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.

Turning McComiskey's argument against him

In "Disassembling Plato's Critique of Rhetoric in the Gorgias," McComiskey argues that, given his relativistic epistemology, there's no way Gorgias would have agreed to premises offered by Socrates that assume rationality, absolute truth, and a foundational epistemology. What McComiskey must argue, then, is that Plato knowingly altered the actual argument between Socrates and Gorgias for political reasons, and he offers a hypothesis about why Plato would have done this. But couldn't one take the same formal argument that McComiskey uses (namely, that given figure x's views, y, there would be no way that figure x would have uttered any speech that entails not y) and use it to refute McComiskey's entire thesis. In other words, isn't it just as plausible to argue that, given Plato's foundational epistemology, which entails an insistence on one, correct version of the truth, there's no way he could have altered what he knew to be a true account of the dialogue to produce a misleading account? The problem with McComiskey's argument is that if one finds it logical, one also has to accept the above refutation of it, which is equally as logical.

Dworkin reads Plato

Just thought this was fascinating and kind of humorous: a feminist reading of Plato, not in the sense of an interpretation of Plato, but in the sense of the actual activity of reading Plato. This is from Andrea Dworkin's autobiography Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant. She interlaces her first time wearing lipstick, her fear of a shiny nose, and her late-night readings of Plato under the covers when her parents were asleep:

“I’d wear Tangerine, along with a favorite dress that let me see my own breasts, a deep V-neck, a cut I still like, and I’d be making my way through Plato’s Symposium. It had been communicated to me through the odd, secret whispers of women that a female’s nose must never shine….I would pretend to go to sleep; I’d wait for them to go to sleep; I’d turn on my reading light, read, and simultaneously listen for any movement at their end of the house, at which point I’d get rid of any light in my room, hide the book, and wait until I heard my mother or father return to their bed.

I was taunted by this problem: how could someone write something like the Symposium and make sure that her nose did not shine at the same time? It didn’t matter to me that I was reading a translation. I’d read Plato’s brilliant, dense prose and not be able to tear myself a way. Even as a reader my nose shined. …Plato was my idea of a paperback writer: the Beatles were not yet on the horizon, and anyway I’m sure that John would have agreed with me. There was nothing I wanted so much in life as to write the way Plato wrote: words inside ideas inside words, the calzone approach attenuated with Bach.”

From Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant by Andrea Dworkin. New York: Basic Books, 2002. pp. 28-29

Zen master Socrates

Socrates' main beef with the Sophists is that rhetoric is merely a form of flattery, that it strives to give the appearance of plausibility rather than proceeding on the basis of an investigation into what is actually the case; thus it is not a true art. And yet, Socrates only offers a positive account of what is actually the case (for example, what is rhetoric) when pressed by others to do so. The rest of the time, as we have mentioned often in class, most of what he says is riddled with vagueness, verbal trickery, and even downright contradictions. How could the Sophists have been any worse--in the sense of presenting only what is plausible rather than what is true--than Socrates; indeed, from what we have read so far, Socrates isn't really even very good at presenting what is plausible! Here's a possible explanation: Socrates didn't believe that attaining the truth--the ideal realm of goodness, beauty, and truth--was possible through language or indeed at any time that we are embodied souls with a limited perspective, not even for philosophers. So, maybe what's going in with Socrates' simultaneous bad reasoning combined with his denigration of the Sophists is similar to what is going on with the Zen master who presents his students with verbal paradoxes: the point is not only to humble the arrogant student who believed any kind of absolute knowledge was possible, but even more to parody the entire attempt to attain truth by such a limited method as linguistic investigation. Thus, Socrates is not so bad with argumentation that no one pays him any attention. He is just good enough to get people to listen and just bad enough to (intentionally) steer the whole project towards shipwreck every time. The dialectic as parody. Socrates as Eastern guru. "The way that can be spoken of is not the true way." (Lao Tzu)

Do words really ever have an effect?

Adams reads the conversion of the lover's soul in Phaedrus as an allegory for rhetoric. He is wrong. In the Phaedrus, Socrates presents the charioteer and his two horses as a metaphor for the human soul. The soul, when it falls in love, first succumbs to a kind of manic love and then, through the shock of perceiving the ideal form of beauty, is converted to true love. Adams reads this entire process as an allegory for the two-way effect of rhetoric: the beauty in the boy's face corresponds to the unadorned truth in the rhetor's topoi (i.e. not just any topoi, but ones that are based on truth); the audience, like the charioteer and his horses perceiving the beauty, are blown away by the sheer power of this unadorned rhetoric and are further given a cue on how to employ this same method back to their audience (in this case, the beautiful boy). But why does Adams claim that Plato intended this to be read and why does he claim that it is best read as an "allegory." It makes more sense, in terms of Plato as well as in terms of rhetoric, to understand--not the horses and charioteer; this is clearly a metaphor for the soul--but the process itself as a literal description of how an audience is won over. That is, being won over by the beautiful face of the speaker is not a metaphor for the effect this speaker's words have: this is in fact how the speaker wins us over. That is not to say that every speaker that we are won over by has a beautiful face, but it is to say that we have already identified with the speaker's image to some extent before we are won over. Once we have identified with the image that someone projects, they are going to be effective and if they aren't effective then it's because we have--usually this is an unconscious process--rejected the image they project. Now, the Internet corrects for this to some extent, but even a purely discursive exchange between two people who never see each other's image will at some point reach the stage at which an identification is made and this identification, visual in essence, is much more powerful than any opinion one has formed on the basis purely of another person's words. For example, one of the people in the chat room will say to the other, hey, we've known each other for a long time, why don't you send me a picture. Let's say the other person refuses and makes up an excuse. Now, even without ever having seen that person who refuses to give them a picture, the first person will form an image based on the fact that the other person is a person who doesn't want to send out a picture. OK, sorry, this is going on too long. The point is that Adams is exactly right in his interpretation of how rhetoric works but is exactly wrong in demoting Plato's description of this process to the level of allegory, an extraneous step that it seems is an attempt by Adams to save rhetoric from the obvious truth that Socrates (and this is consistent with the Socrates who in other places tries to get people to see that words don't really ever have a positive effect in attaining the good, true, and beautiful; they can only make us see what we don't know) is promoting: it's not words that have an effect, it is only beauty. Adams, despite his best effort and because the recourse to allegory is clearly superfluous, demonstrates only that, as in his case, the study of the effect words have is all just a cover-up, a way to console ourselves by persisting in the illusion that words have any persuasive force, an illusion of mastery in the face of helplessness.