Today’s plan:
- Secondary Source Presentations
- Augustine’s [Philosophical] Rhetoric
- Some Discussion of Semiotics and Hermeneutics
- Break
- The Transcendental Signifier, The Big Other, and the Other (with a Capital O)
Points of Concern in Augustine’s On Christian Teaching
A few points from Green’s (1997) introduction:
- On the relation between Confessions and OCT, x
- A massive shift to Cicero’s primary aims for oratory, from “to teach, to delight, to move” to “to be listened to with understanding, with pleasure, and with obedience” (4.87)” (xvii, see also xviii–ask why it isn’t as important to Augustine to give pleasure, short answer: fear (see below)). See also IV.14-15, on the aims of eloquence (and the idea/problem that eloquence aims for the already converted, for those who are “favorable, interested, receptive.” What do we do with those who aren’t? (Again at IV.63, the listener must already approach with the will to learn).
Reading Notes / Discussion Topics for Augustine’s On Christian Teaching
The Preface opens by revisiting the question of who can be taught and what is required for teaching.
Much of the preface wrangles with the central question of Christian philosophy: how do you theorize ignorance, misunderstanding, and even evil? See specifically Preface 13-14. See also II.10-11 (for some incredible hermeneutic gymnastics, they get repeated at IV.61) and II.87 on the “inscrutable plan”).
See preface 18 for a clear response to Plato’s fears regarding writing in the Phaedrus, an acknowledgement that texts are now central to education.
Origins of semiotics. I.26-27
The importance of a canon, history belongs to God (II.109), faith as a shield that protects against manipulation (II.23-24). In terms of rhetorical theory, this leads to an incredibly important shift from thinking about invention to thinking about discovery, and reinforces the centrality of the canon (see II. 120-21). It also, without ever naming him, affirms Isocrates as the grandfather of scholastic education (paideia as enculturation, not Greek but Divine). And, of course, hermeneutics becomes the central “inventive” concern of a Philosophical Rhetoric that grounds itself in a specific set of texts. See again IV.18-19, the importance of scripture before any training in eloquence.
The result of this ontological/epistemological disposition is to frame rhetoric as mere “presentation” of a truth already “discovered.” Hence: Lanham and the strong defense. We are, at best, back in the realm of the Phaedrus, or in the clutches of Aristotle. But the materialist rhetoric that I worked to extract from Cicero and Quintilian, one that operates from a “constructivist” ontology (something is real only insofar as it moves something else) and a civic epistemology (truth is determined by others in a specific moment that always already decays), is in the rear view.
More interesting hermeneutical gymnastics on the origins of eloquence (IV.59-60).
Augustine’s opposition to “wrangling,” the sophistic/dialectical tradition. (II.117). Book IV opens with an acknowledgement of the Q Question, one that leads Augustine to (sort of) defend a rhetorical project of the traditional sort:
Since rhetoric is used to give conviction to both truth and falsehood, who could dare to maintain that truth, which depends on us for its defence, should stand unarmed in the fight against falsehood?
God as the ultimate agent, humans as unnecessary. (IV.95)
Again, a form of weak defense, one that recalls for me Plato and Aristotle: we have to use rhetoric because the bad folks do too. And we are authorized to use disputation to make sure no one can challenge our “sure foundation” (IV.127).
Rhetoric as a form of revealing what was hidden (IV.72; the politicizing of taste, learning and eating). Compare the introduction of Cicero IV.74 to Augustine’s recapitulation for the purpose of rhetoric: IV.87 (“to be listened to with understanding, with pleasure, with obedience).”
The importance of action, some troubling language: “So when advocating something to be acted on the Christian orator should not only teach his listeners so as to impart instruction, and delight them so as to hold their attention, but also move them so as to conquer their minds” (IV.79-80).
The foundation of Current Traditional Rhetoric, learning to speak/write by exposure to great speakers/writers (rather than by method, or even imitation) (IV. 8-9). Also, the development of the championing of the plain style (IV.66-67); an equating of style with sin and punishment (IV.81-83); the grand style has its uses–particularly to help instill the righteous amount of fear.
Side Note on Hermeneutics and its Relation to Rhetoric
For those not familiar with hermeneutics, I highly recommend Steven Mailloux’s “Rhetorical Hermeneutics” essay, which offers a cogent and accessible introduction to the history of debates regarding meaning and literary (rhetorical analysis), as well as offering a way of thinking literary interpretation from a rhetorical perspective (and eschewing a “grand” theory of meaning making). He writes:
What happens when the theorist stops searching for that general account that guarantees correct readings? Where does he go once he quits asking realist or idealist questions about interpretation?
One route to follow takes a turn toward rhetoric […] Such a hermeneutics [views] shared interpretive strategies […] as historical sets of topics, arguments, tropes, ideologies, and so forth, that determine how texts are established as meaningful through rhetorical exchanges. In this view, communities of interpreters neither discover nor create meaningful texts. Such communities are actually synonymous with the conditions in which acts of persuasion about texts take place. (629).
It is worth unpacking Mailloux’s proposition here, in light of Lanham last week, to distinguish a philosophical (or what Mailloux identifies as a Theoretical) hermeneutic from a rhetorical one. What does he mean by synonymous here?
He continues:
Concepts such as “interpretive strategies” and “argument fields” are, we might say, simply tools for referring to the unformalizable context of interpretive work, work that always involves rhetorical action, attempts to convince others of the truth of explications and explanations.
A rhetorical hermeneutics must, by necessity, be more therapeutic than constructive. […] All Theories believe that some pure vantage point can be established beyond and ruling over the messy realm of interpretive practices and persuasive acts.
Rhetorical hermeneutics tries to correct this mistake […] [by] giv[ing] up the goals of Theory and continues theorizing about interpretation only therapeutically, exposing the problems with foundationalism and explaining the attraction of realist and idealist positions. But a rhetorical hermeneutics has more to do: it should also provide histories of how particular theoretical and critical discourses have evolved. Why? Because acts of persuasion always take place against an ever-changing background of shared and disputed assumptions, questions, assertions, and so forth. Any full rhetorical analysis of interpretation must therefore describe this tradition of discursive practices in which acts of interpretive persuasion are embedded. Thus rhetorical hermeneutics leads inevitably to rhetorical histories […]
(629-630)
This semester I have attempted to trace such a history, albeit a long one, that allows us to understand Lanham’s argument: that is the reading at the center of this whole show. To do that, and to place this week’s piece of the puzzle in perspective, we should recognize that Augustine’s hermeneutics, his method of explication, represent a Theory of interpretation par excellence. That will be my primary task after the break.
The Transcendental Signifier, The Big Other, and the Other (with a Capital O)
Undoubtedly, during our discussion period tonight, someone will have pointed out the strong Platonic resonances in Augustine’s work, despite his extreme efforts to distinguish, or prioritize, Christian philosophy in relation to the pagan Platonic tradition (see II. 107-108). I want to spend a bit more time on this tonight, thinking back to Lanham’s distinction between the strong and weak defense of rhetoric, while also introducing (once again) postmodern philosophy–specifically, the work of Jacques Derrida on the transcendental signifier/signified, and Jacques Lacan’s notions of “the name of the Father,” the master signifier, and the Big Other. In doing so, I will turn to Latour’s critique of modern religion and science in Modern Cult of the Factish Gods and Rejoicing.
Book One’s emphasis on permanence, the transcendental realm as perfect because it is impervious to change. See I.12. This is our homeland:
If we wish to return to the homeland and where we can be happy we must use this world [cf. I Cor. 7:31], not enjoy it, in order to discern “the invisible attributes of God, which are understood though what has been made” [Rom. I:20], or in other words, to derive eternal and spiritual value from corporeal and temporal things.
First, with echoes of Plato, we see the Good in terms of the eternal, resistant to change, beyond temporality. And, again as with Socrates, ontological framework begins redefining the proper scope of our desire (think about those chariots all, which horse is pulling you along?). As Mailloux points to above, and as Derrida and Lacan make central to their own theories, it is actually the desire for a “home” that is the defining characteristic of such a theological/philosophical framework. What we desire is a [new] master. For Lacan, the process of psychoanalysis is to come to question the very desire for such a Law. For Derrida, the transcendental signifier marks the concept–itself undefinable–that holds the rest of the system in place, that operates to define/qualify all other signifiers in the system. For Latour, in Rejoicing, the ideal form of this signifier is “God” in the Christian tradition, which marks off “a familiar preliminary to whatever keeps us gathered together” (9), “the guaranteed reference point of our common existence” (17). But for Latour, ancient religion was a dedication to continually flush out the specifics of the signifier, “God,” it was a commitment to a conversation about what binds us (perhaps we could read Isocrates this way if we wanted to be quite charitable, paideia as an ongoing consideration and not a conclusive determination, culture as a question, not an answer). Latour argues that Modern religion has failed to serve us by draining God of this process of renewal (17). Religion, for Latour: “There is no other world, but there are several ways of living in this one and several ways, too, of knowing it” (34). Latour is quite skeptical of any religion that would take us anywhere but where we are (and particularly aggressive toward any religion built around a notion of “altitude”). In other words, the exact opposite of Augustine’s religion, which takes us up high, and, in the process, takes us home.
Obviously, any discussion of homeland recalls for me the Vitanza passage from earlier this semester. But I hope examining Augustine can illustrate how this kind of epistemological certainty can lead to a very violent, and very troubling material politics. Again, Latour will be the vehicle here. If you have been following along, you should see that it a number of ways, the sophistic heritage directly challenges this framework. Below, I will attempt to explicate the nature of those challenges.
In Latour’s Modern Cult of the Factish Gods, he identifies in the Moderns, both in their science and their religion, a critical system predicated on a transcendental signifier or authority–a Father to discourse (in the Platonic sense, think Phaedrus, one who guarantees authority and underwrites all thought. I.13: “It is better to evade this verbal conflict silently than to quell it disputatiously.” Once the transcendental signifier is in place, once we have named the father who can rule the home, then the Modern system is in place, since all arguments issue from the place to which they return, the transcendental Authority (be it secular or religious, Reason or God). Once the beginning/end are firmly in space (above us, beyond place), then we are authorized to interpret. It ushers in the weak defense (and see II.117-118 for an example, for the danger of wrangling and sophism; or see III.22-23 for the critique of Judaism). The Modern explorer, meeting the savages, is free to castigate their myths from a position of objective authority, but, to turn the logic around, to question the signifier that locks the Modern perspectives in place (the objectivity of Reason, the existence of God, our access to Reason or God, etc) is sheer madness. Brutality. Ignorance. An utter indication of savagery. Beyond reason. Not worthy of acknowledgement. Or, perhaps, they are the devil’s conduit, sent to challenge us. But we are too wise to fall for such tricks (II.90). Augustine:
anyone who fails to see this [<<< this could refer to any interpretation offered by the Philosopher in the name of the father] is like a blind man in the sun, who cannot be helped by the brightness of such a clear and powerful light shining into his eyes. But someone who sees this yet runs away from it has a mind whose insight is weakened by his habit of living in the shadows cast by the flesh. (I.20-21).
[Insert comment here about faith as a shield, about rhetoric as protecting oneself from manipulation, see II.23-24]. Of course we have heard this language before, in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” But what reveals to us the Latourian angle is Augustine’s treatment of Plato, and the resonances between Plato and Christianity: “it is easier to believe that the pagans took everything that is good and true in their writings from our literature than that the Lord Jesus Christ took his from Plato–a quite crazy idea” (see II.107-109). When one uses dialectic (deconstruction, etc) to challenge the Law, then one must suffer from madness. Once again: “It is better to evade this verbal conflict silently than to quell it disputatiously.”
The self/same/home operates according to the logic of the Law, while the other operates according to mere myth. And the foundational law provides the ballast from which to pave the critical path–the journey which would lead the other to the safety of the homeland. Never forget that Augustine’s approach to education begins with the proper reverence–which he names explicitly as “fear” (though I would want to consult the Latin here):
It is therefore necessary above all else to be moved by the fear of God toward learning his will: what it is that he instructs us to seek or avoid. This fear will necessarily inspire reflection about our own mortality and future death, and by nailing our flesh to the wood of the cross as it were crucify all our presumptuous impulses. After that it is necessary, through holiness, to become docile and not contradict scripture […] but rather ponder and believe that what is written there, even if obscure, is better and truer than any insights that we can gain by our own efforts. (II. 16-17)
Fear and holiness and obedience. Rhetoric as a hermeneutics of power caught up in the authority to properly ponder what is written there, a fetishization of the signifier that forgets Plato’s first lesson, and Derrida’s second–that the signifier does not speak clearly, that we have no access to the signified. The Augustinian Philosophical Rhetor is authorized like Latour’s modern critic–and to make sure the critical tools that dismantle the other are never turned back upon the self/same.
And so what of education? What of politics? What of ethics? Do we call this Isocratic? “Minds must be purified so that they are able to perceive that light and then hold fast to it. Let us consider this process of cleansing a trek, or a voyage, to our homeland” (I.22). I need not point out the danger of this language. I should not have to point out what it establishes, the ethic it establishes, for those who do not want to be “cleansed.” How quickly ethical cleansing slips into ethnic cleansing. While such a movement might not be an unavoidable consequence of Philosophical rhetoric, it is certainly enabled, and often encouraged, by it. Or, as Vitanza warns, the desire for the home creates dangerous situations for human (and nonhuman, our contemporary context would add) beings.
Sophistic rhetoric, then, is at its base–as Mallioux points out for hermeneutics–an insistence upon disturbing this enjoyment, this desire, this system of thought. It might, in the Derridean vein, operate via dissoi logoi to “make the weaker argument the stronger,” or to point out the transcendental signifier that holds the system in place, refusing to simply remain silent, but wrangling “crazy.” It might, in a Lacanian way (as I have framed it here), begin by problematizing the very desire for order, framing such a desire in terms of a pathology. Or it might, in Latour’s way and in Lanham’s, begin with a more pragmatic frame, begin by discussing what works (rather than how we want things to work). All of these, I believe, speak to the highest definition of that term “sophist.”
