Classical Rhetoric

Saint Augustine, On Christian Doctrine

There were several interesting things about Book 4 that I wanted to talk about.  The very first is on page 120, when Augustine says, “Therefore, since infants are not taught to speak except by learning the expressions of speakers, why can men not be made eloquent, not by teaching them the rules of eloquence, but by having them read and hear the expressions of the eloquent and imitate them in so far as they are able to follow them?  Have we not seen examples of this being done?”  He goes on to say that there are many men who are far more eloquent than those who have learned the rules because they have learned through seeing and hearing and imitating others.  It reminds me quite a bit of discussing in pedagogy the role that grading grammar has to play in terms of creating better writers.  Some argue that memorizing grammatical rules will help students become better writers.  Others argue (and this is more recent) that those who are good at grammar are those who have learned to imitate from a young age - they were young readers, young writers.  Thus, the route to helping students improve their writing is to have them read and write and read and write - to increase their experience in the writing world.

Another thing that caught my eye in Book 4 is that Augustine continues to tie the idea of speaking well to a kind of godly inspiration or muse.  He kind of does this throughout Book 4, but particularly so on page 140 when he says, “When the hour in which he is to speak approaches, before he begins to preach, he should raise his thirsty soul to God in order that he may give forth what he shall drink, or pour out what shall fill him.”  It is interesting to me in that this praying before speaking has a kind of double goal - the first being that before one has to give a public speech, one is usually terrified, and so remembering to pray and put one’s trust in God might be a therapeutic tactic.  The other item is that it is God who inspires and provides the word and the message.  Augustine goes so far as to say that it is God speaking the truth through the speaker. He quotes Matthew 10:19-20, stating, “‘Take no thought how or what to speak: for it shall be given you in that hour what to speak.  For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.’”  This, of course, simultaneously reminds me of Plato’s description of inspiration having a divine origin, as well as the idea of the extimate - where there is something foreign that is more a part of one than himself or herself.

Saint Augustine, On Christian Doctrine

The prologue of On Christian Doctrine was very interesting to me in that it seemed like both an apology that is often seen at the beginnings of older (and newer, probably) texts, but also, strangely enough, the anti-apology.  As soon as the prologue began, I thought to myself, “Oh, of course.  He is going to apologize that his text’s meaning will not be obvious to all people.”  But then, surprisingly, Augustine says, “I am not to blame because they do not understand” (3).  In addition, he states the following, which I found particularly well put: “And those who have studied and learned these precepts and still do not understand the obscurities of the Holy Scriptures think that they can see my finger but not the heavenly bodies which it was intended to point out” (4).  In other words, Augustine is saying that those who object or detract are getting caught up in the words, rather than the message itself.  The point I am getting at, though, is, while I expected the normal and common “apology,” I was surprised to find I might be looking at a reversal of the apology where, rather than saying, “I’m sorry you don’t get it.  This work is really quite not up to snuff,” Augustine instead says, “My work is perfectly fine, and it is you who are the problem.”  I am now wondering if this kind of reversal is due to the fact that the text is religious, and I wonder if there is a similar refusal to apologize in the prologues of other religious texts.  That being said, I suppose one could argue that an apology is still being made, as it is obvious Augustine is writing due to his critics and objectors, except that the fault of the apology is placed on those objectors, rather than on Augustine.  Instead of saying, “It’s my fault it’s not clear,” Augustine is instead saying, “It’s your fault it’s not clear.”  It would make sense to me that a non-religious text might place the blame of an apology on the author, while a religious text might place the blame of an apology on the objector or detractor, simply because the religious text would never blame God for the lack of divine message to come through.  It’s not God’s fault.  It’s not the message’s fault (especially when it comes to Augustine).  It’s the objector’s fault. One thing that is interesting in Book I is that Augustine very much likes to separate the idea of the path and the destination, and he warns many times in many different ways not to stop and smell the roses on the path to the destination, lest the path take away from the destination.  He connects this idea to belief in God when he says, “Thus in this mortal life, wandering from God, if we wish to return to our native country where we can be blessed we should use this world and not enjoy it, so that the ‘invisible things’ of God ‘being understood by the things that are made’ may be seen...” (10).  He goes on to say that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are supreme and the things to be enjoyed, and that all other things lead to God.  So, when one is away from home and desires to get back to it, according to Augustine, he or she may use “ships” of some sort to get there, but one must not love the travel too much, or the length of it may increase, and the time before reaching one’s destination becomes too long.  In short, one shouldn’t tarry on his or her way to God.

This idea gets particularly interesting for me on page 14.  Augustine, continuing with the path/destination example, states, “But since men were made comformable to this world by a desire to enjoy creatures instead of their creator, whence they are most aptly called ‘the world,’ they did not know Him, so that the Evangelist says, ‘the world knew Him not.’“  It is the combination of these items that is interesting to me - that is, the use of other creatures as ways of getting at God, rather than going to Him directly.  This brings to mind many things, but the first item I thought of is actually related to an Animal Studies class I took with Dr. Alaimo.  In that class, one of the theories we learned about had to do with the consumption and repurposing of animal bodies in such a way that the breaking down of them is intricately tied to the building up of motor vehicles.  What is particularly interesting is that (in just one of the many examples) the way cars are sold is through an allusion to animal speed or strength or wildness, and so there is a kind of full circle where animals being broken down is tied with cars being built up and advertised.  This is what came to mind when Augustine says that there is “a desire to enjoy creatures instead of their creator.”  That may be because in the Animal Studies example, there is an attempt to get at the sublime via animals - they are used as the muse (and substance) to produce fast vehicles that produce sensations of the sublime.  It’s an attempt to use animals to get at one’s creator?  This, of course, could be applied to fashion, too - an attempt to create art (reach the sublime), via the decimation of the creatures on Earth.

Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines

Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian’s assessment of school and learning is incredibly apt, and I am surprised at just how applicable many of the things he states are to things today.

There are three parts that amazed me that I want to relate here, the third of which I will spend the majority of my time on.  The first of these is on page 20, when Quintilian says that so many parents are afraid of what their children will learn at public school, yet it is the parents who will teach their children the majority of corrupt morals.  Children don’t get corrupt morals from the school.  Rather, they get it from their parents and take it to their school.  Quintilian states, “We form the palate of children before we form their pronunciation... We are delighted if they utter anything immodest.  Expressions which would not be tolerated even from the effeminate youths of Alexandria, we hear from them with a smile and a kiss... They see our mistresses, our male objects of affection; every dining room rings with impure songs; things shameful to be told are objects of sight.  From such practices springs habit, and afterward nature.  The unfortunate children learn these vices before they know that they are vices; and hence, rendered effeminate and luxurious, they do not imbibe immorality from schools, but carry it themselves to schools.”  I particularly appreciated this quote because it seems to me - particularly when it comes to public schools K-12, teachers are expected to be more than just teachers - they are expected in some ways to be counselors, psychologists, and babysitters.  In other words, much more than just a thirst for learning is brought to them, and the reason isn’t that the school itself is creating problems, but rather that children are bringing problems there from home.

The second item that was interesting to me was on page 22, when Quintilian is describing the necessity of children being in public places where they can exercise what they have learned.  If they aren’t ever in such a place, then they become rusty.  The way he illustrates it, though, is so interesting.  He says, “The mind requires to be constantly excited and roused; while in such retirement, it either languishes, and contracts rust, as it were, in the shade, or, on the other hand, becomes swollen with empty conceit, since he who compares himself to no one else will necessarily attribute too much to his own powers.  Besides, when his acquirements are to be displayed in public, he is blinded at the light of the sun, and stumbles at every new object, as having learned in solitude that which is to be done in public.”  Quintilian then goes on to describe how friendships formed at school have a kind of bond, a kind of religious obligation, that gets created when kids undergo the same sorts of trials together.  What is interesting to me is that he is right in that the environment itself - and how it changes one - is just as important to learning as the message itself - and that once one recognizes the importance of environment, one realizes that everything one knows doesn’t come from within.  I like that he addresses the sensation of being stunned, when one realizes there is a huge difference between what one is taught and the reality of enacting it.  To keep with the surgeon/medical profession metaphor, if one learns the concepts of surgery, but never works on a body, actually doing surgery for the first time will be shocking.  Likewise, if one learns the concepts of public speaking, but never talks to a large group of individuals, actually doing so will be just as shocking.

The Slayers of Moses by Susan A. Handelman

Spoiler Warning:  I talk about Arrival a lot in this post.

When Handelman describes at the beginning of the first chapter the limitations that Aristotle’s syllogisms apply to logic, thus straightjacketing logic in a way and separating it from science, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the movie Arrival.

Handelman begins by affirming that, “Aristotle’s great contribution to logic was, accordingly, the syllogism - which is not a method of investigation but of deductive proof” (6).  The great problem with the syllogism, at least according to William and Martha Kneale, Handelman says, is Aristotle’s “’...overemphasis on the subject-predicate form of proposition which still restricted logical development in the time of Leibniz’” (6).  Handelman further elucidates the problem with an overemphasis on the subject-predicate form by stating that Gadamer, as well, “explains that Hegel also criticized the classical subject-predicate proposition, claiming that, in truth, it constitutes a ‘blockage of thought...’“ (7).

Now, the connection to Arrival is twofold in that, as the movie progresses, Louise Banks is attempting to communicate with two heptapods that have arrived on Earth.  What she discovers, as she continues on, is that their language consists of sentences - if they can be thought of as sentences - that aren’t necessarily constructed in the subject-predicate form in the same way that English is.  Likewise, their concept of time is not linear, in the same way that those who speak English perceive time linearly.  The movie taps into the theory behind the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the basis of which is that the structure of a language affects the speaker’s cognition and worldview - very similar to what Handelman is arguing in The Slayers of Moses.   In the movie, Louise’s brain begins to change as she studies the heptapod language such that her cognition changes and her understanding of time comes to be non-linear, as well.  This can be seen in the way that her daughter comes before the heptapod arrival, despite the fact that, at least linearly, her daughter is not born until after the heptapods have already disappeared.

Louise’s daughter being introduced before Louise is in the movie, and the fact that Louise knows about her daughter before she is born, is perhaps a way of putting the predicate before the subject (that which comes after goes before), or a way of disrupting the subject-predicate relationship.  In other words, time becomes circular and melded in the same way that the heptapod language is.  Louise and her daughter are entwined.

It is important to note that, once Louise is able to enter into the heptapods’ language - a circular form with an unidentifiable beginning and end - and once she moves past the subject-predicate way of thinking, she is able to get around that “blockage of thought” that Handelman talks about.

Later on in the Slayers of Moses, Handelman says, “The reductiveness of this [Aristotle’s] schema led to what has been called a ‘straightjacketing of logic’“ (13).  It is very interesting how what Handelman says is relatable to Arrival, in that Louise is working alongside, and sometimes against, the mathematicians the United States government has assigned to work on the language.  At one point in the movie, she erases complicated mathematical equations on a whiteboard to write her one simple sentence.  (In other words, she is trying to break through the straightjacket they are placing on communicating with the heptapods).  To point out the complication in the smallest of sentences, Louise illustrates just some of the problems that can arise when trying to get the question “Why are you here?” across.  Louise shows that the government wants to ask why are “you,” as in the “heptapods,” here, rather than the specific “you,” as one of the possible problems they might run into when trying to ask the question.  Similarly, in The Slayers of Moses, Handelman, in her critique of Aristotle, shows that his four classes of general statements are only general - that they do not apply to specifics - which is another weakness.  Both Louise and Handelman poke at the problem of singular versus general and how this changes meaning entirely.

Aristotle, On Rhetoric, Book III

There is a particular passage in Book III, in Chapter 7, which is over appropriateness, that I found interesting.  Really, the entirety of Chapter 7 is what got me thinking, but this in particular: “Opportune or inopportune usage is a factor common to all species [of rhetoric].  There is a commonly used defense for every hyperbole: the speaker should preempt criticism; for something seems true when the speaker does not conceal what he is doing” (211).

Preempting criticism is, of course, to anticipate it - to get ahead of it and say something about it before it even arrives.  This reminds me of apologies in the prologues of texts, particularly those that I read in my Early American Literature course at UTA, the subject of which was authenticity.  There is something about the apology for a lack of perfection at the beginning of a text that is supposed to add some sort of genuineness to it, and I think that Aristotle taps into that sensation of genuineness when he says, “something seems true when the speaker does not conceal” (211).

I was thinking, though, in terms of performance, and how voice might be anticipatory, as in the movie Her, which I plan to analyze for my final paper in class.  Scarlett Johansson’s voice in the movie is a type of counterbalancing, perhaps, of the desire to not view an AI as anything close to human.  It could be, maybe, a preemptive move against criticism - both in terms of how the director chose a particular voice to go with the AI, and how, in the movie, the AI is given that particular, raspy/sexy/human voice.  It’s kind of like saying, “No, she is not supposed to necessarily be human, and you aren’t required to look at her that way, but look at how human she is?”  It’s almost as though the creation of Samantha came with the knowledge that people would laugh at the idea she was real, and so a preemptive move had to be made about choosing the right voice to receive such laughs.  In other words, “Here’s a voice you can’t laugh at.”

That being said, Samantha can’t SOUND too intelligent, use too many syllogisms, or metaphors, or be too correct or too concise, because she has to go against the expectations of her audience.  She has to seem like an imperfect human.  In other words, she can’t be better than human to be considered human, and so that kind of switching around of expectation is interesting.  When a rhetorician is most effective, then, is when he or she knows what expectations/criticisms his or her audience has, and the rhetorician preemptively plays on those expectations.  A rhetorician can’t solve criticisms, but perhaps he/she can resolve them preemptively?

I’m reminded just a bit of a YouTube video where a guy (an actor) pretends to be a hillbilly philosophizing on why racism is a terrible thing (to subvert expectations of what a hillbilly might normally say), or Stephen Colbert’s detailed investigation of a “small town in Kentucky” (that is, a town one would normally expect to be highly conservative) that voted for an openly gay mayor:  http://articles.latimes.com/2013/aug/15/entertainment/la-et-st-stephen-colbert-kentucky-town-gay-mayor-johnny-cummings-20130815

In both of these, what is presented is a certain type of individual that is usually associated with certain political leanings, and those leanings are turned upside down.  But the person/people making the YouTube videos know what their audience is thinking about small towns or “hillbillies,” and so the very presentation of “small town” or “hillbilly” is constructed so that expectations can be subverted.  It is a bit like knowing an AI is going to be targeted for certain criticisms, and therefore choosing an AI that sounds incredibly human.  Stephen Colbert could have done a story on a conservative small town, instead, and the YouTube actor could have created philosophical commentary without a hick accent, but they didn’t.

I guess what I am saying is, perhaps certain rhetoricians can take it a step further than just preemptively thinking about criticism - perhaps they can guide that criticism first, by choosing the hick accent, or the small town, or the AI, to direct people’s criticisms into a funnel that they already know how to address.  It is a bit like a Straw Man, but on a more personal level?  Create the persona you know how people will criticize because you know how to easily sidestep those criticisms - with a sexy voice, or intelligent speech, or a liberal political gesture?

Aristotle, On Rhetoric, Book II

I am actually presenting over Book II in class this coming week, and I am fairly certain that if we are presenting, we are not required to complete a blog post - at least, I think I remember hearing that at some point in class.  I have gone through my notes, however, and I have found nothing that I wrote down to back up this belief, so I am going to play it safe and go ahead and create a blog post for Monday’s class.

Aristotle goes over a wide array of things in Book II, and one of the items that comprises quite a bit of Book II is the topic of emotions.  One of the very first emotions that Aristotle dives into is that of anger and then, on an almost opposite side of the spectrum, calmness. 

There is something on page 123 that caught my attention in that I am not quite sure if I entirely agree with it, and I think that my question taps into a more overarching problem that I had with Aristotle’s detailing of emotions (though I do want to say that I agree with the majority of what he says and am quite stunned at times with how well he digs down into things).  On page 123, Aristotle writes, “Thus, people do not vent their anger on others who are not aware of it nor continue it against the dead, since the latter have suffered the ultimate and will not suffer nor will they have perception, which is what angry people want.  Thus, in wanting Achilles to cease his anger against Hector once he was dead, the poet spoke well: ‘For it is unseemly to rage at senseless clay.’“

The problem I have with this statement is that it is a bit too logical to be human.  I do think it is possible for people to vent their anger on others who are not aware of it - we have quotes all the time that tell us how anger is a poison that only the bearer of it drinks - and I do think that people hold it against the dead, both personally and in terms of an anger towards those in history who have committed great atrocities.

Aristotle says that angry people want those they hate to suffer and that it is “‘unseemly to rage at senseless clay,’“ so they rage only at those who are able to feel that anger.  One big problem that I have with this is that it doesn’t take into account trauma and PTSD - a symptom of an event that exists in the now, rather than in the past, whether or not the person who might have created that trauma is now dead.  I don’t want to confuse anger with PTSD, but I do think it could be said that a wide array of emotions can arise in someone who has PTSD, and what I am getting at is that I am not so sure that “senseless clay” is always senseless clay when it comes to someone with PTSD.

Aristotle, On Rhetoric, Book I

One item that was confusing for me as I read Book I of Aristotle’s On Rhetoric is on Page 35, where Aristotle says, “...but rhetoric is useful, [first] because the true and the just are by nature stronger than their opposites, so that if judgments are not made in the right way [the true and the just] are necessarily defeated [by their opposites].”  In addition, right before this, Aristotle states, “...humans have a natural disposition for the true and to a large extent hit on the truth” (34).

What is confusing to me is that Aristotle states that the true and the just are natural, naturally stronger than their opposites, and are items that people have a natural disposition for.  At the same time, and in the same sentence on page 35, though, he then says that if judgments are not made correctly that the true and the just are “necessarily defeated.”

My first thought, then, is that they aren’t stronger.  It is odd to claim that they are so much stronger and then in the same sentence discuss their defeat.  I am also not sure how this is what makes rhetoric useful in a positive sense.  Of course, it is possible that Aristotle does not mean it in a positive sense.  What he could be saying is that rhetoric is necessary because sometimes, even if the true and the just are stronger, they are nevertheless sometimes defeated, and so it is important to persuade towards them, rather than just stating their truth (something we discussed in class last week, I believe).  Or, it is also possible that Aristotle is saying rhetoric is useful to derail people from seeing the true and the just - something more along the lines of what Socrates argued.

In any case, it was an item that was slightly confusing. 

In addition to this, I thought it was highly interesting that Aristotle says the point of rhetoric is not to persuade, but to see the available means of persuasion in each case (36).  I think, perhaps, with movies like Thank You for Smoking that glamorize the ability of lobbyists and lawyers to sway public opinion wherever they want it to go, I usually do associate rhetoric with persuasion.  But, I think Aristotle’s definition elevates rhetoric a bit - or perhaps corrects an improper definition that he, too, senses - by stating it’s not about manipulation.  It’s, rather, about cataloguing all the means of persuasion that are available case by case.

If convincing is a natural state, and if being convinced is also natural, then rhetoric would be the study of what is natural. (Just a thought.  Not necessarily a clear one).

One last thing I want to note is on “Political Topics of Deliberative Rhetoric” that begins on page 52.  I thought that this chapter was particularly moving, considering our current political environment.  Really, all of Chapter 4 applies to what I am about to say, but I will paste one quote from page 54 to prove my point.  Aristotle states, “For the security of the state it is necessary to observe all these things, but not least to be knowledgeable about legislation; for the safety of the city is in its laws, so it is necessary to know how many forms of constitution there are and what is conducive to each and by what each is naturally prone to be corrupted, both forces characteristic of that constitution and those that are opposed to it” (54).

It is interesting that Aristotle says that people have a disposition towards what is true and just and that one thing that might be true and just is that a ruler knows his or her state very, very well, through and through, to make the best choices for it.  I say it is interesting because I haven’t seen evidence for either case recently, considering our current political situation.  There are people who voted based on what is, essentially, anti-intellectualism (which I am not claiming is not understandable, just that it exists).  In addition, we currently have a president who ran for the presidency just for the sake of running and was surprised when he ended up winning.  I don’t believe he has shown evidence of knowledge in any of the areas that Aristotle discusses in Chapter 4.

Plato’s Gorgias

Having finished Gorgias for class, I found that I really enjoyed the reading the second time around (the first time I took Classical Rhetoric, it was with Dr. Warren), and what I would like to address for my blog post concerns pages 135 - 140 from our book Plato on Rhetoric and Language.

In these pages, Socrates illustrates the difference between pleasure and good.  He shows that something pleasurable isn’t always good for the soul, and an example he gives is that of a baker - that a baker creates food to eat, and what he creates is pleasurable.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean that what he creates is necessarily good for an individual.  It doesn’t improve his soul in any way.  Likewise, Socrates points out, there are rhetoricians that don’t necessarily speak or teach for any other reason than to provide pleasure for their audience.  They are not there to improve a person’s soul, or mind, but rather are there for entertainment.  It is fairly obvious, I would say, that Socrates loathes these individuals.  He states that speaking only for the sake of entertainment encourages a kind of soul-sickness in one’s audience.

I feel concerned by this type of argument, and I am going to try to state my concern as best I can.

The first thing that I want to state is that the type of argument Socrates presents can seem logical if he is giving it before one type of audience, and quite extreme, if given to another type of audience.  It is only because the Sophists exist (who focus on entertaining) that a speech against entertainment becomes understandable.  If we remove the Sophists, however, and suppose that Socrates is speaking before an audience with similar values as the Puritans, then the speech takes on a very extreme quality - almost a religious fundamentalist quality?  Framing is terribly important, I feel, when it comes to not taking what Socrates says the wrong way, without pushing it to the extreme, which I am not sure he is or is not trying to do.  After all, he does admit that pleasure and goodness CAN coincide, but he is certainly not willing to say that pleasure and goodness are the same thing.

I suppose a question I can provide that might get at why I have a problem with Socrates’s statements is this: Does every speech one listens to need to be like eating one’s broccoli?  Or is it okay for there to be a speech that is like a dessert - or a pastry - where the point is pleasure?  Why aren’t both allowed?

There is a danger, I think, in easily doing away with pleasurable things or trying to pluck the pleasure out of things.  The danger is not being able to see/remember that pleasure and goodness do indeed coincide.  It is interesting Socrates brings up the idea that sometimes doctors will have their patients not satisfy certain impulses whenever they are sick so as to heal.  It is interesting to me because I specifically remember a story told to me by a friend who was doing his med school residency.  He said that during his pediatrics residency there was one particular child who was being treated for cancer.  She was absolutely miserable from all of her treatments, and the only thing that would make her just slightly less grumpy was being wheeled around in a red toy car in the hospital.  She wasn’t exactly elated with it, and she wouldn’t smile, but she would nevertheless sit in this red toy car with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face and demand to be pushed around.  She liked the car, and so, of course, that’s how everyone was willing to interact wither her - to give her what pleasure she could actually get out of her day.  They pushed her around in her little red car.

Dissoi Logoi, Against the Sophists, and the Encomium of Helen

Dissoi Logoi

I had a little bit to say about the three readings above.  First, I will deal with Dissoi Logoi, written between 403 to 395 BCE by an anonymous person, who was likely a Sophist, male, and possibly a student of Protagoras.  I particularly liked this reading for the fact that, if nothing else, it shows many failures of language to get at reality. 

One thing that I wanted to mention is that when the writer states, in Section 3 “On Just and Unjust” that deception can be a positive thing, especially in tragedies and painting, where the person is best who deceives the most in creating things that are like the real thing, that I am not sure I agree with the idea of art as an attempt to become like reality.  Perhaps technology, particularly “augmented reality” has influenced my view, but I tend to think of fiction as improving reality, of making reality as it should be, rather than what it is, often.  Or, perhaps, I see fiction as augmenting reality, as adding to it. Admittedly, it could also be my psychoanalytic readings that make me look at it this way.  According to Slavoj Zizek, “Fantasy realized is nightmare.”  I consider most pieces of art either the work of fantasy or a kind of hysterical act.  For those that are fantasy, I draw a distinct line between them and reality.

In any case, I’m just not sure I agree with this particular example in Dissoi Logoi.  As a whole, though, I really agreed with the reading, and I’d like to point out one thing in Section 4 “On Truth and Falsehood” before moving on.

About midway in Section 4, the writer states that if a group were to say, “I am an initiate,” but only one person in that group is an actual initiate, then the same set of words is both truth and a lie.  Thus, it’s not the words that make the statement true or false, but rather the people.  The true person can make the truth truth.  The false person can make the truth falsehood.  Truth has nothing to do with the words in this instance because the same words can be truth and falsehood, which means all words are both truth and lies.

The above reminds me a lot of authentication.  Something as simple as password authentication proves this point.  Password authentication’s purpose is to ensure that whoever is accessing, for instance, an e-mail account is the person who owns that e-mail account.  The password, however, is just a password, and it authenticates, no matter who uses it.  Thus, it can work, whether it is the truth or a lie, and it can be a truth or a lie (in the sense that someone can trick the account to let them in with the same word that the user might use to be authenticated).

Against the Sophists

I don’t have a ton to say about Against the Sophists, but I nevertheless wanted to mention that this text reminds me A LOT of potential arguments against televangelists or megachurches.  It’s not an exact comparison, but it’s pretty close.  One particular area made it click for me, and I am going to share it.  This is the point at which I’m not sure if the version I am reading is the same as everyone else’s version, but I am nevertheless going to quote my version here.  I will also include the link to my version below.

“But it is not these sophists alone who are open to criticism, but also those who profess to teach political discourse.  For the latter have no interest whatever in the truth, but consider that they are great masters of an art if they can attract great numbers of students by the smallness of their charges and the magnitude of their professions and get something out of them.  For they are themselves so stupid and conceive others to be so dull that, although the speeches which they compose are worse than those which some laymen improvise, nevertheless they promise to make their students such clever orators that they will not overlook any of the possibilities which a subject affords.  More than that, they do not attribute any of this power either to the practical experience or to the native ability of the student, but undertake to transmit the science of discourse as simply as they would teach the letters of the alphabet...”

Link to this version: https://ryanfb.github.io/loebolus-data/L229.pdf

What really stood out to me is the idea that teachers who are improper teachers only believe in themselves and their speech, and they do not consider the practical experience or native ability of the student.  In other words, it’s ALL about what the teacher is giving the student, and televangelists remind me of this.  It’s all about what they can provide believers or customers, rather than ever considering that those believers or customers might have their own connections to what there is to be learned, or believed, or worshiped, that are completely private and have nothing to do with them.  That, and the fact that numbers are most important for televangelists.  They are, one could argue, less interested in truth, than in rhetoric that can get them more followers.

Gorgias’s Encomium of Helen

As for the last reading I will address, I wanted to say that Gorgias’s Encomium of Helen reminded me quite a bit of Jessica Jones.

Gorgias basically argues that Helen was potentially thoroughly violated through persuasion, as words are basically like magic and can constrain the soul.  As most probably already know, Jessica Jones is about a (one might say godlike, or half-godlike) superhero named Jessica who is coming to terms with the fact that she was trapped beneath the powers of a super villain named Kilgrave.  Kilgrave’s power is that he is able to force people to do whatever he tells them to.  In other words, what he speaks is literally magic and constrains souls.  Jessica, thus, is no more to blame for her actions under Kilgrave as anyone else is.  In addition to this, though, there is of course another element in Jessica Jones that is also in the Encomium of Helen: that of rape.  It is by being convinced that one wants something that one would not want without those magical, bewitching words that constitutes rape, in both the television series and Gorgias’s writing.  I will add that I think there is much, much more worth analyzing here in terms of the Encomium of Helen and Jessica Jones, and that there may be more writings on rhetoric to compare to the television series as we go along.