Today’s Plan
- Attendance
- Review Last Class
- Two Readings: Salon and Breitbart
- Haskins and Benoit
- Homework
Review Last Class
Looking through your posts:
- Essentialism vs. Materialism
- Plato’s Elitism vs. Socrates’ insistence to Question Everything
- Plato’s Transcendentalism (Epistemology, knowledge)
Two Readings
As I was preparing for class this weekend, two readings popped up in my facebook feed. I think these provide a productive opportunity for approaching Isocrates.
First, a Salon interview with George Lakoff
Second, a Breitbart article on the dangers of the New Civics
Haskins and Benoit
Quiz Questions:
- Benoit notes that Plato and Isocrates shared similar objections to the sophists. What were they?
- Benoit notes that both Plato and Isocrates conceptualize rhetoric as persuasion, however, he also notes that there are important differences between them. What are some of these differences?
- What happens to education if we shift from Aristotle to Isocrates? What are the classroom implications? What are the socio-political implications? (Note that Aristotle is Plato’s student, and while he was more pragmatic than his teacher, Aristotle still believed in the superiority of logos and rationality).
Benoit: page 64, Isocrates’ emphasis on practical affairs. Rhetoric as/is “epistemic.”
Benoit: page 65, Isocrates’ pragmatism vs. Plato’s idealism. What comes first, knowledge or expression. Affairs of state, or the souls of audience members?
Isocrates: why we aren’t beasts. (65)
Haskins: (194) Echoes to Plato’s idealist project, seeking universals. Compare to Lakoff.
Haskins: (194-195, 196) Isocrates, political identity, again connect to Lakoff (vs. Plato/Descartes).
An Ironic Way of Being (198).
One topic that didn’t come up: paideia. This was Isocrates’ theory of a “Greek” education, an enculturation into the stories, values, history that makes Greeks “Greek.” I want to connect this directly to Lakoff, to frame paideia as an ethical project, to stress the idea that countries aren’t made, rather, they require continual re-making. (Link to grad lecture).
Homework
Read and blog on Barlow on Cicero (pdf). Cicero is writing a few centuries after Isocrates and Plato, as the Roman empire has risen to power. Generally, the Romans were skeptical of the value of Greek philosophy, feeling it was too abstract to be practical. Cicero believed otherwise, and argued that statesmen and orators could benefit from exposure to abstract philosophy, so long as they weren’t overexposed. Like Isocrates, Cicero’s theory of education centered on practice.
Additionally, read Rose and Ogas’ recent Chronicle article The Faulty Foundation of American Colleges (note: this link should work if you are on UNC’s internet; otherwise, I have uploaded a .pdf to the course’s files section in Canvas). As you read, try to focus on the three basic elements of argumentation: what is the claim that Rose and Ogas make? What do they offer as evidence to support this claim? In what ways do they anticipate criticism?
