Logology and the Burkean Universe

Burke's idea of "logology" that we grappled with last week continues to fascinate me. I hope I didn't give the impression that I had this concept all figured out. The thing with the Socratic Seminar is that it can be deceptive: somehow the leader just "seems" to know all the answers and is just "pretending," like Socrates, that he doesn't know anything. I had some definite ideas on some of the questions we discussed and had a hard time not just spewing out my thoughts (and, as you know, such restraint is not typical for me!). In the case of logology, I'm still thinking and hope to have the opportunity (during vacation or maybe in another class) to read some more Burke. On the one hand, Burke's selection of religion as a discourse to read "as if it were talking about language rather than about God" seems random. Couldn't he just as easily have picked the discourse of, say, political science and said, we can treat political science as if it were not words about voter behavior but words about words? And yet, somehow, given the centrality of the concept of "logos" (a connection which, I think, Amy made, but which I hadn't made until that point) in Christianity, it doesn't seem random; there seems something about religion that lends itself, more than any other discourse, to a logological analysis. And yet...though I'm not as familiar as I would like to be with Burkean literary criticism, I can surmise based on his penchant for "dramatistic" analysis that it must be something very much in the spirit of a logology of literature: let's analyze literature not in terms of theme, setting, character development, etc. but let's look at it how speakers interact with speakers, how the language of the narrator interacts with the language of the characters, etc. I think since last week I'm stuck in a kind of Burkean Universe and keep asking myself, what if I analyzed this or that logologically: when my ex-girlfriend tells me to stop harrassing her or else she'll get a restraining order, she's not really revealing her feelings, but rather is telling me something about words...I just can't figure out what it is.

Afterwords to Braddock Award Essays

As rigorous and enlightening as are the two Braddock Award Essays that we have read, I found myself paying particular critical attention to the Afterwords. As essentially self-reflective, they represent of course a real opportunity for each writer to boost their ethos. I am intrigued by these parts of scholarly works that often get overlooked or that most readers view as simply formulaic: dedications, prefaces, acknowledgements. Usually they are indeed formulaic and, in the case of acknowledgements, can be headbangingly boring. But why is this? It's ironic that those parts of the book that are supposed to be a kind of cybernetic device merging the ink of the text with the flesh and bones of real people are often the part that readers--admittedly, usually justifiably--skip over; I guess it just shows how academics can take the life out of anything and turn it into routine! Of course Cushman's essay itself contains lots of snippets from her life, but her Afterword I found pretty routine and insincere. I enjoyed Connors' Afterword, though. I really liked the real dialogue that Connors recalls surrounding both his writing of the essay and his reception of the award: "Okay, sure, I'll give it a shot." "Is this a joke?" It was almost like a Raymond Carver story. I wish he would have told us about the celebration at the restaurant after he got the award and got drunk on whiskey sours and made a pass at his colleague's wife. It's strange. I have an incredibly prurient interest in the private lives of famous and semi-famous critics and scholars, much more so than in authors or artists, precisely because we hear so little about them. There are hundreds of biographies of Ernest Hemingway, but what about a biography of James McCrimmon or J. M. Steadman! You say, because their lives are boring. I say, maybe they're not boring at all, just that the interesting parts are more subtle, more internal.

Nietzsche and Nature

In class last week I pointed out what I perceived as the incongruity between Nietzsche's metaphors comparing humans to animals and his claims that, from the perspective of nature, humans are at the very least anomalous. Amy pointed out, rightly I think, that Nietzsche doesn't really come right out and say that humans are "unnatural." Nevertheless, I understood him as implying this. I went back and tried to find passages that support my contention. On p. 1171, he writes, "One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature." So, humans may not be completely out of place in nature, but they do at least appear, according to Nietzsche, a bit awkward. He further claims that nature "conceal(s) most things from him...in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness." (1172) Now that I think about this quote, though, perhaps Nietzsche is not saying so much that humans don't fit into nature, but more that it is "natural" for them to be different from the rest of nature: after all, it is nature, and not humans themselves, who have made humans this way, according to Nietzsche. I also gave a lot of thought to Dr. Cadle's response to my claim. She said that writers often state that one thing is something that it isn't in order to make their point: good old-fashioned irony, in other words. This made a lot of sense, too. In other words, from this perspective, yes humans are somewhat unnatural in their drive for truth but it is not odd that Nietzsche would use animals to compare humans to in this respect; the irony of the metaphors underscores the incommensurability between humans and nature all the more. I am thinking so much about this aspect of Nietzsche's essay because I am writing on the essay. Ultimately, I think Nietzsche in the essay is doing a lot of intricate weaving and even intentional blurring of rigid categories, thus putting into practice the very platform that he advocates for the artist/"intuitive man" at the end of his essay. Thanks to Amy and Dr. Cadle for getting me to consider possibilities other than my first instinct.

Vico on teaching ethics and wisdom

I've been thinking about Vico's criticism of educational methods at his time. He writes, "the greatest drawback of our educational methods is that we pay an excessive amount of attention to the natural sciences and not enough to ethics. Our chief fault is that we disregard that part of ethics which treats of human character, etc" (871). He concludes that students who are set on a political career should not waste too much time on abstract sciences, but should instead focus on rhetoric and inductive reasoning. Our educational system should strive for excellence in wisdom and eloquence, he says, as well as science. There could be a problem here, though. If Vico is advocating teaching things like human character, good and bad behavior, appealing to the passions, using judgment, then isn't he advocating reducing these things to some kind of science; if not, how could they possibly be taught? I guess this is a paradox which could apply to other theorists, rhetorical and educational, that we have encountered this semester. I don't believe that this paradox is insurmountable, but I do think that authors like Vico don't give enough thought to it. If judgment, after all, is precisely that faculty which knows when and when not to apply the abstract knowledge and scientific axioms, then by definition it cannot itself be reduced to abstract knowledge or scientific axiom. Or think of rhetoric. If its essence is adapting speech to the particulars of a given circumstance, each of which is different, then how can it be taught? Now one might respond that we learn from observing those who practice these skills. Fine, but in that case doesn't education depend entirely on the student's talent for understanding and incorporating what she or he sees? In which case, why is Vico advocating our educational system address these areas of "wisdom" and practical interaction with human beings? I'm stating the problem in very gross terms here just as a way to start thinking about a seeming paradox that I think has plagued a lot of the authors we have read.

Warning: Satire! If you are a beliver in the Roman Inquisition, do not read!

As Bizzell and Herzberg point out, in 1554, Thomas Wilson, a Protestant, fled a now Catholic England under Mary Tudor, and arrived in Padua, Italy. He was arrested and tortured by the Roman Inquisition, who claimed that his logic and rhetoric books were heretical. Here is a transcript (completely fabricated):

Grand Inquisitor: Question the first: What meaneth this title, "The Rule of Reason?" Doth it mean that the universe is ruled by reason, that reason is the sovereign of us all? or Dost thou hereby mean to supplant the rules that our God, the Lord Jesus, gave to us in his scripture?
Wilson (arms in iron cuffs, mouth bleeding): Neither, actually, it purporteth only to lay out the rules whereby one might use reason to...
Grand Inquisitor: ...to do the work of the devil?
Wilson: No, to construct arguments as well as to judge the arguments of others.
Grand Inquisitor: What are these rules?
Wilson: The most common rule is that an argument must be valid.
Grand Inquisitor: Which meaneth that it must be true?
Wilson: No, it meaneth only that the argument be well-formed. Indeed, two false propositions can be put together to form an argument that is valid.
Grand Inquisitor: How is this possible!
Wilson: For example: Let us assume the following: Proposition the first: Given, All ducks beeth squirrels. Proposition the second: Given, Any lizard beeth a duck.
Grand Inquisitor: False! No ducks be squirrels and no lizards be ducks! (Strikes him on the face with a whip.)
Wilson: Ouch. Aye, but even so...We conclude from these two statements, given, false though they be, that any lizard, since that given he be a duck and since that given all ducks beeth squireels, yea, therefore, that any said lizard beeth also a squirrel.
Grand Inquisitor: And thou dost call this false argument "valid"!
Wilson: Aye, marry, that do I. My rule of reason hath made it so.
Grand Inquisitor: Therefore dost thou claim to be able to use thy rule of reason and thereby to take two false statements...
Wilson: Aye.
Grand Inquisitor: And by means of these two ingredients, subject to your rule of reason, to yield a third statement...
Wilson: Aye.
Grand Inquisitor: and that this third statement, now rendered and pulled forth from your concoction, like to an alchemist pulling forth gold from a vat containing theretofore only quicksilver and lead, that beeth not true yet that beeth "valid."
Wilson: Aye.
Grand Inquisitor: Then do I liken this art, of taking two false statements and conjuring from them a third, "valid" statement, to be the work of the devil (slaps him on the face with the whip from the left side) and do charge you, as practitioner of this "rule of reason" (slaps him on the face with the whip from the right side) to be a minion of Satan. (slaps him on the face with the whip...twice, once from each direction)
Wilson: (pause)...Ow.

Quintilian on education

We spoke a lot last week about how so many of Quintilian's ideas on education were ahead of his time. His emphasis on encouraging students as well as organizing students according to age level and ability anticipate much of 20th century educational theory, even educational theory of the last 20 years. Nevertheless, let's not forget also that in many ways the Socratic method of several centuries before was more innovative than some other of Quintilian's ideas. I wasn't really able to get a real sense of any emphasis in Quintilian on getting students to think and create for themselves. Socrates, on the other hand, for all of his drawbacks, did at least challenge his students to think about definitions and concepts on their own (in those rare instances, anyway, when the method worked the way it should). The Socratic method has actually made a comeback in recent years in educational theory. I'm not trying to detract from Quintilian's contributions, only to point out that the Greeks and the philosophers had some innovative ideas along with the Sophists and Roman orators.

A cinematic enthymeme

I never watch TV, as in zero hours per week (I don't have a TV set, nor do I want one). So, I thought I'd analyze a cinematic enthymeme (rather than a commercial) that I encountered over the weekend. I watched the movie "Bridge On the River Kwai." When the Japanese commander of the POW camp, Colonel Saito, announces to the British prisoners that soldiers and officers alike will take part in the construction of the bridge, the British commanding officer, Colonel Nicholson (played by Alec Guiness), points out that the use of officers for manual labor is strictly forbidden by the Geneva convention. Therefore, Nicholson informs him, his officers will not be working on the bridge. Nicholson has made an appeal to logos relying on the following enthymeme:
claim: The British officers will not do manual labor.
reason: The Geneva code of warfare prohibits the use of officers for manual prison labor.
unstated premises: 1) The Geneva codes contains all and only those "rules of war" necessary and sufficient for conducting a war in the most humane way possible. 2) Any commanding officer would surely see that the humane execution of a war takes precedence over any short-term material consequences such as getting a bridge built.
The enthymeme makes use of one of Aristotle's "common" topics, namely, number 11 (on page 229): Argument founded upon some decision already pronounced, whether on the same subject or one like or contrary to it. The unstated premise of the enthymeme is basedon probability rather than a sign.
Unfortunately for Nicholson, Saito may or may not accept the first unstated premise about the Geneva code being humane, but rejects the second. He thus presents his own counterargument in the form of his seizing the pamphlet containing the code out of Nicholson's hand, slapping Nicholson in the face with it, and throwing it on the ground.