Reason's Dark Champions

Christopher W. Tindale

Description

A complex and complete picture of the theory, practice, and reception of Sophistic argument

Recent decades have witnessed a major restoration of the Sophists' reputation, revising the Platonic and Aristotelian "orthodoxies" that have dominated the tradition. Still lacking is a full appraisal of the Sophists' strategies of argumentation. Christopher W. Tindale corrects that omission in Reason's Dark Champions. Viewing the Sophists as a group linked by shared strategies rather than by common epistemological beliefs, Tindale illustrates that the Sophists engaged in a range of argumentative practices in manners wholly different from the principal ways in which Plato and Aristotle employed reason. By examining extant fifth-century texts and the ways in which Sophistic reasoning is mirrored by historians, playwrights, and philosophers of the classical world, Tindale builds a robust understanding of Sophistic argument with relevance to contemporary studies of rhetoric and communication.

Beginning with the reception of the Sophists in their own culture, Tindale explores depictions of the Sophists in Plato's dialogues and the argumentative strategies attributed to them as a means of understanding the threat Sophism posed to Platonic philosophical ambitions of truth seeking. He also considers the nature of the "sophistical refutation" and its place in the tradition of fallacy. Tindale then turns to textual examples of specific argumentative practices, mapping how Sophists employed the argument from likelihood, reversal arguments, arguments on each side of a position, and commonplace reasoning. What emerges is a complex reappraisal of Sophism that reorients criticism of this mode of argumentation, expands understanding of Sophistic contributions to classical rhetoric, and opens avenues for further scholarship.

Sujets

• Disciplines
• Language Arts
• PHILOSOPHY
• Against the Sophists
• The Philosopher
• Hippias Minor
• Falsity
• Eristic
• Antipathy
• Suspension of judgment
• Polemic
• Good and evil
• Aphorism
• Argument from authority
• Criticism
• Antithesis
• Fallacy
• Socratic method
• Semantics
• Rhetoric
• Ignoratio elenchi
• Ad hominem
• Critique
• Argumentum ad hominem

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611172331
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

REASON’S DARK CHAMPIONS
REASON’S DARK CHAMPIONS
Constructive Strategies of Sophistic Argument
CHRISTOPHER W. TINDALE
STUDIES IN RHETORIC/COMMUNICATION
THOMAS W. BENSON, SERIES EDITOR
© 2010 University of South Carolina
Cloth edition published by the University of South Carolina Press, 2010 Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina, by the University of South Carolina Press, 2012
www.sc.edu/uscpress
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition as follows:
Tindale, Christopher W. (Christopher William)
Reason’s dark champions : constructive strategies of Sophistic
argument / Christopher W. Tindale.
p. cm. (Studies in rhetoric/communication)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-57003-878-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Sophists (Greek philosophy) 2. Reasoning. I. Title.
B288.T56 2010
183'.1 dc22
2009034561
ISBN 978-1-61117-233-1 (ebook)
For my former colleagues in the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Ancient History and Classics at Trent University, in appreciation of many years of collegial support
The Sophist runs away into the darkness of that which is not, which he has had practice dealing with, and he is hard to see because the place is so dark.
Plato’s Sophist 254a
CONTENTS
Series Editor’s Preface
Acknowledgments
PART 1 SOPHISTIC ARGUMENT AND THE EARLY TRADITION
Introduction
The Category Sophist: Who Counts?
The Figure of Socrates
1 Sophistic Argument: Contrasting Views
Against the Sophists
Figures of Influence
Positive Views of Sophistic Argument
Resistance to Revision
2 Making the Weak Argument the Stronger
A Problem of Translation
Eristics and the Euthydemus
Antiphon the Sophist
Protagorean Rhetoric
3 Plato’s Sophists
Platonic and Sophistic Argument and the “Sophist Dialogues”
Public and Private Argument
Plato’s View of Argument
A Question of Method
Imitation and Method: Eristic and the Peritrope
The Veracity of Plato’s Testimony
4 The Sophists and Fallacious Argument: Aristotle’s Legacy
The Sophists and Fallacy
The Sophistical Refutations
Fallacy in the Euthydemus
Lessons from the Euthydemus
Contrasting Refutations
PART 2 SOPHISTIC STRATEGIES OF ARGUMENTATION
Introduction
Rhetoric and Argumentation
Rhetoric and Sophistry
Extending Sophistic Argument: Alcidamas and Isocrates
5 What Is Eikos? The Argument from Likelihood
The Meaning of Likelihood
Examples from Antiphon
The Range of Eikos Arguments
Evaluating Eikos Arguments
Contemporary Appearances: Walton and the Plausibility Argument
6 Turning Tables: Roots and Varieties of the Peritrope
What Trope Is the Peritrope?
Defining the Peritrope
Reversal Arguments in Gorgias and Antiphon
Socratic and Sophistic Refutations Again
Contemporary Reversals
Evaluation
7 Contrasting Arguments: Antilogoi or Antithesis
The Concepts of Antilogoi and Antithesis
History of the Antilogoi
The Dissoi Logoi
Antithesis and the Counterfactual
Examples of Antilogoi: Gorgias, Antiphon, Prodicus, Thucydides, and Antisthenes
Purpose and Evaluation
Contemporary Echoes
8 Signs, Commonplaces, and Allusions
Modes of Proof
Arguing from Signs
Commonplaces
Allusions
More Recent Echoes
9 Ethotic Argument: Witness Testimony and the Appeal to Character
Ethos
The Appeal to One’s Own Character
Witnesses
Funeral Speeches
Promotion of Character
Attacking Character
The Use of Ethotic Argument and the Modern Ad Hominem
10 Justice and the Value of Sophistic Argument
Truth and Morality: Reasoning in the Dark
A Human Justice
Sophistic Argument and Justice
Two Kinds of Sophist
Sophistic Argument in the Present
Notes
References
Index
SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
In Reason’s Dark Champions , Christopher W. Tindale traces the reputation, the theory, and the practice of the Sophists and of sophistic argument from the Greeks of the fifth century B.C.E . to the present. Professor Tindale seeks to advance the rehabilitation of the Sophists, especially by examining their actual modes of arguing in their own works, in those they influenced, and in the reports of others about their argumentation. Sophistic argument has suffered from the charge that it is merely eristic speech undertaken to win at all costs or simply to elicit admiration. Similarly sophistic argument has been charged, since Plato and Aristotle, with developing skills to make the weaker argument appear to be the stronger. But, argues Tindale, the Sophists would not acknowledge the assumption behind this charge that in the sorts of matters that sophistic argument is designed to treat, such as jury trials, there is a knowable, absolute truth, access to which sophistic argument is designed to obscure. The Sophists, claims Tindale, developed their argumentative methods to weigh probabilities and likelihoods in a world of argument where probability is the best we can hope for. Hence the skill of turning arguments about is at least worthy of serious consideration on its own terms. Even Plato, who was in search of the truth of the Forms, observes Tindale, wrote “in a letter that no serious philosopher will attempt to put the truth into words. The nature of the medium, the subject, and the audience all render such an effort pointless.”
Professor Tindale traces in detail sophistic strategies of argumentation as they are used by the Sophists themselves, with extended development of argument based on likelihood, arguments based on reversal, arguments based on antithetical reasoning, and ethotic argument (argument based on witness testimony and the appeal to character).
Professor Tindale concludes his examination of the contributions of the Sophists to argument by noting that sophistical reasoning makes possible rhetoric itself, which is indispensable in any discussion of choices about justice hence all argumentative reasoning is rhetorical. At the core of such argument is an acknowledgment of the importance of audiences, who through rhetoric may become “equal partners in a constructive process that can improve the quality of intellectual communities and the quality of reason itself.” In Reason’s Dark Champions , Christopher Tindale has done much to advance just such a project.
T HOMAS W. B ENSON
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is the result of almost a decade of thinking and writing, over which time many audiences have contributed to its improvements. Parts of chapter 3 were first presented in a paper to the Ontario Philosophical Association in 2002, and sections of chapters 1 and 4 were presented at the International Pragmatics Association meeting in Italy in 2005. Sections of chapters 2 and 4 are drawn from talks presented at the Classical Association of Canada meetings in 2005, 2006, and 2007. The material on allusion in chapter 8 had its first airing in a paper presented to the International Society for the Study of Argumentation in Amsterdam in 2006, and some of the discussion of commonplaces in the same chapter is drawn from a paper to the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation in Windsor, Ontario, in 2007. An earlier version of chapter 5 was read to the Department of Philosophy at the University of Windsor in 2007. And chapters 3 and 5 were discussed in a seminar at the University of Copenhagen in 2008. I am grateful to all the audiences involved for their interest and critical comments.
My interest in the Sophists generally and an appreciation for their perspectives were honed during three senior philosophy seminars dedicated to their ideas at Trent University, including one in my final year there in 2005. I was fortunate in having groups of outstanding students who approached the subject matter with enthusiasm and creativity. Many of the ideas that have found their way into the final version of this book were first tried out in those seminars.
Two anonymous reviewers for the University of South Carolina Press made some useful suggestions that have helped me to clarify the intent of the project; I am grateful to them for these. Several other individuals also deserve particular mention here. My thinking on the Greeks’ interest in commonplaces and topoi has benefited enormously from ongoing conversations with my Bielefeld colleague Andreas Welzel. And Christian Kock contributed a number of important insights during my visit to Copenhagen, as well as impressing upon me the importance of taking seriously the argumentative riches of the Rhetoric to Alexander . My colleagues at Windsor’s Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric provided ongoing critical support during the final stages of this project. I would mention in particular Tony Blair, Hans Hansen, and Ralph Johnson. I am fortunate to be a fellow of this fledgling institution. Though they may balk at the label, they are fine Sophists all.
SOPHISTIC ARGUMENT AND THE EARLY TRADITION
PART 1
INTRODUCTION
The negative connotations that attach to the term “sophistry” have a long and abiding tradition. The use of the term in contemporary debates is invariably accompanied by a critical and dismissive tone. Yet the Sophists whose practices are thought to have given rise to this negative notion have received far more constructive treatments in recent literature and even a few positive accounts that trace back to figures such as