Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Isocrates
Post here a working excerpt from your Response Paper 2 on Isocrates. For example, you might raise questions for us about certain passages or terms in the Antidosis or Against the Sophists--thus soliciting conversation; you might offer a reading (or 2 readings) of a given passage; you might comment on Fleming’s use of Isocrates as a “site for idealizing rhetorical education.”
10 comments:
Ha! Me first.
"Isocrates is proud of treating his audience and students as if they were capable of intelligence and reasoning and sees this, as well as a cajoling tone, as being the chief distinctions by which an effacious and soul-helping rhetoric may be transferred from student to teacher (to some degree, this is an approach that relies on a very small class size, something that Socrates will also espouse. It is difficult to measure the soul's progress in a class of even twenty.)"
I tend to agree that teaching or treating the person you mean to reason with as if they are an intelligent and reasonable person is seductive (as most flattery can be, not that it's necessarily false.) I also think that it is the only ethical way to treat anyone with whom you have that kind of business. Ethical flattery, if you will (ah, cognitive dissonance.)
I do think, though, that the kind of teaching he's discussing is best done as close to one on one as is possible, and while the desire is noble and indeed admirable, it is difficult to closely observe groups of twenty or more, in the way you have to such that you can offer benefit to the soul.
I promise to stop nitpicking, eventually. Or to be persuaded, if the information is presented to me.
Fleming sees Isocrates as a star scholar, dedicated to his discipline, well versed in its teaching, and the source of inspiration for further generations of study. Isocrates had clear ideas of rhetoric—what it was, how it was used, and how it could be taught. He also viewed rhetoric in a purer sense than most. Instead of studying it for gain, or even for personal satisfaction, Isocrates maintained that rhetoric should be studied for the moral benefit it gave a person. Not to make you successful but good. Fleming seems to see Isocrates as possessing vital truths about the study of rhetoric, but I am not sure if Isocrates would agree that there are vital truths to possess.
In reading these essays, I observed a consistency in Isocrates’ opinion on teaching and how to approach the world in general. Isocrates scorned the idea of concrete truth. He was critical of mechanical formulas, or any claim that promised certainty of results. Isocrates was a champion of creativity and critical thinking. Wisdom rather than truth. Isocrates believed that the world was fluid. What worked in one situation might not work in another. Even what was taken as truth from past scholars could not be beyond question. If confronted with the idea that many of his opinions might be taken as truth in the future, I would imagine he would object.
As to what’s right and wrong with Isocrates’ vision of his social world: Isocrates’ praise of creative invention and resourcefulness over mechanistic rote methods implemented by other Sophists is praiseworthy, as well as his sensitivity to kairos. However, his ill regard for the pre-Socratic physicists and metaphysicians betrays him as a narrow-minded man who used his pragmatism as a shabby excuse for intellectual provinciality. Similarly, he was unable to appreciate the potential values of the study of astronomy and geometry in developing the character of a person (mystagogically, as in the Pythagorean initiatic tradition), much less their practical applications, of which the intellectual world has been well aware of since the inventions of Archimedes, and with which we in a post-industrial space age are all too familiar.
Quite understandably, Isocrates evinces concern for the misuses of language to manipulate the public for political purposes through misrepresentation of what is just—though, since we don’t know the particular instances of this to which he alludes, we cannot know if he is speaking merely out of some personal political bias. He also disdains the “word jugglery” of the Sophists because it has nothing to do with objective truth, in which Isocrates has a kind of dialectical materialist/empiricist’s belief (though I am hesitant to apply such anachronistic epithets to an ancient, it would seem to be a propos in his case). Coming from an existentialist perspective, I would adjudge this belief as naïve.
One point that I wish to broach is that Isocrates’ arguments, rather than being motivated by a purely conscientious feeling about the state of rhetorical tutelage in ancient Athens, were galvanized by anxious concern with his own reputation. In Against the Sophists, he is reacting to such professors as Antisthenes and Eucleides who proffered services cut-rate compared to the heftier fees that Isocrates exacted for his oratorical instruction. We could easily suspect him of being merely a self-interested businessman launching a ‘smear campaign’ on the competition, portrayed by him as the ‘used car salesmen’ of rhetoric. In contrast he implicitly builds himself up as a purveyor of moral education and truly skilled oratory. By the time of the Antidosis, Isocrates had suffered retaliation: in a real court case, the prosecution lobbed against him some of the very accusations with which he had attacked the Sophists (of casuistry and ‘making the weaker cause the stronger’). Isocrates, a sore loser (though wealthy, he was discomfited at having to subsidize maintenance of the Athenian trireme warships), fabricated the case presented in Antidosis—expressly for the purpose of vindicating his besmirched reputation. This is not to say that Isocrates does not uphold admirable tenets of pedagogical theory and practice, but he certainly had some ulterior agenda in doing so.
Hi guys, following is a draft of what I've been working on regarding Fleming. It's mostly my thoughts about what I think Fleming's interests in Isocrates.
As I did the word find in Fleming’s piece I realized that every reference to Isocrates dealt with the work he completed and it’s influence today. A particularly great quote is “Isocrates had advanced these same to principles four hundred and fifty years earlier” (178). Fleming inserts it as if reminding the reader that Isocrates was one of the great rhetoricians that considered many of the same issues we are working to understand now. Fleming appears to value Isocrates core beliefs about rhetoric, that it is extremely valuable; it must be learned via practice and instruction. Fleming believes that rhetoric is the ability to use effective language in an appropriate situation (179).
Fleming quotes Isocrates a great deal when discussing the students morality or character. It is obviously important to both Fleming and Isocrates, when teaching rhetoric their appears to be more than one goal, of course learning about language and persuasion but also the idea of morality, truth, and character. Isocrates was interested in the character of the students he taught, that they would continue to do what was right with their new knowledge or sill. I think Fleming appreciates this concept as he refers several times to Isocrates methods.
I harbor a certain skepticism, as some previous posters have, regarding Fleming's inspiration from Isocrates' texts. What is most apparent to me at present is the potentially serious problem that virtue can only be conceived of in a public/political setting. As Isocrates writes in the Antidosis: "the power to speak well is taken as the surest index of a sound understanding, and discourse which is true and lawful and just is the outward image of a good and faithful soul." My skepticism enters the picture in wondering 1) what 'sound understanding' in fact is, and 2) does it truly follow from the statement that speech "is the source of all our blessings" that goodness, truth, and justice can naturally follow from a prescribed method of dialogue (Plato's difficulty, too)?
Fleming also follows Isocrates in maintaining that "the welfare of man and our common good" is paramount (F. states that the "good rhetor [. . .] is conceived first and foremost as a free and equal member of a self-governing community") above all else. I see some difficulties with these statements, namely, that the rhetor might indeed be construed as ultimately not agentive, but instrumental in nature in achieving a desired end (cf. problems that might be said to occur with Plato's philosopher-kings who know what is wise and just [because of their training in dialectic], but cannot allow for equality within their republic because of certain foundational differences with respect to others who work as laborers or soldiers). Finally, what kind of morality does Fleming conceive of with regard to being a good citizen and possessing practical wisdom, as Isocrates also promotes? This might again (or might not) reflect the possibility of the rhetor merely being an instrument for the desired end--does "free" agency really work?
By tracking Fleming’s references to Isocrates and not referencing anything else Fleming elaborates on, I’ve come up with this image of an Iscoratean education:
--students value it
--study of speaking and writing well that is consistent, oral, intellectual, and extended (multi-year) (173)
--is “other” than technological rhetoric, which may be uncontrollable (??) (176)
--can be learned and is worth learning (178)
--is philosophic; educates for the good; produces a good rhetor (180)
--follows the source triad: nature, art, practice (181)
--students and teachers divide labor (181)
--is a curricular practice, that is, writing for teachers is not useless (182)
To say that Fleming is selective (what about the crankiness and competitive caste to Isocrates’s writing?) is an unfair criticism; any writer positions him or herself selectively in some intertextual configuration. But I’d like to hear more (from Fleming or from you) about the ancient and contemporary problems endemic to such an idealized curriculum. What contemporary conditions in higher or secondary education make this portrait so readily attractive and desirable? Who decides what counts as morality in a complex society such as ours? Can indeed we teach morality? Who are the contemporary analogs to Isocrates’s despicable, word juggling, language educators who promise an education in truth yet cannot manage their own lives honestly? Do teachers have to be virtuous? How do we participate (yes, “us”—we good guys) in Isocrates’s proposed wrong sort of educational practice? What specific contemporary classroom practices embrace paideian ideals (with emphasis on specific) and which do not? And my biggest question is this: How does a Greek-oriented paideutic education intersect with the educational ideals of other ancient cultures—or contemporary ones for that matter? Can we afford now in our day to be entirely Western-tradition oriented? Or is this precisely the moment (kairos) at which we do need to resuscitate the Greek moment?
In all fairness, I need now to return to the end of the Fleming’s piece to see if he responds at all to my perhaps unfounded accusations re sins of omission.
In reading and dissecting Isocrates (or anyone else), we have to make a conscious effort to separate our own lenses on the world from the world in which he wrote. Our assumptions about the world can’t help but color our interpretations, but we need to be able to step back from ourselves and try to see a clearer picture of the world as it was then. We’ve been raised in a world where science is seen as concrete and provable, but the world Isocrates lived in had a much different view of science. It’s laughable to us to suggest that geometry and astronomy are not worthy pursuits in their own right, but I don’t think that science began to earn its status as a reasonable means of explaining the world we live in until around the time of Descartes (if then). Was Isocrates narrow-minded for denigrating those pursuits, or was he (and the rest of the world) just not prepared for that particular paradigm shift? We all have some beliefs that become habits, become comfortable—even intelligent people who actively pursue a better understanding of the world and of themselves.
Sorry, I couldn't think of a way to segue into this, so I'll just skip off in a different direction...I think Isocrates sees the “bad guys” on both sides. He criticizes those whose claims are too concrete, but he also criticizes those whose ideas are too abstract. Isocrates argues himself into dissoi logoi, acknowledging one side to debate the other and then reversing the argument: you can’t teach virtue, you can’t foresee the outcome of every situation, but philosophy should be pragmatic, and speculation on the nature of the relationship between language and knowledge is a waste of time. He’s pinning himself to the same place on the spectrum that Fleming would like to pin us. I guess I should have stated that the other way around.
This is a test
I believe in his world there was a great deal of conflict on the nature of teaching, the meaning and teaching of rhetoric (an age old debate which of course has continued to present times!). He seemed to be quite idealistic in teaching standards, for a teacher to eat, sleep and breathe rhetoric and follow it in every aspect of his being. He also wanted the teachers to utilize the native talent a student possessed as well as the art (or technique) of rhetoric with much practice. Sophists were charging relatively low fees (three or four minae) and ignored the need for the natural talent- they glossed over it promising a student of any level could train and become an effective orator. In order to meet these claims the teachers simplify their training to just techniques and do not take into consideration the pedagogy being laid out OR the aptitude of the students to learn. I think he was threatened by this (I will talk more about this later) but also concerned that if the Sophists were not able to be effective orators or did not have a grasp (as shown by other aspects of their lifestyles) of the philosophies of rhetoric how could they teach it? In other words he wanted teachers to be role models for their students, but knew these Sophists might not be doing this and for this spoke out against them.
Both Fleming and Isocrates struggle with the questions of ‘what to teach?’, ‘who should teach?’ and ‘how should we teach it?’. Interestingly enough nearly three thousand years later we grapple with the same questions when it comes to teaching rhetoric!
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