To begin our class, we started with the Sophists, or those mercenary Wise Men who commoditized Rhetoric. Although the lack of 'truth' other than in a shadowy guise of 'most persuasive argument' is a troubling concept that might allow any Gordon Gekko with an agenda and a few well-chosen words to thrive and conquer, it is also liberating in the sense that 'truth' is not caught and calcified - rather, it is a dancing thing that must also move with the argument, which makes for responsible citizens engaging with language in order to find their own particular relationship to it. This is the environment that prefigures Plato and it seems to me that his main invention is to mention that we are all playing towards this endgame known as 'truth' (which, considering Plato's massive ironies, might very well be irretrievable - something inherent in the Sophists but not much beneficial for them or their penny-grabbing antics.) In introducing his encomium, Gorgias agitates us towards Rhetoric in a challenge: "The man who speaks correctly what ought to be said has a duty to refute those who find fault with Helen." (Longinus 38) This is an imploration against the stream, or an instance of the agonistic; we, as responsible citizens, ought to be contrarians so that an argument doesn't gather steam and run away on us until it seems without argument, a natural truth. Not only is this good for the polis, but it is also sheerly enjoyable, "for to tell those who know something they know carries conviction, but does not bring pleasure." (Longinus 39) In other words, people love to be echoed and agreement is generally favorable, but don't people prefer to be surprised? Isn't the shock of something unexpected, suddenly come into being, a much grander pleasure than an expectation filled upon (and that can only please to the extent of that expectation)? Near the end of the encomium, the self-aware nature of Gorgias' text (post-modern anybody?) becomes apparent in the rhetorical consideration of rhetoric in that "speech is a powerful master and achieves the most divine feats with the smallest and least evident body." (Longinus 40) This idea of speech always carrying some implication, often political, prefigures Foucault and a slew of other writers interested in where language has come from and who is intended to use it. It is a good argument - the Greek gods are forces beyond control that bat human beings around like poppycocks, and if such gods are conceived, to blame Helen for her wooing (or capture, or trance) would be to elevate her to the status of a god herself, when her blood is merely half of that.
The Plato readings were just as interesting if not more, especially the way he refers to the gods as indivisible and seeks to elucidate their work by achieving a singularity of observation and purpose in himself. This seems wholly impossible, however, and the paradoxes that abound whenever Plato tries to make the leap remain central to his aesthetic power. If "the gods are not shape-shifting wizards and do not mislead us by lying in what they say or do," (Plato 50) then there is a lie in every shape we would attempt to hold, be it from thought to speech or from speech to writing, especially if these shapes consider themselves whole altogether. It seems where we, us human beings and natural liars, are most complete and indivisible from the gods is when we ourselves are lying and aware of it, or stating truths from two angles that do not cleanly intersect. I find it fascinating that much of Plato is written in a sort of agon with Homer in an attempt to become the great Greek teacher and I imagine the differences between the two writers (or rather what they do in their work) is a battle still waging today between the realistic and romantic genres.
To state it very simply, the question might be 'to propose oneself as telling the truth by means of lies or to lie as if it was the truth and nothing more, truth (if it exists at all) springing from the lies?'
This is my first encounter with these thinkers and one doesn't have to look too far to find modern incarnations of their ideas today. The main difference, I would think, is that the 'agon' has been replaced with the 'accept-all' and so universities publish great deluges of selfsame material rather than trying to diverge from predecessors in clever ways. I, as usual, think something in between the two might be best.
Works Cited:
Gorgias. "Encomium of Helen". ed. Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.
Plato. "Republic". ed. Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment