Speech 300, Unit 2

CS 300
Rhetorical Theory

This unit, along with the next two, are for the first midterm

Early Greek Rhetoric I.

Philosophy begins with wonder and ends with explanation. The mythic school.
A. 2,000 B.C. The Bible --role of persuasion: Moses and the prophets.
B. Gilgamesh -- Assyrian myth.
C. Hesiod -- The Theogony of the Greeks, 750 B.C. Story of birth of Zeus and other gods.
D. Homer -- Iliad and Odyssey --(850 B.C.) mythos and narrative. Retelling of Trojan war of 1184 B.C.

1. Persuasion also is crucial: Paris persuades Helen to leave her husband and go with him: Odysseus persuades the Greeks to stay and finish the battle with Troy. Even the wooden horse is persuasion and Poseidon helps the Greeks by killing the prophet who warns them not to take it..
2. Homer wrote that a great speaker is inspired by the gods and by the audience.

II. The naturalist school = cosmological apologists.

A. Thales, born 640 B.C. at Miletus, the father of philosophy = father of science.
1. water is the basis of everything.
2. Mathematics, astronomy, geometry, deduction.
3. "know thyself"

B. Anaximander - 611 to 549 B.C.
1. Thales' pupil.
2. Logos is the indefinite: man's origins can't be known. The indefinite holds the answer to all contradictions. It releases potentials into the world which gives illusion of change.

C. Anaximenes, born 570 B.C., air is the unifying, base substance. It explains change due to its effusive nature.

D. Leucippus and Democritus reduce everything to atoms.

E. Bottom line, the naturalist school goes outside of man to explain the world and use the sense to observe reality and explain world. Empiri = data.

III. The mystic school. Seeking the solution inside of humans.

A. Heraclitus sees logos as the unifying force in all being. A hidden language that lies behind and brings things together.
1. The logos makes sense to us when we attune to it.
2. "All things flow, nothing abides . . . you can't step in the same river twice.
3. He taught Empedocles (Sicilian) on body and delivery who in turn taught Gorgias, the greatest of all Sophists (see below).

B. Within the mystic school, but presenting a different internal theory was Parmenides.
1. Change is illusion. "All things that mortals have established ... are just a name."
2. Reason reveals permanence, and that which is permanent is true.
3. The only true permanence is God, "One should both say and think that God is."

C. Protagoras (481 to 411 BC) "Man is the measure of all things."
1. Humanizes philosophy by putting humans at center.
2. Recognizes a human's ability and need to persuade, because all is perception. Therefore, we need to learn: Grammar, Debate (every questions has a least two sides), common places, and sham busting (antilogy).

D. Protagoras develops a subschool of the mystics called the Sophists, the "wise ones."
1. His radical relativity gives individualism a voice; it elevates rhetoric to new importance.

E. Zeno, the student of Parmenides, carries relativity one step further, proving that all logic can be reduced to absurdity, and that the language of logic is inadequate.
1. For example, the arrow can never reach the target because it always has to get halfway there first. 2. Said Seneca, "If I believe Parmenides, there is nothing left but one; if I believe Zeno, not even the one is left."
3. Plato was so angered by Zeno's tricks, he said that Zeno could make the false appear true, and that description stuck to the Sophists to the present time.

The Greek Setting for later Sophistry I.

Along with this thought, by 450 B.C. two reforms in Athens led to the rise of public persuasion.
A. the reforms of Kleisthenes, = democratic government
B. the reforms of Ephialtes (462) = court system 1. Juries could consist of 200 people=rhetoric
C. Now the stage was set for a blossoming of Sophistic talent.

1. Euripides wrote 92 plays.

2. Aeschylus wrote 82 plays.

3. Sophocles wrote 122 plays. And Agathon developed the idea of dividing plays into acts.

4. Politicians stepped forward who needed to speak and so speech teachers and speechwriters (logographers came forward to meet the need.)

II. The best tradition developed out of Sicily.

A. In 476 B.C. Corax codifies the principles of rhetoric and with his pupil Tisias developed speechwriting to solve a serious dispute over land rights. Tisias took the theory to Athens.
1. The dilemma of bad crow, bad eggs.
2. They taught Lysias, 458-380BC, one of the great Sophistic speakers whom Plato attacks in the dialogue The Phaedrus. Some dates: Pythagoras (Sicilian) (500 BC) Parmenides & Zeno (Eleatics) Empedocles(500 to 430 BC) Corax (Sicilian) 470 BC Tisias (Sicilian)

Thrasymachus (457-400 BC) Gorgias (Sicilian) (483-375 BC) Isocrates (436-338 BC) Lysias (458-380BC)

II. This led to two main branches of rhetors, both Sophists:

A. the Protagorians and the Gorgians. Protagoras, the leader of one group, and Gorgias, the leader of the other, could demand the equivalent $10,000 (1980 dollars to drachma) a pupil in their day.
1. The Sophists were united in their belief that language is a tool for human invention of artistic speeches; that rhetoric is a powerful art form capable of changing the world; and that the relativistic world needed to be seen as filled with illusions. He who built the better illusion would prevail.
2. The story of Alcibiades.

B. Gorgias of Leontini, Sicily. Born 483 B.C. Died 375 BC
1. Beginning in 427 B.C. as Ambassador to Athens, he gains a reputation as a great speaker and teacher. Had been influenced by his teacher Empedocles, who believed the soul pervaded the body. 2. In 408 B.C. he wins Olympic games in oratory for third time with oration on peace.
3. Gorgias' theory of rhetoric is summed up in his "Encomium to Helen": "Speech is a powerful lord, which by means of the finest and most invisible body [sound] had effects that are almost divine.... [next is from Helen 14] the effect of speech upon the condition of the soul is comparable to the power of drugs over the nature of bodies. For just as different drugs dispel different secretions from the body, and some bring an end to disease and others to life, so also in the case of speeches, some distress, other delight, some cause fear, others make the hearers bold, and some drug and bewitch the soul with a kind of evil persuasion."
4. His theory of rhetoric was the first to borrow the devices of poetry and use them in speeches.
5. Ornate, symmetrical. KAIROS (To prepon) = fitting timing. He also developed such devices as alliteration, antithesis, and parallelisms.
6. His students included Pericles, Thucydides, Isocrates, and Agathon, the playwright.

III. Sophists of note include:

A. Antiphon (B. 480 BC): gave many wonderful orations, extended the theory of forensic rhetoric to include presumption (burden of proof), motive, intent. Wrote a manual on speechwriting.
B. Prodicus of Cheos (flourished 431-404BC): cynical, believed in comparison, ambiguity, and precision. Helped develop the parts of speech.
C. Hippias of Ellis (450 BC): Virtue, memory, rhetoric overcomes the arbitrary and is crucial to justice.

IV. To sum up the Sophists: relativity results in subjectivity.

Perceptions is everything. The truth is determined by what people perceive to be the truth.
A. Tremendous impact on language use, culture, and politics of Greek period. Two styles: attic=plain, asiatic = ornate.
B. The tragic flaw = are they simply gymnasts; do they free the guilty man?

V. First corrective on Sophistic excesses was work of Isocrates, 436-338 BC.

He wrote "Against the Sophists" which condemned them for substituting style for substance.
A Sophist who was a great rival of Plato's, he advocated practical wisdom and morality against Plato's dogmatic truth.

B. Isocrates began as logographer (403-393)

C. Pan Hellenic advocate who tried to get more concern for ethics and truth into rhetorical studies. 1. Philosophy produces truth and ethics; rhetoric defends and transmits them. In this way he believed rhetoric could improve the nation.
2. ELEMENTS OF ART = NATURAL TALENT, KNOWLEDGE OF THEORY OF ART, AND PRACTICE.