Reflections and an Oath

I have had the time to think on many matters these past few months, or this semester in general as it were. The prevailing thought that occupies my mind appears to be the passage of time.

Barely fifteen days hence, I will graduate from college. What a milestone – I will no longer have any license, any excuse to act as an uncouth and foolish youngster. This day will mark that formal partition. And in these fleeting, few moments before the passing of the last remnants of my youth, I will mull the significance of the marker, and set in granite the means of adulthood.

I know I am late. Men and women of old have reached where I now stand, countlessly and infinitely before me. Theirs was a different time, though mine may be even more alien. They pondered their passing with a more decisive mind than I, for in this age such lines have been hopelessly blurred. They knew their duties, and prepared to meet them with every ounce of every fiber in their being. I. I search for such duties in a world that has none, but because of this, I and every member of my generation have already had the opportunity to touch and taste wealth, fame, and endless prosperity. Who am I to beg discontent?

I sit now, alone in a field of Ceres, feeling the effects of the slow ebb of time. The corn is almost as tall as I am now. When I last visited these fields, the crops barely adorned the Earth as shrubbery. How magnificent is this testament to unrelenting Chronos?

Looking back upon our activities, the progression of all western thought and philosophy is revealed with clarity before me. The pre-Socratics – Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander – offered to us the basis. Wrong and misguided they may have been, but such is the glory and the folly of being first. Socrates, ever-inquisitive, brought us the advocation of critical thought over mere memory and repetition. He undauntedly stripped away the foolish trappings of tradition and mindless acceptance of precepts left by his predecessors, but his greatest contributions to the world at large may have been his pupils Plato and Xenophon.

They were both brilliant and prolific, I must admit, though I may not agree with all of their written word. Plato’s criticisms of Gorgias and the sophists stand without my challenge. Speech, like any other power or tool, can certainly be wielded to do harm. It is however, by no means innately unjust. My challenge regards his tendency to force dichotomies and split what should have remained whole: reality and appearances, truth and practicality, techne and “knacks”. Here, I stand inveterately with Isocrates and Aristotle. Such things do not oppose each other, but instead complement each other. Without one, the other cannot function properly.

Isocrates’ accomplishments are largely unacknowledged in modernity, and this perturbs me. For one who is considered the father of liberal arts education and the progenitor of many educational precepts that endure to this day, I find his fate to be deplorable.  This becomes even more pronounced when examining his efforts at uniting all Hellas and spurring his fellow citizens to engage in civic affairs. Even today, we attempt to sustain institutions like NATO, the Arab League, the UN, et cetera and et alii, in the hope that multinational interests can stave off unilateralism and world war. Even today, the majority of our citizens make no effort to participate in their hard-won civic duties.

Time passes, and the world moves on. Cicero, Quintilian, and Longinus all offered fresh perspectives and in many instances improved upon the works of the previous names. And finally, we arrive at Augustine. Augustine towers above them all; he reached the pinnacle and zenith, incorporating all aspects of his predecessors into his own thought. Neo-Platonism and Christianity, rhetoric and philosophy, reclusion and civic duty; these distinctions matter not, because to achieve transcendence, it is necessary to reconcile these seemingly disjointed factions into a harmonious whole.

Of course, numerous writers lie still ahead, but most of them will owe their works to this pipeline.

I am not religious, and I can say with as much certainty as the universe allows that I will never be. However, as demonstrated so elegantly in class, neither is my appreciation of these things strictly secular. All of these people contributed greatly to who I am and who I will be, and I shall always share in their motivations and convictions.

The grand question remains – Augustine was right yet again, for such questions remain long after they have been answered. Why have we studied this? Why read the texts of antiquity, the origins of which have long crumbled to dust?  Why were they so keen to leave behind precepts and construct “ladders” to wisdom? What significance do their words hold for us, and what do they compel us to do? Should we listen?

The answer to these inquiries presents the greatest lesson I have received in college.

Fear not fear, fear not death. Fear apathy and ignorance of the past. The future is full of possibilities, but the past is final.

As children, we are fascinated by fire and reach for the embrace of its brilliant, dancing, flickering arms. Pain ensues, and a scar forever marks the encounter. Do we attempt to touch the flames again? Do we readily forget? Let the past serve as a similar reminder for our future endeavors.

Unless we heed those that have preceded us, we will repeat their mistakes until all of humanity lie in ruin and decay. The stakes are much higher than momentary discomfort of the physical nature; so momentous are the works humanity can put forth. We have but one opportunity to set things right before they fall into the realm of the immutable, and let us not leave it to chance.

My time here has almost come to an end, and it will not be for nothing. It was a good four years. Lessons fade, their magnitude diminished by the ebb of time. This one, I swear, shall not suffer that fate. We are not born for ourselves alone; by now, these sentiments are innate in my being. I shall always hold vigil over our progenitors, in solemn remembrance of their efforts, and in observance of our sacred duty.

The Modern Logographer

Isocrates was always quite coy about his past as a logographer, a profession that we now know as speechwriter. This should not be surprising to us, if we recall the scorn with which Plato and other so-called philosophers looked upon the need to work for a living. Intellectualism, techne, and wisdom, according to them, were attainable only by freeing onself from the menial labors of day-to-day life. We have witnessed this firsthand through Plato’s treatment of Lysias, a logographer who made a living out of writing speeches, in the Phaedrus. Isocrates, through his silent acknowledgment, appears to agree with this sentiment.

In modernity, the tables have turned. We now look upon the unemployed with suspicion and speak spitefully about those who are “just looking for handouts”. What else would we deem those that are voluntarily, adamantly umemployed, but the very dregs of society? Such a dramatic shift in societal opinion is likely derived from various workers revolutions and union movements. In a rare departure from the Isocratean, I am grateful for it. We are of this world, after all, and in the grand scheme of things it was not so long that our ancestors could do little more than survive on a day-to-day basis. Their triumphs cemented our continued existence; there is no need to belittle their endeavors.

A slight distinction between logographers and speechwriters can be made in the context of their employment. Most speeches in Isocrates’ day were composed on the behalf of clients in the courts and the legal arena who could not speak nearly as well without the help. Such roles have been formalized today into other professions, and in America they are known as prosecutors and defense attorneys. Politics is now the arena that most modern speechwriters display their wares. I may be exaggerating slightly, but I don’t think most people will take issue if I say that behind every relevant politician is a speechwriter or two.

It may be very interesting to contrast the life of a modern speechwriter to that of a logographer in Isocrates’ era, during which the occupation of speechwriting on behalf of another essentially began. For politicians of this day, it no longer seems sustainable to request the services of a writer on a speech-by-speech basis, but rather the norm is to retain a team on permanent employ. In recent memory, it could be said that U.S. President Barack Obama has been one of the more inspiring orators in the political arena. Let us then examine the responsibilities of his speechwriting team, which is headed by a man named John Favreau.

Favreau himself was rather young – merely 23 – when he began work for then-Senator Obama, but his accomplishments with speech and the theory of writing was already reminiscent of Cicero’s own youth. He described his political theory of writing as the following:

“A speech can broaden the circle of people who care about this stuff. How do you say to the average person that’s been hurting: ‘I hear you. I’m there. Even though you’ve been so disappointed and cynical about politics in the past, and with good reason, we can move in the right direction. Just give me a chance.’” ^[1]

This attitude is certainly a departure from the aim of logography, transitioning from the need to win tit-for-tat exchanges between clients to the desire for inclusion and inspiration in politics. Furthermore, logography was largely recognized as the field that helped the most frigid and uneducated of speakers to appear eloquent and competent. In modern speechwriting, helping the client to become a better speaker is not the only concern. An even clearer mark of a successful speechwriter regards the ability to make a client, while delivering the speech, sound like it originated from his or her very own pen. In the words of Christopher Buckley, a speechwriter for President Bush,

“The trick of speechwriting, if you will, is making the client say your brilliant words while somehow managing to make it sound as though they issued straight from their own soul.” ^[2]

It is said that Favreau had mastered President Obama’s voice by reading almost everything he wrote as a senator and channeling those ideas and phrases. Favreau had become so adept at this that he admitted it would be difficult to write in his voice own again.

In Response to Longinus

It is amusing to note that my first encounter with On the Sublime occurred while reading the Panegyricus, and not in class. Barely a few paragraphs into the  Isocratic treatise (broken up into small sections on the Perseus database), a very large and prominent footnote appeared. It read:

“The author of the treatise On the Sublime quotes this passage and condemns Isocrates’ ‘puerility’ in thus dwelling on the power of rhetoric and so arousing distrust of his sincerity…Plutarch attributes to Isocrates the definition of rhetoric as the means of making “small things great and great things small” … a similar view is attributed to Tisias and Gorgias.”

Immediately apparent from this passage was Longinus’ intent, personal convictions, and faction association in the philosophy vs. rhetoric divide. Despite all of Isocrates’ insistence to the contrary, Longinus depicted him as a sophist in the style of Gorgias, devoid of all claim to the notion of sublimity. On the Sublime itself certainly did not disappoint in these regards. Longinus specifically singled out one of Isocrates’ passages as an example of a rhetorical figure executed badly, while Plato was referenced with high praise many times in the treatise.

Furthermore, the positions advocated by Longinus were almost always diametrically opposed to those advocated by Isocrates (and by extension Cicero and Quintilian). The most prominent of these appeared to be the role of natural ability in the development of the sublime, the model citizen, or the ideal orator. Out of five sources of sublimity, Longinus attributed the foremost to “natural greatness”, while Isocrates was adamant in the Antidosis that “credit is won not by gifts of fortune but by efforts of study”.

Other criticisms of the Isocratic style I will accept and take to heart, but I cannot let this foolhardy sentiment of Longinus to stand. In fact, I consider this line of thinking to be seriously detrimental to education itself. In America, the belief that you are predisposed to failure or success is especially prevalent. Students abandon all hope on a subject too often, simply because they have been ingrained with the notion that you must be born with the “gift” in order to succeed. While natural greatness may be a non-negligible factor in reaching virtuosity or sublimity, the vastly dominant contribution comes from the sheer amount of time spent honing a skill, drilling a technique, or practicing a routine.

Talent may get you past the basic motions effortlessly, if only for the sake of appearance and bluster, but conceptual mastery is the direct result of intensive study.

There is yet another matter regarding Longinus and Plato that I must address. My primary critique of Plato was the following: while Plato had explicated in great detail his Theory of Forms, he ultimately left no way for humans to distinguish what constituted a Form and what did not. We could perhaps speculate that that the concept of sublimity is capable of being extended to enhance Plato’s Forms.

Longinus makes several references to the true sublime, which can remain awe-inspiring to its audience no matter how many times it is examined. The true sublime is independent of who or what perceives it; everyone who experiences it can only depart with unanimous and fervent praise. Can this be used a criterion in recognizing the Forms? How good of you to patch up the numerous holes in Plato’s so-called theories, Longinus!

And what a criterion it is. Will there ever be a speech, performance, philosophy, or ideal that elicits total approval from its evaluators? Why, perhaps we should journey around the globe to put certain promising items to the test, accosting all beings that chance upon us. When we’ve reached a thousand bodies in favor and only one opposed, can we call it a Form? No? Longinus, you have simply redrawn the asymptote and redefined the indefinite. What we need is a measure of how close we are to that asymptote, and correspondingly, when to stop wondering if what we have is a Form or not.  I would like to have awarded you the honor of improving upon Plato, just as Cicero improved on Isocrates, Quintilian on Cicero, and Augustine on them all – but it is not to be.

Foucault’s Pendulum

Some years ago, I read Foucault’s Pendulum, written by the famed Italian novelist Umberto Eco.

The novel itself could best be described as the “elite” or (dare-we-say?) “intellectual” version of The Da Vinci Code. The premise revolved around a small group of scholars intent on solving an ancient mystery, seeking clues inscribed upon old marble columns and recorded cryptically in dusty, crumbling texts.

Like the works of Dante, a fairly intimate familiarity with Italian history and literature was necessary to understand the many cultural and linguistic references that were made in the novel. These were lost upon me, regrettably, yet I was still largely unmotivated to search for their meanings in the web world. To exacerbate matters, either by the virtue of an overzealous translator or by Eco himself, many of the words in the English version were positively draconian in nature. By the first ten pages of the book I had written a list of words whose inclusion would have shocked even the GRE, to say nothing of their effect on a high-schooler.

All such matters in consideration, it can be best said that I charged through the reading of Foucault’s Pendulum, employing little caution and paying scant attention to detail (that is, to invoke Heinrich Schliemann, except if I were in his place I may have destroyed three Troys instead of just one).

And to think, the ease with which I could have gained a complete and thorough understanding of the book and its requisite vocabulary and cultural knowledge, with a simple flick of a wrist and a cursory glance at a computer screen. I do really pity (and admire) the students of the not-so-distant past, armed with nothing but books, libraries, and librarians. The effort and time it would take me to locate knowledge is infinitesimal compared to the Herculean labors of these not-very-ancient scholars. But I digress. (And I should very likely give Herodotus due credit for the ease with which I did so.)

The reason I am writing this is because the study of Isocrates, Cicero, and the origins of the liberal arts tradition has suddenly prompted remembrance of a passage in the book, even after all these years and a haphazard first reading. The passage is reproduced below, and it deals with the subject of teaching:

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”

What does this imply? Despite our best efforts to structure a carefully-crafted curriculum that would expose our children to a broad spectrum of knowledge, do the most significant moments in teaching occur unplanned and unpremeditated? What would linger in the mind of a student, the precepts taught in Day 67 of Grade Six, or knowledge passed in the form of friendly banter with parents, teachers, and mentors?

There may be a glimmer of truth in this tendency, possibly due to the nature of the human psyche itself, and it is worth investigating. I can attest personally to experiencing this adverse reaction to “formal education”, reverting quickly to curious diligence the moment any pretense of formality is dispersed. Surely this is not a phenomenon of the 21st century, but as to whether or not Isocrates dealt with the issue, I tend to remain in doubt. He taught only six students at a time and prescribed entrance requirements; any interactions students would have had with Isocrates would invariably have resembled free banter than any sort of institutionalized, formal learning. Alas, in our classrooms of thirty and our lectures of two-hundred, we have no such luxury. Currently, it is the duty and responsibility of the student to approach the teacher to engage in such exchanges, but responsibility should be placed equally.