On Isocrates and Education

So can education, in Isocrates's mind and classification, be considered, bad or serving the means of the state? Surely, Isocrates considered education and rhetoric to be beneficial to people, and not as a means to create the perfect society or Plato's Republic. That is why Plato and Isocrates stand on opposite sides (or at least history and society have placed them on opposite sides).

I see Isocrates using rhetoric and education to better individuals for practical use; to create citizens that will perform public deeds and will work to create a better society and also one that is open to negotiation and discourse. I am extremely fond of Dr. Kemp's relating this to American Pragmatisim, because it helps me understand Isocrates's form of education easier. He sought not to create the Republic, where a philosopher king was in charge and controlled society, but rather where participation was valued and where discourse and discussion was placed at the top of society. True, this may in itself be considered a form of brainwashing and manipulation, but I don't see or consider Isocrates a brainwasher or manipulator. Also, I think that without this deep desire to empower people with practical and useful knowledge to better society as a whole, society will tend to repress and oppress people instead, or that chaos and anarchy will ultimately reign supreme.

What happens to society without an open society where discussion is placed at the upmost of importance? True, a privileged few might as well stand for a privileged individual, and this individual could then oppress the rest of society with their power. I’m not entirely sure how ancient Greece operated as a society and who ultimately called the shots. But I think reading Isocrates’s writing, we can start to get the impression that he didn’t want an oligarchy, but instead wanted to give people the means and tools to practically and usefully change their society. As Dr. Kemp stated of American Pragmatics’ slogan, “cause the least amount of suffering for the least amount of people.” It was all about helping others create an open society where instead of oppression there was open discussion where people could settle their disputes through dialogue and discourse.

But I’m still interested in understanding if and how this operates in our society now. Do we truly have an open society where discussion is welcomed and encouraged? I’m not sure. I understand that any citizen has a vote here in the US, and I do believe that voting has power in itself. But I still think there are a lot of people who are oppressed and who aren’t given a voice. But I also see certain technologies creating a means for these people to be given a voice; namely the Internet.

I wonder what Isocrates would think of the Internet and today’s model of education? It’s interesting to think about.

Same Ramblings on Audience

Reading the last book of Aristotle's Rhetoric made me realize several things. One, that the notion of style and presentation was given such detail in his analysis is fascinating simply because it further cements his early expertise at analyzing various aspects of life; but it also made me realize how badly I wish I could read Greek. Not just for the sake of being able to read Rhetoric in its original form, but mainly to see and experience how style was used in the original Greek language. I think a lot of the stylistic beauty is lost in the translation, and I wish I could read many of the original Greek writings in their original form.

This section also further cemented how fundamental audience awareness is to rhetoric. I believe that it is not only a crucial aspect of rhetoric, but it can also be argued to be the most crucial aspect of rhetoric. Not only that, but I also think it is the cornerstone on which rhetoric is build. Audience is key; it is the essential part of anything having to do with rhetoric. Even if there's no audience made up of other people to address there is still the audience of one's self to consider. The basis of all communication, all language, and all knowledge is built around audience, and to not consider or be aware of this audience is a complete and utter failure on the part of the communicator.

Audience fascinates me, from the first moments of considering it in my early written education, to further thinking about and considering it during Dr. Carter's Argumentation class, audience study has had a proof grip on my interest. I also love reading other studies on audience, from the works of Perelman and Toulmin to Aristotle. Jumping back to Aristotle, I find his discussion of audience very interesting in the last book, simply because it seems that the very notion and essence of style is centered on audience. I wouldn't say that style is the most important thing to consider when thinking about an audience; no instead I would have to say it would be the enthymemes and development of the argument. But the very notion of style, for me anyways, seems to be based entirely around the idea of an audience; for what else would be the reason of styling one's communication if not for an audience?

I must admit here that I have actually forgotten my own audience, since I have gone on so long about it. I apologize and will hopefully be able to make sense of my thoughts later on in the semester, which will hopefully lead to less ramblings and more focused writings. This will have to do for now however.

The second post that is late (and hopefully the last)

Okay so I know this is late again, but oh well.

So Aristotle's Rhetoric Book 1 both blows me away, and at the same time pulls me back down and makes me scoff at it. The way he goes about in analyzing and breaking down the art of Rhetoric and argument is extremely interesting. I would like to say that he is really ahead of his time on this aspect, but at the same time I'm wondering why it didn't occur earlier. Why was he the first one to really sit down and question and look at what compels us to discourse, and how rhetoric is involved in constructing our discourses with our audience? Why didn’t anyone question it before? I thought humanity was the questioning sort, instead of complacent?

However, what troubles me with Aristotle's Rhetoric is how organized, and yet completely disorganized it is at the same time. His tangents are incredibly long and drawn out, and he offers no explanation of if and how they tied in to his analysis of Rhetoric. His tangents on the whole goodness and how and what is good is all well and good, but why does it belong in here? Also, his lack of perspective really bothers me. He continually states that what is good is essentially everything opposite of one’s enemies. But what about the perspective of one’s enemies? Isn’t everything that is good to them opposite of the other? What then is good? Does Aristotle believe that there is no inherent goodness, and instead that goodness is relative? But then his other discussions about goodness seem different than this, which he is contradicting himself.

Which brings me to what really grinds my gears about Aristotle. I want consistency. I want to be able to look at a passage and say “Yes, this is exactly what Aristotle means and he will always means this.” I also want clarity in his writing. And both of these things seem to be missing all throughout his reading.

But I guess this is what makes it interesting, and still talked about and argued on today?

The first first post that is late

Okay, so I know this post is late. I also know that I have no clue as to what I'm talking about here, so please don't hurt me if it comes out sounding all weird.

In class we were discussing Karl Popper (kind of), but more so the distinction between dialectic and rhetoric, and I think this distinction is very important to understand. However, I don’t really feel like discussing it at this point. I’d rather discuss something that might or might not be connected to this idea instead.

I’m completely drawn to the idea of rhetoric as epistemological, i.e. it creates knowledge, because I whole hardly believe this. I think that it is through negotiated discussion that knowledge of things is created, not just understood. True, if a tree falls in a forest, that event exists outside of man and the knowledge of man. But that event does not in itself contain any knowledge. It is only through the rhetoric of discussing that event that the knowledge is then created, and that this knowledge then is distributed and also understood.

I’m not entirely sure where I’m getting at with this, because I just finished reading a Heidegger chapter that completely rattled and hurt my head so please bear with me here.

As far as Plato is concerned, I’m completely with the Sophists on this one. I don’t really care if there is a perfect world, or a perfect Idea or Form for everything in this world. It doesn’t matter to me, since I already believe that rhetoric creates knowledge. Our knowledge of the world and universe doesn’t exist in some ideal form of the world. It exists in what we negotiate about the world. I think that Plato was just scared of having his world turned upside down, and thus he wrote the Republic as a means to find that perfect world again. But I don’t think that perfect will ever exist to us, because even if it did, rhetoric wouldn’t help us at all to create a knowledge about and for it. Thus, there would be no knowledge of it, and then it might as well not even exist to us. It’d be the tree falling in a forest without anyone around.

Anyways, that’s my take on it. I don’t believe in the hard social-constructionists that state that everything in our world is socially constructed, i.e. that this keyboard I’m typing on doesn’t exist; only my idea of the keyboard exists. But I do believe that my knowledge of what this keyboard is and what it means is created through the rhetoric that surrounds it.

So yeah, I’m going to sleep now…

First Post

Hello! This is my blog for the Dr. Kemp's English 5364: Classical Rhetoric course.

On this blog I'll post ideas I have that have been influenced from the readings. I'll also post actual reading responses that ask questions about the readings, and hopefully engage in some way with the text. However, most likely what I'll be posting will be brain dumps, since most of the time I'm completely unsure of what I'm thinking and I have to get it all out before I can begin to make sense of it.

When the brain dumps happen please don't think ill of me... I can already tell that this will be a stressful semester on my brain.

Also, the posts are due by each Saturday (I think?) So check back to see if I've posted after then.