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.
7 comments:
Alyssa, I find your posting very interesting. I’m most interested in one of your final questions regarding the sophists “But how much of this was innovative and influential though, and how much was already a cultural focus?” Because I had misplaced my book I decided to start by reading the preface and introduction. Jarratt comments that she wants to look at the first sophists and focus on their contribution, she states so much focus is placed on Aristotle and Plato. I think Jarratt is trying to reclaim some of the ‘glory’ so to speak for the sophists or at least make sure their contributions are remembered. I think this quote by Jarratt serves as a beginning point in answering the question I’ve pasted above; “The purpose of rereading the first sophists for rhetoric and composition studies today is to bring to light that Aristotelian orientation and offer an alternative. …The results will enrich our historical backgrounds and may cast new light on contemporary concerns in the field of rhetoric and composition.” (Introduction xvii-xviii) I think she is wanting to initiate research that will answer the question of how much was innovative and influential.
As a teacher of technical writing (and former professional technical writer), I was also especially interested in the technical aspect of the Sophists’ work. Jarratt says that the concept of “practice,” so important to the sophists’ teaching, can be revalued as philosophical pragmatism because “…sophistic teaching as a profession [is] clearly distinguished from the detachment of philosophy in its engagement in social action” (94). By having students learn commonplaces through memorizing, delivering, and writing speeches, the sophists are instilling the culture’s values in the students. The sophists, though mostly foreign-born, made sure to place a focus on what was appropriate for the culture and community they were in—i.e., the rhetorical situation. In addition, they taught skills with definite practical applications, but the purpose of those skills was to create citizens who could actively and intelligently participate in democratic governing.
Although the focus in technical writing classes today is on the practical, I would like to think that what my students do is more like the praxis described by the sophists—“a form of action informed by reflection” (95). The practical side of technical writing is imitation: “this is what a memo looks like. Write a memo.” But if that’s all I did in my classes, the only use it would have for my students would be to check off another box on their core requirements. Instead, what I hope they leave my class with is an understanding of how they can use situationally appropriate forms of communication to effectively and affectively participate in communities through their writing.
This isn't so much about the Sophists, but it is about the Jarratt reading . . .
Tuesday's discussion about media and photography got me thinking about Jarratt's and Plato's attitude toward speaking and writing. Jarratt calls on deconstruction to show how Plato and Aristotle (the villains in her book) created hierarchical binaries (p 65): Truth over opinion, soul over body, speech over writing. From what we've seen in Plato's dialogues, he sees writing as stagnant, dead, while lively discourse searches for Truth. Reality is constructed through speech, while writing, like a photograph, records a dead moment that has no past and can't progress. But since he wrote (ahem) those things, texts have proven themselves to be their own kind of speech, conversing with one another over centuries and realizing a kind of immortality of ideas that speech could never attain. So, the evolution of ideas has changed Plato and Aristotle's binaries into non-hierarchical pairings, and Jarratt elaborates on this in her discussion of parataxis, in which ideas are linked as equals with coordinating, rather than subordinating, conjunctions.
But Plato had a political agenda. He thought that democracy was a bad thing. The cacophony of voices in the Athenian assembly, each trying to win sympathy for a particular opinion, must've been like nails on a chalkboard for him. It was antithetical to dialectic as a search for Truth. This brings to mind Jarratt's description of pre-literate Greece, in which orality, speech, was the vehicle for truth and tradition (the same thing?) and information. This seems to match more closely with what Plato has in mind: a single person or a small group who serves as the definer and teller of truth, while the majority of people listen and passively take in what is presented to them.
Isn't it interesting, then, that democracy has evolved into something arguably similar to what Plato envisioned? I've heard, though I don't remember where, the terms "pre-literate" and "post-literate" to describe society at different times. Plato's vision sounds like it describes Jarratt's pre-literate society, and perhaps our own, which is post-literate. Teaching this semester has helped me realize that people's reality is constructed through speech, to the degree that it's constructed through language at all. It's equally constructed by images, which are evolving into their own kind of text. Writing—neither the small amount actively engaged in by most people, nor the slightly larger amount actively or passively read—plays an increasingly smaller role in the way that people define themselves and their surroundings.
Another thought more related to Jarratt than to the Sophists themselves . . .
In defining “Sophistic Historiography,” Jarratt cites Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen as an example. While I understand her point that Gorgias shook up the accepted view of Helen, and that this is essential to her definition of Sophistic Historiography, I don’t believe it serves as a “disruption of progressive continuity,” her heading for this section of the book (16).
Jarratt claims that Gorgias “consciously refuses to tell history as a continuous, complete narrative leading to a pre-determined end” (17), but his speech is entirely concerned with “end.” His refiguring of Helen’s story was the means to his end of demonstrating the power of language through his own speech and of illustrating how Helen herself was controlled by speech. Sophistic history, at least in this example, begins with the end. Gorgias intended to demonstrate the power of speech, and chose a particular story with which to do it. He isn’t disrupting progressive continuity, he’s maintaining it in a different direction.
Alyssa, that is a lovely analysis. Just sayin'.
Maybe it's because I'm an artistic type, but I actually think that you have to study those 'soft subjects' to have anything resembling a complete understanding of rhetoric. Rhetoric, as has been remarked on before, all over the damn place, encompasses a fairly broad spectrum of methods and knowledges in order to accomplish persuasion. If I have any fault with rhetoric and rhetoric scholars, it's that they subject rhetoric (which is deeply, deeply contextual and involved in ethos and pathos) to a dry course of logos, logos, logos. While a very important part of learning to control and channel creativity is learning to apply the abstractions of logos to it, creation is still as much a matter of the ability to harness pathos and ethos as the ability to demonstrate the course of your thought (logos.) Invention is a part of rhetoric, and one that has traditionally received considerable deference (one of the distinguishing traits of the true rhetor) and a great deal of avoidance (as in, you either got it or you don't.) The arts are the perfect grounds for that meeting which the theorists have great trouble articulating (hey, we can follow the trial with logos, but blazing it happens elsewhere in the psyche) as it happens, but little trouble recognizing (and reasoning backwards to compensate.)
So hells yeah, the arts were an essential part of a rhetorical education, equally as important as the more logical (and quantifiable) study of categories, etc. The Sophists made a hell of a contribution there.
And yeah, it is funny that the Democracy that so aggravated SocraPlaTle has been so patently what those who have been in a position to make decisions have been working against. But the lip service to it satisfies people who feel inadequate or recognize their own categorical unfitness, given the standard.
I think, in my pointy, cynical head, that the painful process of being chronically unsure (which you have to subscribe to in order to change your mind) and having to decide, change and defend, is not attractive, especially not (and I have some experience here), to people whose everyday lives require the vast majority of their energy. And (I say this after comparing my experience in school overseas to my experience here), we are training specifically for the attitudes which make self-determination even harder (self-determination is the cornerstone of democracy, along with a certain sadistic stubborness.) It's a touch self-fulfilling: having a lack of faith in the generalized public's ability to find their own ass with a map is easier if the only people with a map either have to fight like mad or be born into the class with the maps. And the fighters go uphill-- both ways-- in the snow.
Of course, that's the easy answer. The harder one is that, yes, not everyone appears to be able to make decisions with even the rudimentary ability to see themselves as a part of a group (which is a pity; those people who are most self-interested tend to be those who are most immersed in the groups which they are members of and least aware of it. If it is not uncomfortable to be a part of a group, it is harder to question the group's values.) Democracy requires you to allow those people who are least suited to make decisions to make decisions, even when they do not wish to. If they chose not to be involved, as long as the possibility is offered them in a way that makes participation eminently possible, you still have a democracy. The problem blooms (like the plant from Little Shop of Horrors) when that lack of participation is taken for granted or when it is never offered (sometimes related premises.)
So no, I'm not surprised, even though I find it funny. But I'm glad to air my misgivings to a hopefully like-minded crowd.
Oh, and Democracy hopes those who have made decisions and are unfit to do so can be outvoted by the group, reasoning that a group of many members should keep the interests of a single member (especially if they are to the detriment of the other members) with bounds.
Leaving out charisma, the seemingly endless desire to make someone else do the work and chronic shortsightedness out of the equation. Rhetoric is the subject which attempts to compensate for those, not politics.
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