- Essentially covers the period from the sophists up until before Augustine (who is considered a transitional figure into the Medieval Period).
- We can see a shift from oligarchies to democracies in part because of an emergent middle class built on trade wealth.
- Written law codes began to be introduced in the 6th century BCE, and literacy slowly began to disseminate. Mediterranean culture gradually shifted from orality to literacy, which allows for more complex and protracted management of ideas.
- The commonly considered first rhetoricians, Corax and Tisias, were active in Syracuse, Sicily, c. 465 BCE. This was a time of political turmoil, and Corax likely offered to teach people to navigate the court system for property rights. He also may have coached people to speak in democratic assemblies and thereby gain political power.
- Tisias was likely Corax's pupil, and he (perhaps with Gorgias) likely brought Corax's rhetoric to the Greek mainland c. 427 BCE perhaps accompanied by Gorgias.
- Sophistry coalesced in the Greek mainland in part because of the popularity of Gorgias as a speaker. The Sophists were not a coherent group of people nor a distinct critical school; sophist was merely the label for people who offered to teach rhetorical skill for pay. Sophists were commonly itinerant foreigners (not native to Athens, which was the contemporary center of Greek civilization).
- The most significant Sophists for a contemporary audience are Gorgias, Protagoras, and Isocrates. We do not have much of their thought or practice in a durable format, in part because of Plato's criticism of its value. Also, sophistic practice resisted codification, because it was predicated on changing (or using mētis) to suit the changeable (or kairotic) situation. Isocrates indeed derides those who believe that rhetorical education can be codified in "Against the Sophists."
- The Sophists denied that any knowledge could be certain, and thus focused on probability. For them, language constructed our realities (or was epistemic), because it was through language that we understood the world and took action in it.
- There was a conservative backlash against sophists because they often were foreign, they accepted pay for educational services (this wasn't common at the time), and they were able to give people oratorical skill that allowed them to gain democratic power. The aristocracy (such as Plato) understandably did not like this challenge to the status quo.
- Plato challenged the legitimacy of rhetoric by asserting that there is absolute knowledge we can approach through reasoned dialectic. Language thus becomes a means to discover truth or pervert it.
- Plato's formulation thus upholds a certain hierarchy; a "right way" for things to be.
- Plato's student Aristotle (who was also Alexander the Great's tutor) provided the first known written, formalized rhetoric. Aristotle sided with his teacher Plato that some things could be known with absolute certainty (although he differed with Plato about the source of those truths), but he valued rhetoric as the means to ascertain probable truth in cases were certainty wasn't possible (which was in many if not most quotidian situations).
- Aristotle's rhetoric established many of the elements that are still fundamental to rhetorical study (although they are mostly known through Cicero).
- Cicero, who lived in the Roman Republic (pre-empire) during the 1st century BCE and was a contemporary of Julius Ceasar, valued rhetoric as a civic tool. He recovered much of Aristotle's rhetoric and formalized the canon of memory, bringing the total to the now customary five.
|
|