lecture01.md

1. What is rhetoric?

It comes from the Greek word Rhetorica meaning "Public speaking". It first and foremost means public speaking, but it typically is focused on persuasion.

It could be considered the art of persuasion. This includes written expression.

Until the renaissance, it was focused more on "oral speaking"-based persuasion.

2. The alphabet derived from the Phoenicians (hence "phonetical"). The biggest contribution from the Greeks was the invention of the vowel.

3. Early Roman hero is the silent type that gets stuff done (think John Wayne). The Greek hero is also eloquent, a good speaker, who gets stuff done. As Homer describes it, a "speaker of words and doer of deeds."

Rhetoric becomes useful in Greek politics and judicial affairs.

4. Pericles (500-429 BC) rules Athens because he is an excellent public speaker.

5. Historical Origins. (Also in the world at this time: In 466BC, Thrasybulus (Tyrant of Syracuse) overthrown.)

Corax makes money teaching rhetoric: rhetoric developed hand-in-hand with Law. Corax taught Tisias, but Tisias didn't pay his tuition. Corax sued Tisias for the money.

Tisias argues he shouldn't pay: if he's found guilty, then "obviously" he never learned rhetoric (otherwise he would have been able to defend himself in court). If he's found innocent, then being innocent he shouldn't pay!

Corax reversed this argument, positing that if Tisias is found guilty, then Tisias should pay. And if Tisias is found innocent, then "obviously" Tisias learned rhetoric and should pay for instruction.

This is one of the first cases in history thrown out of court, with the judge commenting "a bad crow lays a bad egg." This entire case is more legend than fact.

6. The first people who studied rhetoric, the earliest "texts" were enumerating tricks to win court cases.

7. There is some antagonism in this field between "persuasion" and "constructing a logically sound argument".

The Greek system had two outcomes: innocent or guilty.

In the Athenian Court System, you had to defend yourself. You cannot hire a lawyer!

Instead you hired someone to write a speech for you to speak. Logographer = person who writes the speech.

Lysias was a famous Logographer.

8. The most general approach focuses on notions of probability. Rhetoric focuses on probability, i.e., what is likely based off of our everyday experience.

9. Another approach questions a person's character, appeals to emotions. Some of the earlier books focuses on invoking emotions.

Notions of commonality is also a good element, e.g., "He's just 'one of the guys', he can't be guilty of that!"

10. The Athenian approach to infrastructure was the rich people pay for things, using "private funding under public control" (an approach called "liturgies").

For a certain period, too, military generals were elected. Greeks quickly found that great speakers win elections, and seldom make good generals.

11. Sophists typically arrived into a town, gives a speech, and recruits a handful of students.

Gorgias was a sophist, and part of a Syracusan embassy to Athens attempting to convince Athenians to intercede in Syracuse's politics.

Gorgias epitomized sophistry, and spoke well. Plato uses Gorgias as an example of what's wrong with rhetoric.

Aristophanes' The Clouds ridicules Socrates for many of the same things Plato ridicules Gorgias for.

Although rhetoric is good as a virtue, it permits evil people to go free and innocent men to be jailed.

lecture03.md

1. Isocrates suffered Agoraphobia. He never really delivered a speech. (Isocrates had a weak voice.) His first noteworthy job was as a logographer.

Eventually (c.390 BC) he began teaching rhetoric.

In many ways, Plato and Isocrates have the same aims: give moral character to rhetoric. Isocrates taught solely in Athens (compared to the Sophists who traveled).

2. Isocrates innovated education. He first demanded an entrance requirement, and he was the first to require tuition up front (avoiding repeats of Corax and Tisias).

His teaching was secular, his schools were small. A class lasted for 3 years. He never had more than 5 or 6 students at a time.

Isocrates taught by imitation. There is no other way to learn, at least in Antiquity.

3. Isocrates viewed himself an opponent of the Sophist's rhetoric (the idea you could convince anyone of anything).

Instead Isocrates argued you have to be a good person to be persuasive.

The goal of education was to make people better individuals. But there is no notion of public education.

4. Discourse is always about political issues. The theme, for Isocrates, was always "unity of the Greeks."

Isocrates frequently discusses Pan-Hellenic unity, the idea of a Greek nation.

Culture, he argues, is the supreme good. "The people we call Greeks are those who have the same culture as ours---not the same blood," he once wrote.

This develops into classical Humanism (which argues humans are united more by culture than race). Words are what distinguish humans from animals.

There is no distinction between form and content: if an orator wants to produce a work of art, s/he must not be using a trivial subject.