Lady-like Rhetoric

Can I say I really liked Diana's method of class discussion? I had never heard of this silent discussion before, but is very nice (and very much like low-tech blogging).

Here's the passage from Christine de Pizan's The Treasure of the City of Ladies I picked out to write about during class: "She [the princess] will show the reasons [to the prince], which she will understand thoroughly, and she will show how it is necessary for a prince, if he wishes to reign long in peace and glory, to be loved by his subjects and by his people."

This passage interests me because on the one hand, Pizan is arguing for the importance of a lady's rhetoric, but on the other hand, casting the lady solely in a supporting role. The princess listens to the subjects with a woman's patience and compassion, then explains everything to her husband rationally. That's actually quite nice--Pizan's princess will not merely make emotional appeals but will lay out the reasons so that her husband can understand.

But, of course, the lady's rhetoric here is used in a carefully limited ways. She uses rhetoric because she can't actually do anything. She can only ask her husband to do things. Although the princess is presumably perfectly intelligent (and I'm thankful for that), she nonetheless is limited by her social roles. She must maintain a perfect harmony where she never comes into conflict with either her husband or his subjects. And while that makes for an interesting rhetoric, I'm glad it's not a rhetoric that I'm forced to use.

Work Cited

de Pizan, Christine. From The Treasure of the City of Ladies. Trans. Sarah Lawson. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2001. 546-551.

On Christian Oratory?

So when only two people in classed raised their hands as having read Augustine before, I was shocked. I read him in every class I ever took in medieval studies (but I suppose I never read him in any other classes). Confessions was one of the first things I read in college. I can't say On Free Will or City of God did quite as much for me although they were still interesting. But I'd never read On Christian Doctrine before, at least not the excerpt we read for class, so I was surprised at how much Augustine, the Christian philosopher, had to say about rhetoric.

Augustine has a lot of good advice when it comes to eloquence: content matters ("those who speak with wisdom are heard with profit" 459), don't go overboard with a incessantly grand style (478), and models of are more useful than rules (457). But when I try to examine Augustine's view of rhetoric, I'm drawn back to the title. On Christian Doctrine. And doctrine may not really be the best word here, even if it does look more like the Latin doctrina than the English teaching. The book was not called On Christian Oratory, and certainly not On Oratory. So how sure can I be that this is the extent of rhetoric for Augustine? Has he merely narrowed his scope to talk about the relevance of rhetoric to Christian teaching? Perhaps political speeches weren't common in his day, but what about courts?

I know Augustine is aware of courts, because he talks about them in City of God, which I don't even have a copy of to cite. I can't help wondering what Augustine might have said in On Christian Oratory. Would he still have said that Christian oratory is for instruction and persuasion in Christian doctrine? That although we sometimes find ourselves in legal trouble, we shouldn't spend too much time on these worldly concerns? I'd like to imagine that he would see a place for even Christian lawyers, but I don't think he would, as disillusioned as he was with the world.

Work Cited
Augustine. On Christian Doctrine. Trans. Therese Sullivan. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2001. 456-485.

Cicero is not a believer in specialism

It seems to me that Cicero really doesn't think there is such a thing as a good specialist. In De Oratore, Antonius argues that Crassus is quite silly in thinking that the orator must be educated in every subject. As Antonius puts it, Crassus "included, under the single vocation and title of orator, omniscience in every topic and every art" (311). On the other hand, Antonius thinks an orator simply is "a man who can use language agreeable to the ear, and arguments suited to convince, in law court disputes and in debates of public business" (311). Cicero knows that many people will find his ideas far-fetched, but I think he still backs Crassus on this one.

Take for instance, Cicero's argument elsewhere "that good men are always happy" ("Discussions at Tusculum (V)" 68). Where most people would think that the connection between moral goodness and happiness isn't that tight, Cicero sees the two as always co-occurring. If you really are a good person, you won't be distracted by a little thing like torture. And you wouldn't be happy deep down if you had your priorities completely out of whack. Likewise, while many would take Antonius's side here and say that oratory is about speaking, not about knowing everything about every subject, Cicero is less willing to divide the two. Oratory isn't a surface level knack for expressing yourself with eloquence. It's more inclusive and requires that you actually know what you're talking about and how to relate to your audience.

Works Cited

Cicero. "Discussions at Tusculum (V)." On the Good Life. Trans. Michael Grant. Middlesex, Eng.: Penguin, 1985. 49-117.

Cicero. From De Oratore. Trans. E.W. Sutton and H. Rackham. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Ties to the Present. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2001. 289-339.

Analysis of Stem Cell Research Campaign Ad

We've all seen the Claire McCaskill's campaign ad from last year with Michael J. Fox, right? In case you haven't, it's on YouTube.



The obvious enthymeme here is Vote for Claire McCaskill because she'll support stem cell research.

But certainly there's a lot more going on. Why, for instance do we need a famous actor like Michael J. Fox in order to tell us that McCaskill is pro-stem cell research? We need only look at Jim Talent's voting record to see that he (as Fox says) not only opposes funding, but also tried to make the research illegal in Missouri.

So Fox is here to be a sign of what stem cell research can do. McCaskill appeals to our pathos. Seeing the star of Teen Wolf unable to control his movements, we're moved to pity and we want to believe that stem cell research can help real people that we feel a connection with.

So the ad contains the premise that supporting stem cell research can help treat people like Michael J. Fox. And the premise that supporting Claire McCaskill is supporting stem cell research. One unstated assumption is that we ought to support stem cell research if it helps people like Michael J. Fox. Another is that supporting stem cell research should be done through electing advocates to the US government.

The ad actually ignores the main claim of those who oppose (human embryonic) stem cell research: that it destroys human life (or potential human life, or the sanctity of human life). The question is, does the ad address those who accept that claim? If so, then it has to also contain the assumption that the destruction of embryos is justifiable, either because they are not life or because they are less important than people like Michael J. Fox. That, or McCaskill hopes by not mentioning the issue, people will forget about that objection because the painful-to-watch image of a familiar face and voice behind erratic movements caused by over-medication is much stronger than that of petri dishes in a lab.

Why is Plato's Gorgias so agreeable?

Would Plato lie? Sure, he's only human. Lots of people find it hard to follow their own ethical principles. But is the Gorgias so deceptive that Plato couldn't have fooled himself into thinking it was okay? Because clearly Bruce McComiskey is right about the real Gorgias being less likely to assent to everything Socrates would have said. Gorgias was an accomplished rhetorician, so even if Socrates caught him in a few contradictions, it seems he would at least have had a better response than "Apparently" any time that Socrates asked him a question that would make Gorgias look stupid. Like a modern politician, Gorgias would likely have refused to be backed into a corner with a yes or no question, preferring instead to simply state his beliefs in his own words, perhaps even putting Socrates on the defense rather than letting Socrates control the debate.

I find McComiskey's argument unconvincing when it portrays Plato as willing to do anything to stop the democrats. I can accept that Plato strongly opposed democracy. But how involved did Plato really want to get in politics? Did he see the Gorgias as a rhetorical piece, designed to persuade people, or did he see it as a philosophical piece, designed to demonstrate truth? I simply don't see enough evidence to believe that Plato wanted the Gorgias to be rhetorical to see him as misrepresenting sophistic arguments in order to see the end of democracy.

What seems most likely to me is that because Plato saw truth as being singular and universal, he believed that sophists really would have to assent to Socrates's arguments (if they listened to him and let him set the terms of debate). If they answered yes or no questions reasonably, even sophists would have to agree with Plato.

Work Cited
McComiskey, Bruce. "Disassembling Plato's Critique of Rhetoric in the Gorgias (447a-466a)." Rhetoric Review 10.2 (1997): 205-216.

Spelling news

Just thought you English-y types might be interested in the decline of the hyphen reported by Reuters:
Thousands of hyphens perish as English marches on | Reuters

Personally I find hyphens confusing when they're part of the established spelling of a word (as opposed to clarify what word is modifying what). I'll be back to talk about kairos in a few hours.

How Important Is Aspasia's Personal Life?

I had one more question in my pocket for the discussion Tuesday which no one picked: What to you make of the attention given to the biographies of rhetorically important women (Sappho (22), Aspasia (36), Diotima (44))? How important is it to understand the historical reality of the lives they led as opposed to their rhetorical practices and theories? Perhaps I should take the hint that the question wasn't that interesting, but I can't really help it. I wanted to talk about our obsession with women's personal lives.

It makes sense that we talk about Aspasia's personal life, since we don't really have anything of hers to read. She was notable for affecting notable men, so her relationship with Pericles is certainly important. And since Aspasia has gotten some flack for not adhering to the role of an Athenian wife, I can understand that we want to free her from charges that she was a prostitute. Still, how important is it, really, whether she was a prostitute or not? When I read about rhetoric, do I really expect to learn whether Cicero was sexually pure? Bizzell and Herzberg seem intent on confirming that Aspasia was no whore--that even if she were a prostitute, it was due to the social roles of the time (57). They seem to suggest that she really would have married Pericles (making her a proper woman), but since the law didn't allow foreigners to marry Athenian citizens, she was his official concubine (57). I was really worried there for a second that I might have been reading about a woman who didn't live up to my moral standards.

Now let me be fair: I understand that we don't want to let ancient Greek jokes obscure what we might otherwise be able to learn from Aspasia. But I'm just not sure that focusing on the sex lives of influential women is always called for, even when we're trying to help.

Works Cited
Bizzell, Patricia, and Bruce Herzberg, eds. "Aspasia." The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Ties to the Present. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2001. 56-60.

Glenn, Cheryl. Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity through the Renaissance. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1997.