"The Laws" and the Danger of Innovation

Plato worried about the deleterious effects of innovation, in terms of the canons of rhetoric, of invention. The arts were particularly suspect, because the arts, music and dance, were the means by which the young were taught virtue. Thus, innovations were suspect because they might lead the next generation away from the virtue of the present generation. Once a city, and the people of the city, had become virtuous, any innovation could only lead to a loss of virtue. 

In Book III of The Laws he warns against music and the theater, which introduce an "evil sort of theatrocracy" through rampant innovation. "For what is this shamelessness, which is so evil a thing, but the insolent refusal to regard the opinion of the better by reason of an over-daring sort of liberty?"

The solution is a static culture with no innovation. In Book II, the Athenian Stranger holds up Egypt as the prime example: 


Cle. And what are the laws about music and dancing in Egypt?
Ath. You will wonder when I tell you: Long ago they appear to have recognized the very principle of which we are now speaking-that their young citizens must be habituated to forms and strains of virtue. These they fixed, and exhibited the patterns of them in their temples; and no painter or artist is allowed to innovate upon them, or to leave the traditional forms and invent new ones. To this day, no alteration is allowed either in these arts, or in music at all. And you will find that their works of art are painted or moulded in the same forms which they had ten thousand years ago;-this is literally true and no exaggeration-their ancient paintings and sculptures are not a whit better or worse than the work of to-day, but are made with just the same skill.
Cle. How extraordinary!
Ath. I should rather say, How statesmanlike, how worthy of a legislator! 

Plato and Democracy

We generally see Plato as being anti-democracy, preferring oligarchy. in the third book of The Laws he sounds more balanced. But then, he may have seen oligarchy as the "measure" of both.


"Hear me, then: there are two mother forms of states from which the rest may be truly said to be derived; and one of them may be called monarchy and the other democracy: the Persians have the highest form of the one, and we of the other; almost all the rest, as I was saying, are variations of these. Now, if you are to have liberty and the combination of friendship with wisdom, you must have both these forms of government in a measure; the argument emphatically declares that no city can be well governed which is not made up of both."  

Schedule

Trail Running Disney World

These pictures were taken along an old jeep trail about a quarter mile west of the Grand Floridian Resort. Complete run, eight miles there and back.

Plato on Ethos in Eryxias

On the web you'll find that everyone from wikipedia to librivox questions whether this dialogue was written by Plato or an admirer. Unconcerned with authenticity myself, I wish only to note that the dialogue contains as succinct a definition of ethos as possible. Clearer than Aristotle's. 



"For just as in the law courts, if two witnesses testify to the same fact, one of whom seems to be an honest fellow and the other a rogue, the testimony of the rogue often has the contrary effect on the judges' minds to what he intended, while the same evidence if given by the honest man at once strikes them as perfectly true. And probably the audience have something of the same feeling about yourself and Prodicus; they think him a Sophist and a braggart, and regard you as a gentleman of courtesy and worth. For they do not pay attention to the argument so much as to the character of the speaker."


A final note: the more I read the debate about the authenticity of certain dialogues, the more I notice that those dialogues are usually in question because the scholars disagree with them. It seems to be a simple methodology: The dialogues I agree with are authentic; those I disagree with are not.  

I wonder if most of the "knowledge" on the internet comes from an article written in 1935, avaliable as everything today seems to be, on JSTOR.

"The Pseudo-Platonic Dialogue Eryxias."

D. E. Eichholz

The Classical Quarterly

Vol. 29, No. 3/4 (Jul. - Oct., 1935), pp. 129-149

Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/636604

 

Plato Interrupts Quintilian (Book 3, Ch. 8)

Plato joins Quintilian for a beer on the patio of the University Brew House.

P: The day is pleasant my friend, with a breeze that is so much more comfortable than the air-conditioning inside. I think it will be but a few more days before it will be too warm to enjoy the afternoon thus. Before we begin our discussion, I think a small oblation to Pan is appropriate. Perhaps a little ale poured out on the pavement.

Q: But would not wine be a more appropriate offering to Pan?

P: Perhaps so. Yet, he might appreciate an occasional beer. See how it soaks into the stones? Ah, but the waiter is giving me a dirty look now. No more, I think. Besides, this is an excellent beer.

In your Institutes, you write that the end of oratory is not persuasion, a distinction I appreciate. But what, if not persuasion, is the end of oratory?

Q: Eloquence. Nothing more.

P: Eloquence? How then does that assure virtue? An orator who seeks to persuade might at least seek to persuade toward the virtuous. But if an orator seeks only eloquence, has he no concern at all for the end of his speech? Speak up my friend. Demonstrate for me your eloquence.

Q: You are right, friend Plato; an orator who seeks only to persuade might seek a virtuous cause--or an unvirtuous one. An orator who seeks eloquence seeks to speak to the best of his ability. In other words, he speaks for and to his own honor. This is the meaning of that phrase, which though attributed to me, I have heard Cato utter more than once, that true rhetoric is "a good man speaking well." Eloquence, thus defined, connects what a man says to who he is. An honorable man cannot but speak honorably. Eloquence must be married to honor.

P: Just so, my friend. I am troubled, I must admit, on reading the third book of your Institutes, where you allow your orator to bow to expedience. Where is the honor in this?

Q: There may be times when an orator is forced to expedience in a good cause. Should an orator allow an evil to come to pass when he has the eloquence to put a stop to it?

P: Ah, if my teacher, Socrates, had thought so, he would not have been so truthful when he stood before the judges. Surely you have read my Apology, or if not, at least Xenophon's. Was this a man who thought anything less than honor was due from him in his every word, his every breath?

Q: You must keep in mind the differences between the courts in Athens in your day and those in Rome in mine. You had no lawyers, and every man spoke for himself. What a man said was seen as what he was. Not so today, when litigants are represented by an orator whose honor is tied to his eloquence, in doing the best for his client. 

P: So, in your eyes the orator didn't have to be honorable as long as he could imitate honor?

Q: I address this more clearly in Book Twelve. Have you not read so far?

P: We shall get to that when we get to that. What of these imitations, prosopopeiae, you call them? Do you really suggest, as you write, that "we very often utter fictitious speeches attributed to characters which we ourselves introduce"? How does an orator stay honorable if he is no longer speaking of himself, from his own honor? How is such a speech honorable, if eloquence comes from the inner character of the man if he no longer speaks as himself.

Q: I believe the waiter is eyeing us again. Perhaps we are disturbing the other patrons.

P: Ah well, we can put these questions off if you wish. Does this establishment have no flute players to keep us entertained as we drink?

Quintilian Institutes Book 2 Chapter 18 What Kind of Art?

In this brief chapter Quintilian categorizes arts as 1) those concerted with knowledge, theoretikē, or contemplative arts, the primary goals of which is study; his example: astronomy; 2) The active arts, praktikē, those arts that are more concerned with the immediate experience than producing something, such as dance or theater; 3) and the  productive arts, poetikē, such as painting, which are concerned with the creation of an object that exists after the creative moment.

We immediately recognize that each art may have attributes of the other. Quintilian did as well, claiming that rhetoric had attributes of all three:

"for the subject of it may sometimes be restricted to contemplation, since there will be oratory in an orator even though he be silent . . . There is some enjoyment, and perhaps the greatest of all enjoyments, in retired meditation, and the pleasure derived from knowledge is pure when it is withdrawn from action . . . But oratory will also effect something similar to a productive art in written speeches and historical compositions . . . Yet if it must be classed as one of the three sorts of arts which I have mentioned, let it, as its performance consists chiefly in the mere act and as it is most frequently exhibited in act, be called an active or a practical art, for the one term is of the same signification as the other."

http://rhetoric.eserver.org/quintilian/2/chapter18.html

Institutes Book 2 Chapter 17 Quntilian's Defense of Rhetoric (Cont.)

It’s not clear whether Quintilian is directly answering Plato or simply a tradition of thought that follows from Plato. Here he answers Plato’s argument that the rhetor must know all things he speaks of. Instead, Quintilian makes the post-structuralist argument, than none of us can ever be certain. 

“Oratory is the art of speaking well, and the orator knows how to speak well. But it is said he does not know whether what he says is true; neither do the philosophers, who say that fire, or water, or the four elements, or indivisible atoms are the principles from which all things had their origin, know that what they say is true; nor do those who calculate the distances of the stars, and the magnitudes of the sun and the earth, yet every one of them calls his system an art.”

http://rhetoric.eserver.org/quintilian/2/chapter17.html