rhetoric exam 2

Chautaqua

training sunday school teachers, popular family resort, lectures, preaching, music, vaudeville

Inventio (Invention)

developing your argument

Disposito (Arrangement)

organizing your arguments

Elocutio (Style)

selecting rhetorical techniques/strategies

Memeria (Memory)

learning and memorizing speech/address

Pronunciato (Delivery)

presenting your speech

dissoi logoi

• nothing is good or bad in itself, it depends on the circumstances

• it is always possible to speak either for or against something

• there will always be something to be said on the other side of the case

Kairos

• time

• a good or proper time for action

• qualitative

• contextual

• adapting to changing/contingent circumstances

Chronos

• time

• the right or critical moment

• quantitative

• fixed

• seizing an opening/opportunity

Eristic argument

dispute regardless of truth

decorum

correct behavior in a social situation to best persuade an audience

Gorgias (sophist)

• esteemed Athenian orator, influential sophist

• must appeal to “whole person”

• emotions especially influential

Encomium of Helen

• written by Gorgias

• encomium = praise

• defense of Helen of Troy

• power of speech

• rhetoric like a drug or magic potion

Plato’s Socratic Dialogues

• moral/ philosophical discussions

• socrates as a character (not author)

• socratic method

The Sophist (dialogue)

• the sophist is nothing else, apparently, than the memory-making class of a disputatious combative acquisitive art

• claims to give education, and is a hunt after rich + promising youths

• a kind of juggler an imitator of realities

Gorgias (dialogue)

• dialogue between socrates + gorgias

• rhetoric is insincere speech w/ persuasion rather than truth as a goal

• rhetoric like propaganda: just gets you to belief, not truth

Phaedrus (dialogue)

• dialogue between socrates + young boy phaedrus

• ostensibly a discourse on love

• rhetoric not just public speech but any verbal communciation

• plato critical of logography + spread of writing in Athens

• both good and bad kinds of rhetoric

• good rhetoric is ethical speech that reveals fundamental truth

Metis

• titanese

• cunning intelligence; trickery deceit; stratagems, clever, ruse, ingenious tactics

• 1st wife of zeus

• prophecy of powerful offspring

• birth of fully formed Athena

Metistic intelligence

• intelligence/way of knowing

• flair, wisdom, forethought

• subtlety of mind, deception, resourcefulness

metis in everyday life

• a wily intelligence

• chief domains: war, politics, medicine

• hunting & fishing

metis & kairos

• metis plays upon the right time + right place

• quick-wittedness of metis is realized in a time too short to be observed

metis & embodiment

• embodied intelligence

• helmsman/sailor

• charioteer/driver

• wrestler/athlete

• physical embodied action + timing

metis & overcoming

• the cunning of the underdog

• bie = brute force/strength

• trojan horse

• escaping the cyclops

• turning the tables

• the weaker overcoming the stronger

Metis & sophists

• relativism/contigency/adaptation

• kairos/decorum/contextualism

• arguing to win

• making the weaker argument stronger

Techne

• technical expertise

• art, skill, craft

• root of technology

• universal application of knowledge

• rhetoric AS techne

Episteme

• scientific understanding

• systematic rationality

• pure/abstract/conceptual

• theory of knowledge

• tools to acquire, create, + share knowledge

• rhetoric AS epistemic art

Phronesis

• practical wisdom

• prudence + virtue

• producing good consequence + realizing the good life

• metis vs. phronesis

• BOTH are practical/applied BUT metis is value neutral

Platonic truth

• Sophists rejected Plato’s absolute Truth in favor of contingent relativism

• = being

Platonic idealism

eternal truths in the realm of ideas (episteme)