Scott Consigny

Misreading the sophist

After a hiatus of two millennia, Gorgias is again becoming fashionable. His revival is due in part to the project of "rehabilitating the sophists" initiated in the nineteenth century by Hegel, Grote and Nietzsche; for most current champions of Gorgias agree with Hegel and Grote that the older Greek sophists were not the shallow and amoral opportunists that Plato made them out to be. And many also share Nietzsche's contention that "every advance in epistemology and moral knowledge has reinstated the sophists." But some advocates of Gorgias insist that he is now especially timely, because his distinctive sophistic ideas and performances anticipate much of our own "Third Sophistic." This is the view of Bruce McComiskey, who argues that attending to Gorgias will enable us to illuminate and further develop a neosophistic philosophy and rhetoric. While I share McComiskey's appreciation of Gorgias, I think that he misreads the sophist, and that he consequently fails to reinstate him.

McComiskey first argues that in order to understand Gorgias, we must reject Plato's distorted account of him. Plato condemns Gorgias on epistemological, methodological and ethical grounds. Perhaps taking a cue from Gorgias' three-part argument in On Not-Being, Plato contends that Gorgias is indifferent to the truth, and instead concerns himself only with his audience's opinions or doxa (Phaedrus 267a); that he does not know anything about the topics he discusses; and that he does not see language as a means for conveying information, but rather as a powerful apparatus with which clever speakers deceive gullible audiences. Gorgias' professed art or techne of rhetoric is not a real art, like medicine or gymnastics, for it is not grounded in the real world and does not employ valid logical arguments; instead, it is merely a "knack" for combating rivals and captivating crowds (Gorgias 465a). Gorgias' rhetorical skill is really a kind of "cunning" or metis, an ability to seize an opportunity or opening (kairos) in a particular verbal battle or agon, the way a wrestler finds an opening in the defenses of his adversary. Gorgias' art is "antilogical" in that it involves demolishing the account or logos of a rival rhetor (Gorgias 456e; Phaedrus 261c); and it is "poetic" in that it involves weaving a playful and engaging text that captivates audiences. (Gorgias 501c-502d). Plato also condemns Gorgias on moral grounds, arguing that he is an opportunist who reduces every human interaction to a power struggle, a game or agon in which the cleverest rhetors are able to make "willing slaves" of their audiences (Philebus 58a) As indifferent to social justice as well as truth, Gorgias ridicules people who claim to teach virtue, and instead teaches students to become clever speakers (Meno 95c). Furthermore, Gorgias is a hedonist who subverts the rational faculty of logos in his audiences; for he relies less on logic than delightful wordplay, indulging their appetite for verbal sweets as a Sicilian chef gratifies the gustatory desires of the banqueters. (Gorgias 500b). The social and political consequence of Gorgias' rhetoric is an unstable world in which egoistic ubermenschen like Callicles manipulate gullible crowds, and in which frivolous artists like Gorgias' protégé Agathon entertain them with ephemeral diversions.

In his rebuttal, McComiskey argues that Plato misrepresents Gorgias' epistemology, art of rhetoric, and ethics. For Gorgias is not indifferent to truth, but only to the non-empirical or metaphysical truth sought by Plato. Maintaining that knowledge is always "derived empirically," Gorgias repudiates those external realities "outside the realm of mortal control and their effects on humans," and insists that the only reality that matters is that which impacts people, namely the "economic, political, social and cultural realities throughout Greece" (25, 37-38). Gorgias' art of rhetoric is not a mere knack, but rather a rational techne that requires rhetors to attend to objectively real situations, and to articulate their accounts in rational discourse. Gorgias emphasizes attending to the right moment (kairos) in speaking, but this does not mean that he merely a gamester; for the kairotic rhetor must heed the "demands of the situation," and must "possess knowledge of the subject" (111-112). Further, Gorgias' art is soundly empirical, for it "involves empirically testing and implementing in each individual communicative situation the linguistic rhetorical choices that are, at that particular time and place, most effective" (30). Gorgias' art enables people to acquire knowledge about the world, for it provides them with a means to identify and correct mistaken perceptions they may have individually. This is because "knowledge that is gained empirically through communal discourse in public rhetorical situations is more reliable than purely subjective opinions" (25). Gorgias art is rational as well as empirical, for it privileges logical argument as much as the logocentric techne of Aristotle (51). Whereas some rhetors, such as Paris, abuse the art by deceiving their audiences, the "sincere" or honest rhetor speaks the truth and eschews deception. Gorgias' rational rhetoric is also profoundly ethical, since it affirms "virtuous actions" (51), and enables people to attain the "greatest good" for their community. Providing the means for sincere people to articulate opinions and arrive at "reliable" judgments, "Gorgianic rhetoric is concerned with the greatest good, contrary to what Plato would have us believe-- but it is the good of the community" (27-28). Politically, Gorgias is an egalitarian who promotes democracy and opposes platonic dialectic, which McComiskey identifies as "the primary vehicle of the oligarchic power structures [in Athens] in 411 and 404 BC" (31).

Given this reading, McComiskey proceeds to show how Gorgias anticipates several neosophistic and postmodern thinkers, and to articulate a neosophistic rhetoric that he claims is "based almost exclusively on Gorgianic rhetoric" (12-13). McComiskey contends that Gorgias anticipates postmodern theorists who repudiate what Derrida calls the "transcendental signified," and who instead hold that the non-transcendental "context of communication has as much to do with meaning as the matter that is communicated" (87-9). He argues that Gorgias' characterization of rhetoric as an empirically constrained and rationally informed art anticipates Robert Scott's claim that rhetoric is epistemic. For Scott, like Gorgias, repudiates the "Platonic belief in the existence of truth and knowledge as analytically demonstrable and prior to experience" (59), and instead maintains that rhetors are able to articulate knowledge of the empirical world through free and open discussion. Neosophistic rhetoric also plays a crucial ethical and political role, for neosophists, like Gorgias, tend to be egalitarian democrats intent on subverting "dominant-class hegemonious discourse" that represses people (93). Since "demystification inevitably leads to emancipation" (74), neosophistic rhetoric enables people to liberate themselves by "demystifying" hegemonic discourses that conceal the real economic, political and social forces that control them. The primary "tactic" for demystification is kairos, which "remains a potent rhetorical tactic for harnessing the uncertainty of language and the contingency of situational contexts in the interest of democratic political and social ends" (13). The distinctive rhetorical genre that Gorgias originates, the epideictic, anticipates what McComiskey calls the "postmodern epideictic," a genre with which the neosophistic rhetor "affirms democratic power structures and subverts hegemonic discourses advanced by oligarchies or elites." The genre is "graffitic" because its signs derive meanings as much from their socio-cultural contexts as from their referential content," and "immemorial" because "its primary goal is to subvert dominant-class hegemonious discourse"(93).

How persuasive is this reading and reinstatement of Gorgias? I'm not convinced, because I think that McComiskey misreads Gorgias, and that his own brand of neosophism bears little resemblance to Gorgias' ideas or the way in which he presents them. As Plato correctly points out, Gorgias rejects the notion that there is a truth in the world that we can grasp and articulate in language. For as he says in Helen, Gorgias see logos (language or reason) as a "powerful lord" or "drug" that clever rhetors use in various verbal agons (Helen 8, 14). That is, Gorgias sees language as inescapably rhetorical rather than representational, in that its irreducible units are not names of things in the world, but are maneuvers or "tropes" used by rhetors in various agons, what Wittgenstein calls "language games." For Gorgias there is no inherently "literal" speech that describes the world as it is; language is comprised of tropes, and literal speech is that which is become familiar and accepted. Consequently, the only criterion for assessing the truth of an assertion is the judgment of contingent audiences. This does not mean that Gorgias is unable to distinguish between knowledge and opinion, however, or between reality and appearance. Rather, it means that such distinctions are always made in a particular game, with its own criteria; and that no context-invariant criterion exists that validates or disproves all assertions made in all games. But Gorgias does not, as McComiskey says, affirm an empirical reality comprised of political and economic forces, while repudiating "transcendental" entities, such as gods, as mere fictions. Indeed, Gorgias is quite willing, in Helen and the Funeral Oration, for example, to entertain the idea that the gods really do exist and that they influence human behavior; and, conversely, he contends (anticipating Kuhn) that empirical scientists are also rhetors who "substitute one opinion for another" (Helen 13). Using Rorty's term, we may characterize Gorgias as an "antifoundationalist" who maintains that every assertion originates and is judged in contingent discourses or agons; and we conclude, with Fish, that "modern antifoundationalism is ancient sophism writ analytic." Plato is also correct in saying that Gorgias' art of rhetoric is agonistic and poetic, designed to help a rhetor to demolish the arguments of rival rhetors and fabricate his own compelling accounts. Gorgias' art of rhetoric is, as Plato rightly says, antilogical or "deconstructive", to use Derrida's term, and "poetic" or constructive. Gorgias' rhetoric does not rely on valid logical proofs, as McComiskey contends; for Gorgias holds, with Rorty, that an argument is "rational" when it is accepted as such by an audience. Gorgias does not repudiate foundationalists like Plato and Parmenides because they consider the empirical world of politics and economics to be less real that the non-empirical world of gods and ideas; he repudiates them because by presenting themselves as articulating objective truths they conceal from others (and probably himself ) the fact that they are themselves rhetors advancing partisan positions in rhetorical agons.

McComiskey also misreads Gorgias' ethical and political views. Gorgias is not a dogmatist like Plato who preaches adherence to an objectively rational and just order. Nor is he a "utilitarian," as McComiskey suggests, for he never claims that his goal is the "greatest good" of the community. Indeed, given his agonistic model of inquiry, Gorgias would contend that every account of what constitutes the "greatest good" of a community is inescapably partisan and biased. As Plato correctly points out, Gorgias' objective is to excel in rhetorical by "arm[ing] the soul for contests of excellence" (DKA8). But this does not mean that Gorgias promotes the egoism of a Callicles. For he suggests that engagement in the agons of the culture is a moral activity, demanding that participants heed the rules of the games and agree to heed by the judgments of the audience or community. An individual who is socialized into an agonistic culture will presumably recognize that agreement about the rules of the games is a prerequisite to winning in those games. Thus Gorgias' model of a moral community seems to be the agonistic and collaborative community of Larissan potters who, he claims, fashion themselves and one another just as they create their famous pots (DKA23). Politically, Gorgias is not an "egalitarian," for whereas engagement in agons demands that each participant have an equal chance at victory, the agon also encourages and rewards excellence or arete. Nor is he a "subversive" who attempts to undermine the established institutions of the community, for he actively promotes the established agonistic institutions of Greek culture. It is more accurate to characterize Gorgias as a Panhellenist who encourages peaceful competition among Greek cities and opposes "barbarians" who violently suppress free and open debate. He thus declares that military victories over other Greeks "warrant lament, while victories over the barbarians warrant praise" (DKB5b). He does not attempt to justify or legitimate his commitment to his panhellenic culture by appealing to objective moral principles such as "ideal justice" or the "greatest good." Yet he nevertheless engages in and affirms that culture, and in this respect he anticipates Joseph Schumpeter's assertion that "to realize the relative validity of one's convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian."

Finally, McComiskey misrepresents the nature of the "epideictic" performances in which Gorgias presents his views. Gorgias' primary stylistic or artistic strategy is to parody existing genres, adapting his own style to the conventions of various genres while playfully exaggerating and distorting those conventions. Using an array of paralogical arguments and paratropic figures, which Aristotle denounces as "frigid," Gorgias draws attention to the inescapable rhetoricity of logos as it is manifested in every trope, statement, argument and text. Each of Gorgias' four extant displays are antilogical or deconstructive in that they expose the ways in which his foundationalist rivals conceal their own art, and thereby present themselves as truth-seekers or truth-tellers. He thus exposes the ways in which Eleatic metaphysicians, poetic critics of Helen, clever legal prosecutors like Odysseus, and official Athenian orators all present their views as if they were true and incontrovertible. Gorgias' displays are also self-parodic, altering his audience to the fact that the views he expresses are his own, and that they are made possible by his participation in a particular agon. Gorgias thus underscores the ways in which conventions permit some articulations and proscribe others; and he potentially disabuses his audience of the illusion that any rhetor-- including himself-- has a privileged access to objective truth. By presenting his own views as contingent upon the prevailing (and contingent) agons of Greek culture, he presents himself as what Rorty calls an "ironist," a person who "faces up to the contingency of his or her own most central beliefs and desires," and who has 'abandoned the idea that those central beliefs and desires refer back to something beyond the reach of time and chance.' A playful parodist and ironist, Gorgias anticipates the self-conscious, self-referential foregrounding of convention found in much postmodern art, whether it be the hyperreal metafiction of Borges, the parodic pastiches of Warhol, or the multivocal and multimedic performance art of Laurie Anderson. Gorgias' epideictic performances are ethical and political as well as pedagogic, but his goal is not, as McComiskey maintains, to "subvert" the dominant institutions of the culture. On the contrary, Gorgias invites his audience to respond to his playful and often outrageous assertions, to articulate their own views, and thereby to become actively engaged in the agonistic institutions of the community.