Isocrates' paideusis was neither sophistic, nor Socratic, but also both

04 April 2013

This short paper was written for my classical rhetoric course at UMN-Twin Cities.

Isocrates’ paideusis (educational training) was neither sophistic, nor Socratic, but also both

In this paper, I am going to discuss how Isocrates straddled the lines drawn between the sophistic tongue and Socratic mind. In short, Isocrates disregarded the radical relativist nature of Gorgias (Gorgias, 454d; Encomium of Helen, 1.13), but also created a space of tension between this and his critique of Plato’s quest for universal knowledge (episteme). In Against the Sophists, Isocrates marks such a claim to have a complete knowledge as a false morality, let alone the claims to teach such a thing as simple as learning the “alphabet” (13.10). To claim to have such a knowledge, according to Isocrates, is out of the human purview (13.2). Accordingly, neither Sophistic tongues, nor the Platonic, or “eristic,” techne bent on acquiring episteme, characterized the ethos of Isocrates’ school and educational philosophy.

Isocrates more closely resembled the sophists by privileging opinion (doxa) over the means to the end of knowledge (episteme) via a Socratic dialectic. Yet, not too far removed from Plato’s own adherence to what is best and good for the soul (eudaimonia), Isocrates adhered to the ends of advanced education as being one through philosophy (philosopheia). Isocrates critiques the eristic devices of Socratic dialecticians, who hold up episteme as their end, (15.184, 15.271). As Halliwell notes, Isocrates’ focus on political discourses “sets itself decisively apart both from technical amoralism and from seductive irrationalism” (p. 118). Instead, Isocrates seemed to have integrated parts of the two poles into his own end toward logos. As Halliwell remarks, Isocrates proposed to the Greeks, his fellow Athenians, a different “technical aim” (p. 118), where persuasion becomes “an entailment of the shared possession of logos, the logos of both reason and speech.” More importantly, perhaps, Isocrates takes up a different strategy, or means, of the agon of argumentation, where logos should not be separated from ethics of a situation, but not adhere to the sophistic teaching of speechmaking (rhetoreia, 13.21) for its own sake—a philosophia that Isocrates also deemed too far removed from the ethics and justice to be sought in political situations. This logos, then, moves toward a grounded, practical approach that, while not fully adhering to Plato’s bent on reason and study (15.190), still draws upon such means through his own pedagogy, or educational training (paideusis).

However, near the end of what remains of Isocrates’ seemingly unfinished work, Against the Sophists, he notes how his paideusis, if the student engages it properly and the teacher follows his method precisely and with care (13.16-18), will become a better public speaker. Yet, he also emphasizes that this training will not guarantee, as Plato implies with his teachings, that a person’s character, or attainment of “fair-mindedness,” or epiekeia (13.21), will be improved in the process (see also Antidosis, 15.274). Perhaps a good example of Isocrates’ epiekeia, or even his ideal model of politics, is found in his letter, To Nicocles, which addresses a monarch, who holds much responsibility in the political process. Here, he discusses the virtue of wisdom through judgment in the circumstance (kairos), and stresses the importance of knowing the arguments of many to fulfill the necessary requirement to have a “substantial vision” (2.6). These virtues are, at the very least, made possible through his model of education, where, as he states, “education and diligence have the greatest power to benefit our nature” (2.12).

Isocrates lays out his educational process in Against the Sophists, discussing it as an incorporation of 1) “a knowledge of the forms (ideai), 2) an engagement with the “circumstances (kairoi),” 3) how one integrates the facts of the kairoi not readily known into the speech (enthymemata), 4) a process of learning “the forms (eide) of speeches and their practices,” and 5) how the teacher must be a model through which these activities imbue the education (paideia). He criticized the sophists for their so-called technai, which promised pupils a set of teachable skills, but, as he rebuked, “they themselves need much instruction” (13.132).

In summary, Isocrates eschewed the radical relativism practiced by the sophists, and he separated his teachings from the exaggerated claims made by some of the sophists and their technai, as their methods were not, as he claims, teachable, nor did their rhetoreia work toward virtues of justice and fair-mindedness (eudaimonia) in the contexts of the polis. On the other hand, he also criticized the Socratic schools, who claimed to have made teachable the art of gaining universal knowledge (episteme), as Isocrates upheld the testing of doxai (opinions) within the circumstance (kairos). In so doing, he carved out his own space in Athens by practicing a paideusis that he preached; namely he “&#91chose&#93 from these necessary forms for each subject, &#91as I argue are both and neither sophistic and Socratic&#93, to mix them with each other and arrange them suitably, and then, not to mistake the circumstances (kairos) but to embellish the entire &#91teaching and practice of logos&#93 properly with considerations (enthymemata)” (13.16).

References

Gorgias. (1995). Encomium of Helen. In M. Gagarin and P. Woodruff (Eds.), Early Greek political thought from Homer to the sophists (pp. 190-195). Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Halliwell, S. (1997). Philosophical rhetoric or rhetorical philosophy? The strange case of Isocrates. In B.D. Schildgen (Ed.), The rhetoric canon (pp. 107-125). Detroit: Wayne State UP.

Isocrates. (2000). Against the sophists. (D. Mirhady & Y.L Too, Trans.). In M. Gagarin (Ed.), Isocrates I (pp. 61-66). Texas: University of Texas Press.

Isocrates. (2000). Antidosis. (D. Mirhady & Y.L Too, Trans.). In M. Gagarin (Ed.), Isocrates I (pp. 201-264). Texas: University of Texas Press.

Isocrates. (2000). To Nicocles. (D. Mirhady & Y.L Too, Trans.). In M. Gagarin (Ed.), Isocrates I (pp. 157-168). Texas: University of Texas Press.

Plato. (1998). Gorgias. In J.H. Nichols, Jr. (Trans.) Plato Gorgias. London: Cornell UP.