judgment about the best interests of the audience.” The question for me then becomes: whose “good judgment?” and who decides what the best interests of the audience are. Perhaps this choice of texts must be an interdisciplinary effort, bringing the perspectives and judgments of those in literature, the arts, science, philosophy, and religion.
Jarratt also writes, “The point for a modern rhetorical historiography is the disruption of the conventional expectation that a history be a complete, replete, full, and logically consistent narrative record. . . . For the rhetorical historians, the point of breaking the chain, of resisting the impulse to fit historical materials into a neat, continuous line from beginning to end, is to achieve the kind of critical distance which allows for re-vision.” (p. 18) I view that “critical distance” as necessary in enabling the student of history to see the big picture, to make connections, and to grasp context.

Gale-Jarratt-Glenn Exchange

Here's the launch post for the Gale-Jarratt-Glenn Exchange. I'm glad that Daniella raised the question of the rhetoric of this exchange, so we should take into consideration not only WHAT these scholars say to each other but HOW they say it. See also Jeremy's comment about HOW scholars work on recovery.

I wanted to point more directly to the approach Jarratt and Ong are taking to the feminist project of recovering Aspasia. On page 10, right before the heading, they write that "Aspasia" is a "rich site for interpretive work." In such a framing, it matters little whether we get the details of who Aspasia was and what she said and did down right. What we can say without a shadow of doubt is that she elicited discourse, that unlike most women of the era, she elicited commentary, just as the sophists elicited commentary by Plato--a lot--placed in the mouth of Socrates. (If scholars for years read Plato's dismissal of sophist practice as some kind of "truth"--e.g., the Sophists were bad for culture--they now read Plato's attention to them as evidence of something culturally strong at work.)

So--the interpretive question then becomes, what kind of discourse did Aspasia elicit? There would be many answers to this question--and we should include the visual images cited by Glenn and Jarratt-Ong as part of that elicited discourse. Why do people feel moved to foreground the sexual aspects of her personhood? Then and now? Jarratt-Ong's "reading" (the autochthony part) of a selected piece of this discourse centers on the differences between the two versions of the Funeral Orations and is in fact a reading of Plato's rhetoric, not Aspasia's. The question was this: Why did Plato insert Aspasia into this dialogue? Why is she for Plato a "site of discourse?" J-O's reading: not to give her credit for composition arts but to place an argument about citizenship/foreignness and Athenian birthrights in the mouth of a birther (woman) and what more credible woman than Aspasia. The feminist argument embedded here would then be what?

I found both the Jarratt/Ong and Glenn readings stimulating to further research and discussion of the contributions of women to classical rhetoric.
Jarratt and Ong quoted Wood: "Nevertheless, it remains a remarkable feature of Greek history that the position of women seems to have declined as the democracy evolved, . . ." I think that women's position declined as democracy grew because men did not want to share power with women and ensured that they would not have to do so. In our own country, women did not receive the right to vote until the 19th amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1920.
Glenn mentions that Aspasia's "contributions later directed through a powerful, gendered lens to both refract and reflect Socrates and Pericles, rather than herself." We know that women were denied citizenship and even recognition of full status as a human being in that society. I find it curious these attitudes prevailed in a city named for a goddess.
I am also intrigued by the speech Plato gives through Aspasia in Menexenus: "For as a woman proves her motherhood by giving milk to her young ones . . . , so did this our land prove that she was the mother of men . . . . for the woman in her conception and generation is but the imitation of the earth, and not the earth of the woman." Here we see homage to Mother Earth, Earth as a female figure who is honored. Yet, female humans did not receive the same appreciation. in ancient Greece.
The quotation from Plutarch - referring to how history is written can distort truth - opening the Jarratt/Ong article is echoed in Glenn's Introduction when she writes: "Why, then, should we continue to write histories of rhetoric when both writing and history are suspect?"
I find Aspasia interesting for several reasons - being a woman rhetorician as well as an educated foreigner who was accepted into Athenian society somewhat beyond what I assume was the norm of most native women, and a businesswoman who opened her own academy for girls and a salon - not a "brothel," as Glenn notes - that attracted the male rhetoricians and philosophers. I hope that there will be further research that will give us more insight into her contributions and how she navigated a society so closed to women.