Shrine for a Runner

Running down a coastal road south of Naples I came across this shrine. I see this sort of thing in Texas, but this one seemed so much more personal, perhaps because this was a shrine for a runner. I have no idea what happened, how he died, who remembered him and why they cared so much they wanted to leave this for me to see. I'm grateful that they did. I'm grateful for his life, for how full of life he appears to be in this picture. Good running, my friend.






 

Misunderstanding the Sophists III: They were Nihilists

Aristotle cites Plato in a backhanded way as his source on the sophists: “And so Plato was in a sense not wrong in ranking sophistic as dealing with that which is not” (Bk. VI Pt. 2 Ross).  What follows is a convoluted explanation of the way sophists focus solely on “that which is not” or nothing, and thus, what they study is not a science, which must focus on that which is. (Note: when Plato and Aristotle talk about science they do not mean STEM, they mean any systematic method of study and/or practice. Thus, metaphysics is a science.)

It's easy to see how this assessment writes off the sophists as nihilists, and Gorgias’s famous sound bite that, “Nothing exists; Even if existence exists, it cannot be known; Even if it could be known, it cannot be communicated,” doesn't help much. 

How do we see this as nothing more than nihilistic mysticism? Or, as Aristotle sees it, as “that which is not” philosophy, and thus can be written off? 

In order to play this brain game, let’s think about our object of study, for right now, Gorgias’s argument from On Nature above, as a sculpture rather than a painting. When I look at a painting I see one surface. That surface may have the illusion of perspective, as in Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Annunciation. But I can’t step around it and see it from the back. For that, I need a sculpture. I can walk around Michelangelo’s David, and at least until they put it behind plexiglass in St Peter’s, his Pieta. Even behind the plexiglass, the light hits Mary’s face at different angles depending on where the viewer stands. At one angle we see her grace, at another, her anguish. From the front Christ’s body, broken and emaciated, rests in her lap, yet our focus is on her face. From the back, we see the folds of her robe, graceful and somehow serene. And Christ cannot be seen at all. Let’s see if we can do that, change our perspective and see entirely different objects, with Gorgias’s sophism.   

In order to step around the other side, rather than seeing these three phrases as a syllogism that somehow makes an ontological statement that denies itself, let’s think of it as a rhetorical statement. 

Of course, one thing we’ve got to get around is the tendency in philosophy to see rhetoric itself as outside the pale. See this quotation from The Internet Encyclopedia on Philosophy: “In 1930, French philosopher Jacques Maritain remarked ‘[s]ophistry is not a system of ideas, but a vicious attitude of the mind;’ the sophists ‘came to consider as the most desirable form of knowledge the art of refuting and disproving by skillful arguments’ (32-33)” (Higgins). Maritain’s condemnation is common when our perspective begins with philosophy. 

When we begin with rhetoric we can, though I admit do not necessarily, come to a different reading. In this reading, Gorgias denies Plato’s forms. If we start from forms, from an axiom that must be true, that cannot be denied, then what follows is simply a string of dominos. All will fall in their proper order and place. There is no reason to seek for truth. From an axiom we run the danger Charles Sanders Peirce identified as the “fixation of belief,” our tendency to hold onto what we believe in the face of all opposition—a fault that is as prevalent in philosophy and science as it is in religion.

Using Gorgias’s “nothing exists” we sidestep fixation of belief. We start, not from a reified truth, but from possible truths, each of which must contend with each other. As William James puts it when writing about God, “The truth of ‘God’ has to run the gauntlet of all our other truths. It is on trial by them and they on trial by it. Our final opinion about God can be settled only after all the truths have been straightened themselves out together” (Pragmatism 52).

The synergy between Gorgias and pragmatism is evident in this viewpoint that “nothing exists” isn’t an ontological statement, but the starting point for dialectic. In this method there are no preexisting truths that cannot be questioned, there are no sacred cows. Every truth has to stand the test of dialectic. This might frighten some. It obviously has frightened many.

For a more nuanced academic discussion of Gorgias, take a look at the citation on him in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://www.iep.utm.edu/gorgias/

Path of the Gods, Amalfi Coast

The Stairway up to the path, a thousand feet above.

Along the trail

Praiano from above; abandoned monastery and vinyard

A view of Positano and the Amalfi Coast

Misunderstanding the Sophists II: They were Relativists

I don't want to question the idea that the sophists were relatives, merely clarify what kind of relativists they were and how we might read them. Let's start with modern relativism, which is simple enough. Modern relativists are cultural relativists. They insist that simply because we hold one idea of the true and just doesn't mean it's any better than the ideas of the true and just of another culture. We might also think of cultural relativism as historical relativism, the idea that at one time in history we might hold one concept of the true and just; at another time a different concept. Example: at various times homosexuality has been seen as a sin, a mental disorder, an alternative lifestyle, as normal as any other choice. A relativist might insist that at any given point any one of those views is as good as another. I am not interested in arguing with cultural/historical relativist, only point out how this form of relativism was different from the relativism of the sophists.

In this case, we're not so much looking at the sophists through the eyes of Plato and Aristotle, as we are revere engineering the arguments against sophism they make. Both spend a lot of time arguing that a thing cannot be and not be, which if of course the foundation of Aristotle's logic, that A cannot be not A at the same time. Plato's argument against the sophists as thinkers rather than rhetoricians comes out in Parmenides, particularly Zeno's recitation of the arguments in the book he wrote in defense of Pamenides's argument in favor of the one over the many. There are moments in Zeno's recitation that he appears to be contradicting himself, primarily due to his relativism.

Here's the point: the relativism of Parmenides and Zeno isn't cultural; it's a relativism built into the nature of language itself, particularly in Cratylus, in names. A key element is the argument that one cannot say anything that is not true. The problem, at least for us, in understanding relativism build on language, comes out in in Euthydemus, where, as Plato intended, it sounds ridiculous.When one of Socrates's interlocutors argues that one cannot say anything that is untrue, that paradox comes to the fore. We all recognize that two contradictory statements cannot both be true--at least this is what logic teaches us. Aristotle goes a step farther, giving extended examples, such as . . . just because a man says he is in Thebes when he is actually in Athens, doesn't mean he is in Thebes.

This argument against the sophists is similar to the argument one often hears against the post-structuralists. I have heard more than one rhetorician or philosopher say something along these lines: "What the post-structuralists don't seem to understand is that their ideas eventually lead to nihilism." This is similar to the critique Russell made of pragmatism: "What the pragmatists dont' seem to understand is where their philosophy leads." His famous remark that in pragmatism, "ironclads and Maxim guns must be the ultimate arbiters of metaphysical truth" comes from the same viewpoint, that outside the system that only notices the inconsistencies (or perceived inconsistencies) and assume that those within the system cannot see them due to some deficiency in their thinking. One might as easily use use Burke's "terministic screen" as an explanation. In the end, what one is doing is a variation of ad hominem, the assumption that we are simply smarter than the other guy. (Look what that did to Enron.)

When this happened in one of those cocktail hour conversations as a conference, I asked two questions: "You know some of these people, right? Do they strike you as smart or dumb?" Of course, they're all pretty smart. So, the logical conclusion is this: "If they are smart, but their ideas seem dumb, then the only conclusion is that we don't really understand their ideas yet." (Thank you Sherlock Holmes for that bit of logic: "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.")

So, can we ask the same question of the sophists? Of course, Plato and Aristotle didn't assume these were dumb people, they assumed they were dishonest, seeking only their own advantage. This is certainly the view in Euthydemus, and the contrast between Euthydemus and his brother's dialectic and Socrates's.

Let's start from a different perspective, what if we asked ourselves how a relativism based on language, that started from the idea that nothing that could be said is untrue. How could that idea neither be illogical nor immoral?

I'll give my answer to that question in "Misunderstanding the Sophists III: They were Immoral.

Misunderstanding the Sophists I: They Were Only Concerned with Speeches

The idea that the basic difference between Plato/Socrates and the sophists was in their chosen genre, comes from a reading of Gorgias and Phaedrus. In Gorgias Socrates implores Gorgias not to make long speeches because he cannot follow them, one among many examples of Socrates playful, or not so playful, irony. In Phaedrus, at least since Weaver's "Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric," the focus has shifted from speeches, still condemned, to writing, also condemned. In both dialogues, dielectic is favored over rhetoric as a form of argument that has the potential to lead toward truth.

This basic interpretation of Plato, prominent among rhetoricians, requires that we simply ignore Euthydemus, in which the brothers and sophists, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus teach a new kind of "fighting," that of question and answer, IE dialectic.

In the opening, Socrates is rushing to meet the brothers in order to become their student--irony yet again. Without going too deeply into the dialogue, which I encourage you to read or listen to, Plato contrasts true dialectic with the dialectic of Euthydemus and Dionysodorus on the basis of motives. The brothers simply wish to win every argument, and will twist the answers of their interlocutor in order to do so. Socrates wishes to teach his interlocutor.

This difference between Socrates and the sophists is emphasized by Aristotle in Metaphysics when he compares his method, analytics, to Plato's dialectics and the sophists. He claims that analytics is more powerful than dialetics; and simply brushes the sophists off due to their "way of life." In other words, their virtue/motives, not their methods, keep them from being philosophers.

Of course, in this case as in all others, what we know of the sophists comes from their opponents. We need to keep that irony in mind.