Friday, September 26, 2014

Praise to the Men


Unique New York Greece
One of the greatest points of pride in Pericles’s speech is the idea that Greece, and more specifically Athens, differs greatly from surrounding sovereignties. They are braver than the Spartans. The people care more for the government. They are more tolerant of foreigners who happen through Athens. Later in his oration, he lauds Athens for her greatness. He even goes as far to say that her greatness is such that famous men have the whole earth as their memorial, in foreign lands also, where it fixed on the hearts of the men who came across the citizens of so great a city. From his description, though bias, we understand that Greece/Athens had surpassed the neighboring regions in politics and foreign policy.

Textbook Epideictic Oration
Pericles’ funeral oration falls nicely into the category of epideictic oration. His speech is replete with praise to the fallen, praise to the city for which they fell, praise to the survivors, and praise to the morals for which the fallen stood. Especially towards the end of his address, he praises the relatives for being able to cope with grief – real grief, born from the loss of love. He praises every group of people that could be associated with the men who died for the cause.

Socratic Pericles

Funerary Plaque
Though I agree with Katie’s thought on Socrates’ personal reaction to Pericles’ oration, I still believe that Pericles’ commentary on the characteristics of the Athenian thought process would generally place him more in line with the Socratic thinkers. Pericles asserts that the residents of Athena possess a propensity to act in accordance with truth. He declares that they will debate an issue first, to gain a better understanding of that issue, before acting on it. This tendency indicates that they are seekers of truth. Rather than just debating for the sake of debating, Athenians debate to arrive at a particular conclusion that will allow them to act properly. They seek a debate to mitigate and weigh risk before acting; they seek the truth to avoid acting in ignorance. This seems to be very reflective general Socratic ideology.

5 comments:

  1. I completely agree with you that Pericles's oration was almost fully epideictic except that he mentioned that he did not want to over-do the praise of the soldiers because they had their faults. Furthermore, rather than praising the soldiers as irreplaceable, he suggested that parents attempt to have more kids and that women basically shut their mouths about the grief so that men won't mention them. However, the oration still is mostly epideictic.

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  2. I found it interesting how much of the Greek culture we could understand from the oration. I mentioned your post in my own post because I disagree about which kind of truth he was seeking. He seemed to have a very biased position on what truth is relative to the viewpoints of the Athenians.

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  3. I mentioned you in my post!
    Although Pericles definitely uses the element of praise in his speech, I think it goes beyond that. His words are more flattery, if you will, to soften the people up and get them to continue fighting. Thus, I find that maybe his speech falls under deliberative oratory instead, or could be described as half-and-half.

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  4. I mentioned about how your point that they don't argue to argue, but to progress shows that they would be right in line with socrates and his philosophy that the unexamined life isn't worth living. As such, I agree that I would place him with the socratics.

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  5. Your a popular individual! I mentioned you in my post as well! I thought it interesting that you had viewed the history of the Athenians in such a prideful light. I think we would tend to agree overall on what this pride represents but I mentioned that I do not believe it to be pride in themselves so much as pride in their city and what it represent. To me it seems to be a bit more patriotic than just normal pride. Take a look!

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