Epistemology

Sophists

• Pragmatic rhetoric--focus on effects on the audience

• Isocrates, Cicero, Quintillian: integration of rhetoric & inquiry

• Language => power• Plato: ban lyric & epic poets –Republic

Plato: Ideals

• Every circle that is drawn or turned on a lathe in actual operations abounds in the opposite of the fifth entity, for it everywhere touches the straight, while the real circle, I maintain, contains in itself neither much nor little of the opposite character . . . The important thing is that, as I said a little earlier, there are two things, the essential reality and the particular quality . . . –Plato, Letters, 7.343a-c, tr. L. A. Post

A Platonic View of the Realization Process

RealizationIdealization

Aristotle

• It is clear then, that rhetorical study, in its strict sense, is concerned with the modes of persuasion. – Rhetoric, I

• Homer, admirable as he is in every other respect is especially so in this, that he alone among epic poets is not unaware of the part to be played by the poet himself in the poem. The poet should say very little in propria persona, as he is no imitator when doing that. Whereas the other poets are perpetually coming forward in person, and say but little, and that only here and there, as imitators, Homer, after a brief preface, brings forthwith a man, a woman, or some other character--no one of them characterless, but each with distinctive characteristics. –Poetics

Early History of Rhetoric

• Longinus: address the reader (Tompkins, p. 202)• Renaissance• audience => aristocracy• Ben Jonson's verses (Tompkins, p. 208)

Aristotle

• Empirical methods lauded• “we are all empiricisits”• Russell: ask Ms. Aristotle to open her mouth

Systematic Philosophy

• Aquinas• Skeptics: Hume, Berkeley

Kant: The New Synthesis

• How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?• Unitary version of knowing based on natural

sciences• Subject/object -> ahistorical• "Rising sun"• 19th century science edifice

Wittgenstein

• Glorification and doubt• Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus =>

Positivism• Philosophical Investigations =>

Pragmatism, hermeneutics

Wittgenstein History

• B. April 26, 1889, eighth child of wealthy family in Hapsburg, Vienna

• Hermann W to F. Mendelssohn: “Just let him breathe the air you breathe!”

• Time of “nervous splendour” (Monk, p. 9)• Interdependence of the arts (Janik, p, 18)• Poetry & science (Janik, p. 113)

Ethics & Truth

• “Why should one tell the truth if it’s to one’s advantage to tell a lie?” (age 8)

• The ethical task (Janik, p. 167-169)• The dilemma (Janik, p. 189-191)• Tractatus (Janik, p. 20-24)• Teaching: intellectual (Monk, p. 192)• Answer to the riddle of life

Wittgenstein: Language Games

• . . . in philosophy we often compare the use of words with games and calculi which have fixed rules, but cannot say that someone who is using language must be playing such a game.--But if you say that our languages only approximate to such calculi you are standing on the brink of a misunderstanding. For then it may look as if what we were talking about were an ideal language.

• [Wittgenstein, 1974/1953, ¶81]

A Wittgensteinian View of the Realization Process

RealizationIdealization

Songs Without Words

• The thoughts I find expressed in music that I love are not too indefinite, but on the contrary, too definite to put into words

• –Felix Mendelssohn, 1841

Logical Positivism

• operational definitions of terms• test by experiment• contexts • covering law• monomethodology• Neurath: cup of coffee hermeneutics (Howard, p.

29)

Anti-Rhetoric

• fact/value• truth/opinion• rigorous/intuitive• precise/vague• things/words• cognition/feeling• object/subject• observation/interpretation• report/argument• findings/inferences