Historical Rhetorics Week 7: Sophistry and/as Making the Other Argument the Self

Posted on October 5, 2015 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s plan:

  • Touching on last week: What’s Your Problem?
  • Secondary Source Presentations
  • Sophists Rock: Greatest Hits
  • A Few Things I Want to Say
  • A Quick Walkthrough the Dissoi Logoi
  • Eristic Exercise

What Do We Want From Writing?

I want to stress something that will develop over our reading the next few weeks, something that we already saw in Vitanza. From a postmodern/poststructuralist perspective, the ancient Greek skepticism (be it Plato’s suspicion of writing, Aristotle’s suspicion toward delivery, Isocrates’ suspicion of metaphysics) toward the power of language (see: Gorgias) will likely be interpreted as a symptom of an underlying–conscious or unconscious–will to kNOw, will to power, desire to control (others and ourselves). There is a fear of language controlling us, of language operating on us in ways that we cannot control. They are afraid of the Drunken Boat.

Vitanza’s performance asks us to imagine how we, or they, might write otherwise than the general logocentric handbook argumentative [essay] tradition handed down over centuries. I have picked up this argument, spliced it with Geoffrey Sirc’s argument, to propose a more pragmatic and civically driven form of writing instruction (one in which we do not decide in advance what kind of writing our students will want or need to do). I would consider this Isocratic writing (one in which we acknowledge many viable genres for writing instruction). But I also am intrigued and have explored other, more radical [digital] methods for exploring what else Writing might want, such as the works of Gregory Ulmer and Jody Shipka. My point here is that this is a fundamental question you should be asking yourself: why teach writing? What is it that you want writing to want? What kind of world do you want to live in? What kind of writers does that world require? To what extent should we kNOw our students?

Sophist Rock

Let’s review some greatest hits.

  • Protagoras measures things
  • Gorgias on logos, take one: On the Nonexistent 84-86
  • Gorgias on logos, take two: Helen 8-12, 14
  • Gorgias on judgement, Palamedes, 34-35

The Dissoi Logoi and Cultural Relativism

I want to look specifically at the section on section II, concerning the Seemly and Disgraceful.

Eristic Exercise

For most of the semester, we have focused on understanding the various perspectives on rhetoric: its scope, its righteousness, its limitations, its dangers, its epistemology, its methods. Tonight, I want to focus on that last one–the methods–and ask you to put them into practice. Working in a team of two, you will spontaneously compose an epideictic speech, in the style of Gorgias, on one of the following people or issue.

You will have 20 minutes to prepare your speech. You will then have 5 minutes to print copies of the speech for us to read (say, 8 copies so we can share). The speech must be between 3 and 5 minutes. The speech must involve at least one topoi from the Dissoi Logoi. The speech should also reflect Aristotle’s notion of pathos as condemning the judge (i.e., the speech should anticipate the audience’s predisposition).

We will use an RNG to determine choice order.

Final thought: on the title of this post. Argument as ethics as the ability to become ideologically intinerant, what Vitanza might identify as becoming at home in our homelessness. Basically, I want to explore the difference between making the weaker argument the stronger, the ability to occupy multiple sides of an argument, and the ability to resist the desire to transform the other’s alterity into the same (the same narrative that the I inhabits, the home, assimilation etc).

Fixed It!

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