Greek Rhetoric Before Aristotle. Richard Leo Enos
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of persuasion—as interpretative choice and construction of how one comes to acquire knowledge and view the world” (Enos, “Structuring” 4). In essence, as Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca posit, it is this fundamental rhetorical process which grounds the “structure to establish a solidarity between accepted judgments and others which one wishes to promote ” (261). Thus if we recognize that sensitive explanations of Hellenic discourse necessitate an understanding of the psychological and epistemological presumptions that ground Hellenic discourse, and if we recognize the process as rhetorical, then we must acknowledge the indispensability of theories which can account for these rhetorical vectors.
Research dealing with historical development of language-use must account for the psychological consciousness of the rhetor beyond the descriptive data of text if the relationship of form and meaning is to be epistemologically understood. Nowhere in Hellenic discourse is this need more apparent than in the distinction between analogical change and analogical creation of discourse. By an isolated comparison of discrete, synchronic analyses of internal evidence into “frozen” periods and dialects (e.g., Homeric and Attic Greek), we may be able to account not only for orderliness and regularity in language evolution, but also for the anomalous creation of new language forms by accounting for the conceptual processes which generate new form and meaning. The discovery procedures of the discourse clearly cannot be limited to explanatory powers of observation but must account for the evolving concepts and generative competency. In Homeric Greek, for example, there are several words that appear only once (hapax legoena): the Iliad has 1097 and the Odyssey has 868 such occurrences (Pharr xxvi). One would be hard-pressed to account for these 1965 “creations” synchronically but, more importantly, explanatory powers in such a traditional approach would fail in attempting to account for the conceptual creation of these new forms and meanings.
Understanding the grammatical structure of discourse does not in itself explain the epistemic processes that developed the techniques. This latter step has not been fully dealt with in traditional studies of classical rhetoric and, consequently, the larger role of theoretical synthesis in Hellenic discourse has been neglected. These views on researching Hellenic rhetoric apply directly to this revised edition. Rhetorical theory analyzes and synthesizes evidence in order to interpret the epistemology and articulation of Hellenic discourse, discourse that is both situated in time and influenced by the social contexts within which it is involved. The implications of this perspective reveal not only the importance of rhetorical theory driving historical research, but the methodologies employed in that research as well. In Homeric literature, to refer to the extended example used here, there is ample evidence to illustrate that eloquence was viewed as a gift from the gods and not a technical skill (e.g., Homer, Iliad 1.247–49; 3.200–24; 9.433; Odyssey 8.165–85; Hesiod, Theogonia 74–103). Moreover, “conviction” is attained by a “persuasion of the heart” of Odysseus and insight is endowed to Telemachus by such mentors as Athena and referred to as a divine gift (Homer, Odyssey 9.33, 2.267). Furthermore, to the epic poet Hesiod, Prometheus personified the human capacity to create (techne) (Pucci 82–101). Yet, Prometheus’s disclosure of divine knowledge to man led directly to Zeus’s revenge: Pandora’s release of the god’s gift to men, including divine eloquence (Hesiod, Works and Days 90–105). The loss of this divine power of eloquence led man to a self-conscious techne of discourse and a rational approach to language development. Although these mythic notions are grounded in irrationality, and are not revealed by the metrical patterns of formulae, they do reveal some presumptions on the part of Homer and Hesiod—if nothing else than how they believed their characters believed eloquence was attained and how individuals were persuaded.
In a similar respect, as Pre-Socratic philosophers moved from an accounting to acts via personified forces to such dialectic terms as logos and dissoi logoi, they revealed a corresponding shift in the presumptions of the acquisition of knowledge. In fact, the debate about the nature of rhetoric between Sophists and Socrates is best seen as a debate about epistemological presumptions; that is, the presumptions of what constitutes reality and the grounding of discourse in relativistic or ontological terms. When Antiphon employs the notions of “probability,” “intent,” “presumption,” and “motive” he is revealing an epistemic shift in the notion of what constitutes effective discourse from predominantly emotive utterance to rationalism. In brief, rhetorical theories are needed to account for the notions, presumptions, and presuppositions that went into the structuring of such discourse. This position may not seem unreasonable to researchers of contemporary rhetoric or postmodern theoreticians, but it is unknown—or at least unrecognized—to all but a few historians of rhetoric. Among the more standard, long-established works in classical rhetoric, few have dealt with the mentalities of ancient rhetoric. Some of the best of these exceptions include Charles Segal’s “Gorgias and the Psychology of the Logos,” E. R. Dodds’s The Greeks and the Irrational, Helen North’s Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature, and Eric Havelock’s Preface to Plato. Many others in the canon of our classical scholarship, however, do not consider the epistemic process or more importantly, recognize its rhetorical nature in their explanations.
More recently, however, scholars have begun to depart from Victorian methods and offer new, insightful contributions both to the social and cultural contexts and also to the mentalities driving classical rhetoric. Such innovative works include Cheryl Glenn’s Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity through the Renaissance, Edward Schiappa’s The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece, Susan C. Jarratt’s Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric Reconsidered, John Poulakos’s Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece, Jeffrey Walker’s Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity, Ekaterina V. Haskins’s Logos and Power in Isocrates and Aristotle, Debra Hawhee’s Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient Greece, and James Fredal’s Rhetorical Action in Ancient Greece: Persuasive Artistry from Solon to Demosthenes. All of these more recent scholars range widely in their topics and orientations, but all share similar traits: they all have broadened the range of “evidence” in order to make new insights to the mentalities creating rhetoric, to the context of the environments within which that rhetoric was produced, and to the cultural consequences of their historical interpretations. Once again, accounting for such “evidence” compels researchers to go beyond the drawing of philological inferences from the text alone, and necessitates inquiry into the epistemic presumptions that structure rhetorical discourse within its historical contexts. Such an orientation expands our range of evidence in a manner that complements textual analysis with an archaeological perspective that includes cognitive and physical elements into our “history” of classical rhetoric.
The above discussion has presented concerns about syntactic change (the alteration and evolution of discourse) and philological change (the preservation of sound patterns). It is clear that earlier efforts have emphasized observation and limited study to an examination of performance. If the objective is to understand the “idea” of discourse, then emphasis should be placed on the generative competency for the discourse within its context. This understanding requires an examination of both the epistemic processes of rhetoric that formulate meaning and theories that account for the phenomenon of its performance in the context of its utterance (see Enos, “Emerging”). The position presented here argues for such a point and that methods of retrieval of such “data” must inevitably turn to archaeological rhetoric and, in that sense, reveal its legitimacy and necessity as a sensitive tool for the analysis of Hellenic discourse. Inherent in this approach to methodology is that all artifacts of the situation within which that discourse was produced constitute—directly or indirectly—evidence of the context for that discourse. Pottery, epigraphy, architectural remnants and even the physical topography of the site are all sources for providing a more sensitive awareness of the rhetorical situation. To be sure, traditional historiographical procedures that draw inferences strictly from textual analysis provide important contributions, but those contributions are limited. Traditional methodologies for research in the history of rhetoric should be viewed as a prologue or means to discover the fundamental processes for the conceptualization of Hellenic discourse. For a thorough understanding of Hellenic rhetoric, epistemic processes need to be considered, and we must recognize these processes both as rhetorical and also situational by providing theories that account for such notions, presumptions, and presuppositions as “evidence” that stands beside physical remains from the past. All such sources,