Saturday, August 29, 2009
Hair of the Dog that Bit Me
Readings from Classical Rhetoric provides an effective cross-section of examples to complement Conley’s piece. I found that reading Conley first provided a nice background before tackling the actual pieces of rhetoric; the result was an exercise in locating the criteria in each piece laid out by Conley. The one piece that I would like to discuss further in class is Isocrates “Against the Sophists.” I am having difficulty seeing the distinction Conley and Isocrates himself claim separate his rhetoric from the sophists. Conley mentions that Isocrates was concerned with “bridg[ing] the gap between morality and technical skill (18),” which the sophists was accused of neglecting. I cannot, however, find anything in Isocrates’ piece that presents him as anything different from Protagoras. Isocrates mentions the importance of morality, but he appears to base his theory of rhetoric on pragmatic logic “adorne[d]” with “striking thought” and “clothe[d]” “in flowing and melodious phrase” (45). I have no doubt that I am missing some moral nugget, but until it is revealed in all its glory, I don’t see Isocrates working towards the aim of moral argumentation as Conley suggests, or perhaps this piece neglects to highlight the rhetorical element I thought I would find.
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I agree. This would be a good bit to go over more in class as I would like to see more of where Conley is drawing his conclusions from.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good point for future discussion. Plato's position from the readings in Conley is a statement against the glitz of rhetoric. In his construct, only persons with the knowledge of the "eternal and immutable essences of things" possess the virtue to properly address these topics and the integrity necessary to speak the truth about them. This introduces the idea of objective truth and objective standards which may be discovered and explored, but never changed by human inquiry. In Augustine's writing in Christian Doctrine, morality backed by Scripture is the assumed state of the orator. Here we are back to the question posed in class:"Whose scripture--Sharpton's or Dobson's?" In Augustine's day, this was not an issue. The lock down on scriptural interpretation was held by the Catholic Church. Oddly enough, Augustine believed that sermons should also contain some "entertainment" value to draw in the masses. Truth and morality alone can be rather dull, I guess.
ReplyDeleteI think the morality of Isocrates is in question for me as well. He is pretty explicit in Antidosis, line 278, about his philosophy, but it isn't very effective when he's trying to exempt himself from taking on the responsibilites of a wealthy Athenian.
ReplyDeleteFYI, UDC was me, I just now changed my name to make that known. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that the morality is not in Isocrates' technique, or approach to rhetoric, it is simply a call for the moral rhetor. He doesn't delineate whose morality, or what that morality entails, but he seems to have a goal of having good people use his form of rhetoric. I certainly (much like those above) am not seeing any morality inherent to his rhetorical theory.
ReplyDeleteAs has been stated by general concensus, any issue can be successfully argued from either perspective-for or against. Conley states that what sets Isocrates apart from the Socratics and Cynics of his day was Isocrates viewed their "philosophizing" as nothing more than "idle speculation" and "vain quibbling" (18). I find Isocrates practical approach to persuasion,through probablility a more open-minded approach. This was reflected in his school as well. Matsen notes, Isocrates school focused on teaching many subjects: "oratory, composition, history, citizenship, culture, and morality" (43). Our liberal arts education today is based on these subjects.
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