Blog 3

I enjoyed this chapter, and I like that the text begins with the historical background of rhetoric. History has always been fascinating to me, and for this reason I was particularly interested in reading about these early applications of rhetoric. I found it especially interesting because I have a particular interest in Ancient Greek culture. I’ve read several of the texts mentioned in the Greek section and, as a result, I was able to fuse previous knowledge with the accounts in Preparing to Teach Writing.

I was glad to read so much about the sophists because, reading mostly works by Plato, I had (and perhaps still have) a very biased account of this group of people. Plato does not speak very highly of them, and, as the text also points out, Socrates never wrote any records of his own thoughts (or, if he did, none of them survive).

My only other knowledge of the sophists comes from the works of Aristophanes (who approved of neither the sophists nor Socrates). As Williams points out, Aristophanes called Socrates a sophist in his comedic play The Clouds. This farce blatantly attacks the sophists for advocating senseless positions simply because they are capable of doing so.

While I would side with Socrates over Aristophanes on many subjects, I can see Aristophanes’ point—Socrates was a master rhetorician, often manipulating alternative viewpoints to make his ultimate point. From what I’ve read of Socrates’ minor verbal sparring matches (as recorded by Plato) with Athenians, Socrates is shockingly good at forcing his opponent to contradict himself. Socrates makes his opponent prove himself wrong and prove Socrates right, and all the while Socrates puts forth no (or few) direct statements himself. Socrates uses questions to guide the conversation and ultimately leaves the person with whom he is conversing two equally unappealing alternatives.

I also read Aristotles Rhetoric and Xenophon’s Oeconomicus. The Oeconomicus is along the same lines as Socrates’ other dialogs, but is used for inspiration rather than knocking his opponent down a peg (as was the case in the dialog Ion, the short exchange that, of the texts I’m familiar with, most markedly demonstrates the traits I mentioned above). Rhetoric, in contrast, is a manual of sorts, explaining the use and importance of rhetoric (probably groundbreaking in its time, but much of it is generally well known today).

I enjoyed reading about the other people and times as well, but I am not familiar enough with any of them to add additional information.