Exam #1 Flashcards
Antithesis
Greek for “setting opposite” (From “against” + “position”)
○ “Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice.”
§ Polonius (Shakespeare’s Hamlet)
○ “Stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.”
○ “One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.”
§ Neil Armstrong
○ “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
§ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Chiasmus
Greek Chiazo, “to shape like the letter X” AB:BA
○ “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your county.”
§ President John F. Kennedy (1961)
○ “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
§ Jesus, Matthew 23: 11-12
○ “It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have honors and not deserve them.”
§ Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Scala (klimax)
Going up a ladder or “scaling the walls”
○ “All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this administration, nor then perhaps in our lifetime on this planet.”
§ President John F. Kennedy (1961)
○ “I speak to you for the time as Prime Minister in a solemn hour for the life of our country, of our empire, of our allies, and, above all, of the cause of freedom.”
§ Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1940)
Kairos
Time
what is right for that specific moment, knowledge of the past is important, fitting response, study situation (r and t)
Logographer
speech writers, sophists, who could be hired for a high fee
Epistēmē v. doxa
Episteme = socratics: true knowledge and knowledge building
Doxa: sophists - opinion
Tyche
Luck
Phroneisis
Practical wisdom
To prepon
appropriateness
• “But to choose from these elements those which should be employed for each subject, to join them together, to arrange them properly, and also, not to miss what the occasion demands but appropriately to adorn the whole speech…” (B/H, p. 74).
Empeiria
experience
Kategoria v. apolgia
Kategoria= accusation
o Atheism
o Corrupting Athenian youth
Socrates’ Apologia= self-defense
o On a Mission from God for the benefit of his fellow Athenians!
iatroi logoi
healing words
iatros tes psuches
healer of the soul (what socrates wished to be)
nous
mind/intellect (common sense)
Thymous
our will/the passions of the inner self
Epithumia
appetite, desire or yearning
rhêtorikē
Plato’s word for rhetoric
eudemonia
human well-being or happiness; goal of deliberative oratory
Or
Human flourishing . What are you meant to be or do?
○ Whats going to lead to human flourising? How do we reason under uncertainty
telos
an ultimate object or aim.
antistrophos
Greek for “counterpart”
○ For self defense ○ Useful for a popular audience ○ Useful for learning opposing arguments ○ A tool (like money, health, military strategy)
Gorgias
Gorgias of Leontini was a Greek (non-Athenian) sophist and rhetorician who formed part of the first generation of sophists in Ancient Greece around 485-380 B.C. He asserted to have the skill of persuasion and thought rhetoric to have magical powers over words due to language’s ability to control the mind. Gorgias was also big in the use of rhyme and style in order to make his arguments more convincing and “magical”.
Lysias
writer not speaker, logographers - did not believe in J justice. Legal writing, speeches not organized
Isocrates
Believed in phronesis - tied together sophists and socratics
different because he was concerned about building good citizens believed in kairos knows he cannot teach virtue but knows it can be morally impoving
• 436-338 BC • Student of Gorgias • Influenced by Protagoras and prodicus • Early logographer ○ Lysias, The Father of Lawyers • Sophist and Philosopher • Leadership (393-92 BC) • As a philosopher: rejects Plato's view: Episteme (absolute knowledge) ○ Philosphy
Socrates
“Truth”, interpersonal communication, dialectic, soul, mind should control soul
○ Socrates asks questions so that people can understand that they essentially know nothing. He has no wisdom, so he is searching for wisdom constantly. ○ The best life is to constantly search for a good life. It's not attainable. ○ The problem is that some people think they have wisdom when in reality they do not. They are the people chained to walls staring at shadows.
Plato
• ca. 427-347 B.C.
• A student/disciple of Socrates
• Wrote (at least) 25 “Socratic Dialogues”
• “Dialogues”
o dialektike (dialectic) a method of investigation
Polus
Polus (Greek: Πῶλος, “colt”; fl. c. 5th century BCE) was an Ancient Greek Athenian philosophical figure best remembered for his depiction in the writing of Plato. He was a pupil of the famous orator Gorgias, and teacher of oratory from the city of Acragas, Sicily.
Aristotle
• Born c.384 B.C. • Father was a physician ○ Served king philip ii of macedonia • Student of plato: taught alexander the great • Return to athens ○ Opens the lyceum • 338 bc alexander the great defreats greek states • 323 alexander the great dies
• Prolific writer ○ Rhetoric ○ Poetics ○ Politics ○ Nichomachean ethics ○ De anima ○ Physics ○ Metaphysics ○ Meteroology ○ History of animals
Father of the empirical metho
What important quotations are from Gorgia’s “Encomium of Helen?”
○ “I wish to free the accused of blame and having reproved her detractors as prevaricators and proved the truth, to free her from the ignorance.”
○ “I shall set forth the causes through which it was likely that Helen’s voyage to Troy should take place.”
What important quotations are from Isocrates’ “Against the Sophists”
• Academic prospectus
o promotes his school, his pedagogy: civic leadership
• “For I think it is manifest to all that foreknowledge of future events is not vouchsafed to our human nature…
• …But that we are so far removed from this prescience that Homer, who has been conceded the highest reputation for wisdom, has pictured even the gods as at times debating among themselves about the future–…
• …He desired to show us that for mankind this power lies in the realms of the impossible” (
What important quotations are from Isocrates’ “Antidosis”
• A written speech
o Hypothetical situation:
Isocrates is defending himself
In a law court
The charge: corrupting the youth of Athens
• A defense of his ideas about education
• “My view of this question is, as it happens, very simple. For since it is not in the nature of man to attain a science by the possession of which we can know positively what we should do or what we should say, in the next resort I hold that man to be wise who is able by his powers of conjecture to arrive generally at the best course…”
• “And I hold that man to be a philosopher who occupies himself with the studies from which he will most quickly gain that kind of insight” (B/H, p. 77).
What important quotations are from Socrates’ “Apology”
○ “Their persuasive words almost made me forget who I was”
○ “Yet they have hardly spoken a word of truth.”
○ “You shall hear from me the whole truth, not, however, delivered after their manner, in a set oration duly ornamented with words and phrases. No indeed! But I shall use the words and arguments which occur to me at the moment.”
“Men of Athens, this reputation of mine has come from a certain sort of wisdom which I possess. If you ask me what kind of wisdom, I reply, such a wisdom as is attainable by man.”
What important quotations are from the Gorgias’ “Platonic dialogue?”
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What important quotations are from Aristotle’s “Rhetoric?”
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What is the purpose of Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen speech?
• Artful display with the goal of winning an argument
Goal is to make the weaker case seem stronger
What are the four (4) “causes through which it was likely that Helen’s voyage to Troy should take place” as Gorgias argued them in the “Encomium of Helen” speech?
Fate, force, persuasion, true love
What are ways he describes “speech” in “Encomium of Helen?”
• “Speech is a powerful lord, which by means of the finest and most invisible body effects the divinest works, it can stop fear and banish grief and create and nurture pity.”
What did Gorgias teach and practice about the power of words in relation to human emotions?
• The effect of speech upon the condition of the soul is comparable to the power of drugs over the nature of bodies.”
Who was Isocrate’s primary teacher/ mentor?
Gorgias
In what vocation did Isocrates began his professional career?
Early logographer
How was Isocrates different from other Sophists (esp. Protagoras & Gorgias) in relation to his students
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What did Isocrates do with Gorgias’ “style?”
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What is Isocrates view of Kairos?
• “For what has been said by one speaker is not equally useful for the speaker who comes after him” (B/H, p. 73).
• All “general” Principles or “universal” Truths must fail
o Each circumstance in life is different (i.e., Heraclitus)
o If relying only on overarching Principles/Truths…
Screens out the particulars of a specific situation, circumstance, issue, problem
Without studying each situation or its own “particulars”
cannot best understand situation
cannot best understand how to act or react in it
What did Isocrates connecte rhetoric/oratory to?
Morally indifferent
Primarily aesthetic
Tyche (“luck”)
How did Isocrate’s school function, what was his teaching method, and what was the focus of his teachings?
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What are The “Five Lessons” of Socrates’ Apologia?
- People can be very persuasive and not yet speak a word of truth
- We can know absolute truth, and knowing that truth gives us wisdom
- We obtain knowledge of truth, and develop wisdom, through the practice of dialectic (dialectic = method of searching for truth)
- The philosophical life is the best life to live
- The importance of the human soul makes the philosophical life imperative
Where (in which of his writings) did Plato first record the term rhētorikē?
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Where (in which of his writings) Plato first recorded the term rhētorikē?
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How Polus “defines” rhetoric in the dialogue “The Gorgias.”
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How Gorgias “defines” rhetoric in the dialogue “The Gorgias.”
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What significant distinction about knowledge (episteme) and belief (doxa) Socrates gets Gorgias to admit?
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How Socrates defines “rhetoric” and the other parts of the “whole” of which Socrates argues rhetoric is only a part (i.e., the “True Arts” v. the “False Arts”).
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How Aristotle emphasized empiricism (i.e., in his own research), the empirical method
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How Aristotle defined “the Good” (eudemonia and telos);
• Eudamonia - human flourishing . What are you meant to be or do?
○ Whats going to lead to human flourising? How do we reason under uncertainty
What Aristotle thought was the “best life” and the “second best life” for human beings to live
- Philosophical is probably the best life if you’re interested in perfecting your soul
- It’s not practical for societal life
What is Aristotle’s relationship of rhetoric to dialectic (antistrophos)
Rhetoric leads to human flourishing (eudamonia) because it gives us reasoning under conditions of uncertainty
What are the reasons Aristotle argued that we need rhetoric (i.e., why rhetoric is useful);
○ For self defense
○ Useful for a popular audience
○ Useful for learning opposing arguments
○ A tool (like money, health, military strategy)
What is Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric?
“the faculty of observing in any given situation all of the available means of persuasion.”
What are inartistic pisteis (proofs);
Inartistic (pre-existent) -
Evidence, testimony, date
What are artistic pisteis (proofs)?
Artistic proofs (created by speaker): ethos, pathos, logos
What is ethos?
Ethos (the speakers credibility). You establish your credibility through the act of speaking.
Character, intelligence/ knowledge, good will
What is pathos?
Pathos (connects logos and ethos with audiences mood)
What is logos?
Logos (the speakers message)
