Midterm Essays

4) Invention of Writing and the Medium of the Socratics 

As in any civilization, the invention of the alphabet and the rise of the written word greatly affected the Greeks and their way of thinking.  Great emphasis was placed on memory in Greek society.  A rhetorician who had mastered their topic of speech was often one who had memorized a plethora of facts about their subject from various sources.  With the advent of writing, it wasn’t as important to be well-versed, but well-read.  There were obvious benefits from this, such as greater autonomy.  With a common language and written system, ideas could be shared farther and to more diverse audiences.  The autonomy of written language would also prove for better national autonomy.  For example, ancient Greece was composed of independent city-states, but in rare fashion they banded together in the late 5^th century B.C. to defeat the Persians.  Later, Alexander the Great would lead Greece to conquer all of Persia, but he would be hindered when cultural and idiomatic barriers prevented his troops from fully meshing.  Such unification would have been difficult, if not impossible, without common writing and written military plans.

Despite the obvious benefits from the written language, many suffered from the movement away from rhetoric.  Famous Socratics, such as Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, each developed their own medium that favored their type of work.  For example, Aristotle dedicated himself to the naming of plants and animals.  The systematic nomenclature he developed relied upon writing so it could become widespread and generally accepted.  But he also used concise rhetoric to observe human phenomena such as: “We are what we repeatedly do… Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”  Plato and Socrates were even more heavily dependent on rhetoric, though Plato favored writing.  The goal of the Socratics was to find absolute truth.  They believed that one of the most efficient ways to find this truth was through dialectic rhetoric, or the conversing of two or more people.  Cross examination, soul-searching questions, and conflict ending in resolution all would lead to this truth.  Without the introspective dialogue, a reader must take the author’s theories of truth and mix them with their own notions of truth instead of taking the journey with the rhetorician to find absolute truth together.  In the eyes of the Socratics, though much was gained through writing, much of their objective was lost, lost in transcription.

5)  Greek Politics and Rhetoric

Ancient Greeks were judged primarily by two things: their ability to fight and their ability to speak.  When the weapons of choice were words rather than spears, the political stage turned into a battlefield.  As Dylan P. said, Greek citizens needed to know how to defend themselves.  Now, the tactics these people used would depend on the political melee they were entering.  Would they rely primarily on judicial reasoning to determine innocence or guilt in the Athenian courts or deliberative persuasion to determine how to organize the best “neighborhood watch” program on Greek row (ok, maybe we invented that)?  They may employ the authority of witnesses to sentence a criminal or perhaps the correlation of a past and future fact to expedite neighborhood legislation.  Whatever the case, Greeks needed to be well versed in rhetoric in order to make democracy function.  The new invention of democracy was established on the principle that the government would be partial to the majority voice of the people, which was only possible if the citizens were verbally adept. 

There were faults in the political realm with regards to rhetoric.  Because of the lack of emphasis on writing, it was easy to manipulate people using rhetoric.  We could see this, for example, in the court system.  If I was accused of theft, but I was a much more talented rhetorician than you, I could verbally outmaneuver you.  Without written evidence and testimonies of witness, it would be easy for me to prove myself “innocent”.  Essentially, my ethos established by my speaking ability would overrule the logos of your claims that I robbed you.  Putting ethos on a pedestal above that of logos and pathos was a chronic problem of Greek political society.  One day, a famous general, Scipio Africanus, was brought into court after blatantly killing another Greek.  While he was obviously guilty, Scipio was well-known for his victories in northern African, bequeathing him the title “Africanus”.  After the accusations of the prosecutor, Scipio stood and, for his defense, simply stated, “My name is Scipio Africanus”.  He was released without penalty.   Clearly, while rhetoric was the lifeblood of the political arena, it wasn’t always the healthiest medium through which justice was established.