History of Rhetoric

http://jinnan.com/2009/10/19/a-sophisticated-education/

The earliest mention of oratorical skill occurs in Homer's Iliad, where heroes like Achilles,Hektor, and Odysseus were honored for their ability to advise and exhort their peers and followers (the Laos or army) in wise and appropriate action.

With the rise of the democratic polis (city states), speaking skill was adapted to the needs of the public and political life of cities in Ancient Greece, much of which revolved around the use oforatory as the medium through which political and judicial decisions were made

, and through which philosophical ideas were developed and disseminated.

In Classical times, many of the great thinkers and political leaders performed their works before an audience, usually in the context of a competition or contest for fame, political influence, and cultural capital; in fact, many of them are known only through the texts that their students, followers, or detractors wrote down. As has already been noted, rhetor was the Greek term fororator: A rhetor was a citizen who regularly addressed juries and political assemblies and who was thus understood to have gained some knowledge about public speaking in the process, though in general facility with language was often referred to as logôn techne, "skill with arguments" or "verbal artistry."

Rhetoric thus evolved as an important ART.

Today the term rhetoric can be used at times to refer only to the form of argumentation, as a means of obscuring the truth. Classical philosophers believed the contrary: the skilled use of rhetoric was essential to the discovery of truths, because it provided the means of ordering and clarifying arguments.

The Sophists

Organized thought about public speaking began in Ancient Greece. Empedocles (d. ca. 444 BC) => theories on human knowledge would provide a basis for many future rhetoricians. The first written manual is attributed to Corax and his pupil Tisias. Their work, as well as that of many of the early rhetoricians, grew out of the courts of law; Tisias, for example, is believed to have written judicial speeches that others delivered in the courts. Teaching in oratory was popularized in the 5th century BC by itinerant teachers known as sophists, the best known of whom were Protagoras (c.481-420 BC), Gorgias(c.483-376 BC), and Isocrates (436-338 BC). The Sophists were a disparate group who travelled from city to city, teaching in public places to attract students and offer them an education.

The School of Athens by Raphael

Their central focus was on logos/discourse. They defined parts of speech, analyzed poetry, parsed close synonyms, invented argumentation strategies, and debated the nature of reality. They claimed to better their students/teach them virtue.

They thus claimed that human "excellence" was an art. They were among the first humanists!

They were also among the first agnostics - they questioned the received wisdom about the gods and the Greek culture.

They argued even further that morality or immorality of any action could not be judged outside of the cultural context within which it occurred. The well-known phrase, "Man is the measure of all things" arises from this belief.

One of their most famous, and infamous, doctrines has to do with probability and counter arguments. They taught that every argument could be countered with an opposing argument, that an argument's effectiveness derived from how "likely" it appeared to the audience (its probability of seeming true), and that any probability argument could be countered with an inverted probability argument. Thus, if it seemed likely that a strong, poor man were guilty of robbing a rich, weak man, the strong poor man could argue, on the contrary, that this very likelihood (that he would be a suspect) makes it unlikely that he committed the crime, since he would most likely be apprehended for the crime. They also taught and were known for their ability to make the weaker (or worse) argument the stronger (or better). Aristophanes famously parodies the clever inversions that sophists were known for in his play The Clouds.

The word "sophistry" developed strong negative connotations in ancient Greece that continue today, but in ancient Greece sophists were nevertheless popular and well-paid professionals, widely respected for their abilities but also widely criticized for their excesses.