Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece

John Poulakos, Thomas W. Benson

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781611171808
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Rhetoric
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

An expert in rhetoric offers a new perspective on the ancient concept of sophistry, exploring why Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle found it objectionable. In Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece, John Poulakos argues that a proper understanding of sophistical rhetoric requires a grasp of three cultural dynamics of the fifth century B.C.: the logic of circumstances, the ethic of competition, and the aesthetic of exhibition. Traced to such phenomena as everyday practices, athletic contests, and dramatic performances, these dynamics defined the role of sophistical rhetoric in Hellenic culture and explain why sophistry has traditionally been understood as inconsistent, agonistic, and ostentatious. In his discussion of ancient responses to sophistical rhetoric, Poulakos observes that Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle found sophistry morally reprehensible, politically useless, and theoretically incoherent. At the same time, they produced their own version of rhetoric that advocated ethical integrity, political unification, and theoretical coherence. Poulakos explains that these responses and alternative versions were motivated by a search for solutions to such historical problems as moral uncertainty, political instability, and social disorder. Poulakos concludes that sophistical rhetoric was as necessary in its day as its Platonic, Isocratean, and Aristotelian counterparts were in theirs.

Chapter 1

Sophistical Rhetoric and Its Circumstances

The first generation of sophists burst on the scene of the Hellenic culture some time in the middle of the fifth century B.C. and exited some time during the early part of the fourth, leaving behind an ambiguous legacy, many disciples, and a host of thorny questions. On account of their moment in history, the sophists can be said to have been both the beneficiaries and benefactors of an age of cultural exuberance, political expansion, economic growth, intellectual experimentation, and robust artistic expression. By most standards of historical judgment, the fifth century was a remarkably exciting age, and it was the sophists' good fortune to have been part of it. Still, some scholars of Hellenic antiquity insist on studying the sophists apart from the culture, focusing simply on their brief biographies, essential doctrines, or unique contributions to the edifice of Western thought. In so doing, these scholars inevitably assign the sophists doctrines that, in themselves, make little or no sense unless they are forced to fit the design of such trans-historical frameworks as the history of philosophy, the history of literature, the history of education, or, more recently, the history of rhetoric. While such a compromise may be necessary when we cut across many centuries and thinkers, it is, nevertheless, a compromise that lacks the texture and the color afforded by a focus on the specific cultural setting of a particular group of thinkers. If we are to go beyond the limits of a set of sketchy biographies, essentialized doctrines, or contested contributions to posterity, we need to follow the sophists' trails in Hellenic antiquity. More specifically, we need to look for their starts and stops, instances of convergence with and divergence from others, the overall pattern of their movement, as well as their collective predicament within the cultural terrain in which they lived and achieved notoriety.¹

Still, studying a group of intellectuals exclusively in the light of their age has its limitations. Although an age is more than the sum of the events and notions that can be said to have made it an age, it is still mainly an abstraction that leaves its makers out of account. But if this is so, the point is to favor neither an age nor its makers as individuals. Rather, the point is to show a reciprocal influence between the two, to ask, that is, how the age shaped the makers and how they, in turn, helped shaped it. Only then can we advance a sensible understanding of either.

Prior scholarship on the sophistic movement has sought to explain its emergence by account of the favorable intellectual climate in Periclean Athens, the Hellenic cultural center to which most celebrated sophists were drawn.² Although plausible, this explanation is too general and as such can account for the emergence of virtually everything (i.e., sculpture, drama, philosophy, architecture, science) in the Athenian culture. More importantly, such an explanation overlooks three crucial points. First, intellectual movements are born not in vacuo, but in the midst of a set of cultural givens of practice and thought already in motion. Second, they spring up not simply as a result of a conducive climate but in order to address particular circumstances and to fulfill certain societal needs. Third, they inadvertently grow alongside some established cultural practices and against others, producing innovative results despite the resistance of the tradition or the potential risks of criticisms that may eliminate them.

To understand sophistical rhetoric, then, means to specify the circumstances in which it occurred, to know the needs it sought to satisfy, to link it to prevalent cultural practices that helped shape its character, and to articulate the reactions it drew from subsequent thinkers. When situated culturally, the Greek sophists can be shown to have been not only products but also catalysts of their age, an age that facilitated their emergence, adopted many of their views and practices, and eventually initiated their denigration for centuries to come. In the same way, the sophists' rhetoric can be shown to have constituted not just an isolated activity by a class of talented individuals out of step with the tenor of their times, but rather a vital symbolic practice in the very culture that encouraged, produced, and critiqued it.

During the period of the sophists' emergence, the Hellenic culture was undergoing several changes, two of which are of special note. The first was from aristocracy to democracy. Initially introduced in Athens by Cleisthenes' constitutional revisions early in the fifth century, and later consolidated by the political reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles in the 460s, this change was not limited to the structural features of a political system of governance but involved other social, intellectual, and cultural arrangements as well. Specifically, the aristocracy of the nobility was yielding to a democracy of citizens;³ the aristocracy of the myths was losing its authority to a democracy of public arguments;⁴ the aristocracy of the oracles was receding before a democracy of human laws;⁵ and the aristocracy of poetry was relinquishing its glory to a democracy of prosaic discourses.⁶ In short, this was a change from the few to the many or, to put it in Aristotelian terms, from the extremities to the middle.⁷ It was a change, however, that was far from total—much of what assumed a democratic character did preserve some aristocratic features. For example, excellence in citizenship was still measured in terms of such deeds as victories in athletic competitions or generous gifts to one's city; laws preserved the oracular quality of prophesying the very human behaviors they were seeking to regulate; public arguments often derived their efficacy from the power of the myths they invoked; and prosaic discourses did not escape entirely from poetry as public audiences expected to hear in the speeches of their contemporary orators a good measure of the familiar poeticisms of their past poets.⁸

Caught in the midst of this pervasive change, the sophists responded neither as passive observers nor as active resisters but as energetic catalysts, accelerating its rate and enlarging its scope. By offering rhetorical instruction to those who could pay for lessons, they increased the number of the beneficiaries of learning without reducing the number of privileged aristocrats. Moreover, their rhetorical prose was one of the earliest efforts to break away from the cultural dominance of poetry; but it was a prose relying on the use of the poetical techniques of past poets.⁹ As Aristotle points out in his Rhetoric (3.1.8–9), the sophists were among the first to borrow the techniques of the poets on matters of style and delivery. Furthermore, their use of familiar mythical figures in their speeches helped preserve the legendary names whose character and deeds had shaped the culture's earlier system of values. Even so, the portrayal of those same figures in a new light challenged traditional notions of morality and reflected the rise of a new political and civic consciousness. Prodicus' Heracles, for example, was not the Heracles of incredible accomplishments requiring raw physical strength but a reflective character facing a dilemma between virtue and vice, pondering which path to choose. Similarly, Gorgias' Helen was no longer a woman of loose morals but a victim of circumstances and forces beyond her control; and his Palamedes was no longer simply a victim of Odysseus' ploys but an inventor of things useful to civilized life. In the same vein, Protagoras' gods, Zeus, Prometheus, and Hermes, were no longer concentrating exclusively on the enlargement and security of their respective spheres of responsibility; rather, they put their own preoccupations aside in order to attend to the survival of humankind. Finally, the sophists' discourses, initially affected by poetical techniques, began leaving poetry's metric limitations behind, and turned to the prose that the common people were speaking in the agora, the courts, and the Assembly. Such a turn must have led to the awareness that several established discursive practices and the culture's mythology were subject to change.

In a culture gradually placing its fortunes in the hands of the many rather than the few, sophistical rhetoric proved indispensable. Claiming to empower its possessors, it presented itself as a valuable commodity, an instrument that both the lingering aristocracy and the emerging democracy could use profitably. Caught in the whirlwinds of democracy, the aristocrats had interests to protect. Therefore, it was in their best interest to learn persuasive tactics in order to influence large juries and legislative assemblies of commoners to vote the right way. On the other hand, common citizens had a chance for the first time to make their voices heard and their wills done when it came to the legal and political affairs of their city. Therefore, it behooved them to learn how to articulate their positions eloquently and express their arguments persuasively. In their pedagogical capacity, then, the sophists did not only seek to mold effective citizens for the city-state but also furnish interested individuals with the rhetorical sophistication necessary to survive the new changes. Contrary to what some of their critics have said, the sophists' motto was not the survival of the fittest but fitting as many as possible for survival. In this sense, the sophists can be said to have helped strengthen the recently instituted democracy by forging a mentality aware of the centrality of persuasion in the coordination of sociopolitical action and the resolution of human conflicts. At the very least, this mentality was consistent with the partial empowerment of the traditionally weak and the partial disempowerment of the hitherto powerful. Insofar as the sophists enabled more people to enter the contests and spectacles of public life, the rhetoric they taught created at least two new possibilities: first, the possibility of the weaker challenging the stronger; and second, the possibility of revitalizing calcified discursive practices. Together, these two possibilities created a new world, simultaneously contesting the one already in place.

In addition to its democratizing function, however, sophistical rhetoric inaugurated a new aristocracy, crowning “logos” the new master of the polis—a master whom all had to serve but whom only few could serve with distinction.¹⁰ Inasmuch as the sophists regarded virtually all people capable of and subject to rhetorical persuasion, they can be said to have viewed rhetoric as a universal capacity. But insofar as they realized that only few could excel in eloquence, they can be said to have regarded rhetoric as a supreme art.¹¹ In both cases, however, their message underscored neither the primacy of the world nor the primacy of human beings; rather, it emphasized the primacy of logos as the medium circulating between human beings and constituting both human beings and the world. In this sense, they can be said to have instituted a new regime whose sympathies and character were neither aristocratic nor democratic but logocratic.

The second noteworthy change, during the age of the sophists, involved the growth of the middle class, a class defined by newly acquired wealth and occupying the mid-point between the land-owning nobility and the serfs.¹² As early as the latter part of the sixth century B.C. the elegist Theognis had identified the beginnings of this change in these words:

In our rams, asses and horses we endeavour to preserve a noble breed, and we like to mate them with a good stock. Yet the nobleman does not scruple to marry a low-born wife, so long as she brings him money, nor does a woman refuse the hand of a low-born suitor, preferring riches to nobility. What they honour is money. The nobleman marries into a family of base birth, the baseborn into a noble family. Wealth has blended breed. So do not wonder that the breed of the citizens is dying out; for noble is being blended with base.¹³

Theognis' sentiments aside, the advent of th...