Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Popular Persuasion: Opinions are greater than Truth

Introduction

            This rhetorical analysis of Gorgias’s Encomium of Helen will focus on two chief parts of the judiciary oratory convention that Gorgias implements to various effectiveness: enthymeme and the topic of invention of testimony.

Enthymeme
Aristotle codified enthymemes as a way that
judiciary rhetoricians persuaded the jury.
Today, we are much more aware of what
"memes" are than what enthymemes are.
Would grumpy cat approve of our lack
of rhetorical knowledge?

Rather than being truly epideictic, Gorgias’s Encomium of Helen is more of a judiciary rhetoric.  Gorgias speaks of the past only and uses chiefly enthymemes, which are, according to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, most suited for judiciary rhetoric.  Enthymemes are informal logic that leaves out either a major or minor premise.  They rely chiefly on popular opinions rather than truth to persuade others.  Enthymeme is employed, among many other cases, when Gorgias claims, “For the will of a god cannot be hindered by human forethought. For it is not natural for the superior to be hindered by the inferior, but for the inferior to be ruled…by the superior….accordingly, if one must attribute responsibility to…the gods, one must acquit Helen of infamy.”  Here, the obvious and common premise that all humans are inferior to the gods is left out of the argument.  These enthymemes are highly efficient to Gorgias’s argument.  He relies on the popular opinion to prove his case.  His arguments, thus, seem logical and indisputable to his audience even though they are not based on pure truth.  Gorgias also secretly employs the pathos of appealing to popular belief whilst maintaining a somewhat deceiving appearance of logic.
Gorgias relies chiefly on enthymemes rather than testimony to
prove Helen as innocent.  Both are methods that Aristotled 

codified as useful for judiciary rhetoric.  However, not
including more instances of testimonymight not be the 
most effective approach.

Testimony 

  Unlike the use of enthymeme to great effect, Gorgias loses some of his ethos and credibility by not truly examining another important judiciary convention—testimony.  Gorgias does not examine any testimony except appealing briefly to the supernatural and the written law.  He calls on the supernatural to acquit Helen as one can see in the previous paragraph, which is effective as an enthymeme.  However, if the popular opinion did not support the supernatural as a motivator, he would lose its effective testimony.  Furthermore, Gorgias briefly compares the ineffectiveness of written law, saying it is not always effective: “For the strong habitual force of law is banished because of the fear prompted by the sight [of battle].”  Here, he attempts to prove that law might be overcome by fear and thus is not Helen’s fault if she does not obey law.  This argument is effective to an extent, but because Gorgias calls upon no other testimony to prove Helen innocent, he is a bit ineffective in this sort of argument.

3 comments:

  1. Indeed, I felt a bit of the same as you did while examining Gorgias and his argument. Nowadays, people must be condemned or freed by the mouths of witnesses. The testimony of a witness is critical to reaching decisions in law cases. I noticed how Gorgias flew solo throughout his reasoning, but still succeeded in rallying, or ensnaring, listeners with his pretended infallibility.

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  2. I see your point about testimony. But, he stated at the beginning that he was basically arguing against everyone else's opinion. Perhaps it was that there simply was no testimony arguing the same way he was. Or, it could be that he was trying to get us to not rely on others' testimony and find out about it for ourselves.

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  3. It is important to note that Gorgias isn't really trying to save Helen's name. That is what he claims to be doing, but Helen is more of a legend at this point and what Gorgias says won't really change that. I think that might have something to do with why he phrased things the way he did, but more about that in my post!

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