the ritual functions of epideictic rhetoric: the case of ...-ch. perelman and l. olbrechts-tyteca,...

MICHAEL F. CARTER

The Ritual Functions of Epideictic Rhetoric: The Case of Socrates' Funeral Oration

pideictic rhetoric, says George Kennedy in an understatement, is "a form of literature which has relatively few admirers today." And the main reason for this dearth of

admirers appears to be its nonpragmatic nature; unlike forensic and deliberative rhetorics, epideictic does not seem to have a viable, legitimizing purpose. J. Richard Chase, citing nineteenth-century rhetorician Richard Volkmann and ancient commentator Syrianus, notes that the early influence of Gorgias created a need for a two-part classification of oratory: pragmatikon, the practical oratory used by Athenian citizens in the law court and assembly; and epideictikon, "the oratory of the non-citizen who was permitted to speak only at festivals or through either the written word or, as logographers, through the Athenian citizen" (p. 293). E. M. Cope describes epideictic as "inferior" to forensic and deliberative rhetorics because it is "demonstrative, showy, ostentatious, declamatory" and has "no practical purposes in view."' And Perelman and

'George Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in Greece (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1963), 153; J. Richard Chase, "The Classical Conception of Epideictic," Quarterly Journal of Speech 47 (1961): 293-94; E. M. Cope, An Introduction to Aristotle's Rhetoric (London; Macmillan, 1867), 121-22.

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210 R H E T O R I C A

Olbrechts-Tyteca underscore the widespread contempt for epideictic with this caricature:

A single orator . made a speech, which no one opposed, on topics which were apparently uncontroversial and without practical consequences. [T]he audience, according to the theoreticians, merely played the part of spectators. After listening to the speaker, they merely applauded and went away. . Such a show-piece was assessed as a work of artistic virtuosity, but this flattering appraisal was considered as an end, not as a consequence of the speaker's having reached a particular goal. The speech was regarded in the same light as a dramatic spectacle or athletic contest, the purpose of which seemed to be the displaying of the performances.^

Little wonder epideictic has had so few admirers. The number of admirers, however, appears to be growing,

particularly as scholars have begun to recognize and appreciate the special kind of pragmatic value offered by epideictic rhetoric. John Poulakos and Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca view it as a way to articulate the values of a community and to encourage adherence to those values. Bernard K. Duffy explores the philosophical possibilities of epideictic as suggested by Plato. Christine Oravec says that epideictic served its audience as "a preparation for learning and ultimately for practical action." Walter H. Beale, using early speech-act theory, defines epideictic as a rhetorical performative, "a significant social action in itself." And Lawrence W. Rosenfield describes its value as the unconcealing of the "radiance" or "luminosity of noble acts and thoughts."^

These reconsiderations of epideictic have been very helpful in establishing its value, but none of them gets at the more profound qualities of epideictic, the qualities that made it a part of the fabric of life in ancient Greece as well as in contemporary Western cul-

-Ch. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (Notre Dame: Univ of Notre Dame Press, 1969), 48.

3John Poulakos, "Gorgias' and Isocrates' Use of the Encomium," The Southern Speech Communication Journal 51 (1986): 307; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 50; Bernard K. Duffy, "The Platonic Functions of Epideictic Rhetoric," Philosophy and Rhetoric 16 (1983): 79-93; Christine Oravec, "Observation in Aristotle's Theory of Epideictic," Philosophy and Rhetoric 9 (1976): 166; Walter Beale, "Rhetorical Performative Discourse: A New Theory of Epideictic," Philosophy and Rhetoric 11 (1978): 225; Lawrence W. Rosenfield, "The Practical Celebration of Epideictic," in Rhetoric m Transition, ed. Eugene E. White (University Park: The Pennsylvania State Univ Press, 1980), 134.

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Epideictic Rhetoric 211

hire. The problem, of course, is that it is difficult to apply our standard notions of purposive speech to epideictic; the esoteric even mysterious—nature of epideictic resists our definitions. The closest anyone has come to capturing this sense of epideictic is Rosenfield, but he makes epideictic seem downright otherworldly, outside the realm of common human experience. What I will provide here is a connection between the uncommon and the common, to show how the almost mystical qualities of epideictic may be accounted for, and better appreciated, in terms of something that is common to human experience. I argue that epideictic may be understood as ritual, indeed that epideictic is successful insofar as it achieves the qualities of ritual.

Ritual, of course, was extremely important in ancient Greek society. It was everywhere, in the prayers and sacrificial acts at public and family occasions, in the oracles and divinations that were recited so widely, and in the elaborate invocations that initiated the festivals. Epideictic rhetoric grew directly out of ancient ritual. Kennedy shows that the genre came into being when funeral orations evolved from the poetic laments of ancient rites of the dead. He also notes the historical relationship between epideictic and other rituals, such as the festival orations, or panegyrics, which had their foundations in the ritual topoi of praise—of the festival god, the city, the festival officials, the local rulers, etc."

Just as important as the historical connections between epideictic and ritual is the fact that both have suffered the same fate at the hands of modern dogmatic pragmatism. In modern use, ritual often carries the connotations of empty, mindless, even neurotic behavior. 5 It is eccentric, set apart from the ordinary, the purposeful, and the meaningful. Fritz Staal, a religious anthropologist, supports this notion of the inherent meaninglessness of ritual. After extensive

^Kennedy, 29, 154, 166-67. 'Robert C. Moore, Ralph Wendell Burhoe, and Philip J. Hefner ("Symposium

on Ritual in Human Adaptation," Zygon 18 (1983): 209) suggest that the reason for the stereotype of ritual as mindless is the increased secularization and individualism of Western civUizaHon since the Reformation and the Renaissance: "The archaisms of ritual behavior in both religion and magic were correctly perceived as carrying with them assumptions about human values that were at odds with the embryonic 'modem' view of the nature of human selfhood, which was gathering strength among cultural and scientific elites. Ritual behaviors, first denounced as 'popery,' came to be viewed as mere superstition which human progress would erase once the obscurantist forces of religion could be forced to release their hold on the human spirit."

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observation of ancient Vedic rituals, he concludes that ritual is primarily a rule-governed activity in which what is thought, believed, or said is far less important than what is done. Ritual, he says, is done simply for its own sake: "It is meaningless, without function, aim or goal. ."* And Wade T. Wheelock demonstrates that ritual language is also fundamentally different from ordinary, pragmatic language, violating Jacobson's basic constitutive factors of speech as well as all four of Grice's cooperative maxims. Ritual language is a fixed pattern of utterances, typically removed from the vernacular, which creates the occasion and serves a truth that is removed from everyday reality.^

However, there has been a revolution in the rapidly growing field of ritual studies* in which Staal's idea of the meaninglessness of ritual has been rejected. Scholars who study ritual readily admit that it is extraordinary behavior and uses language in an extraordinary way; they conclude, though, that it is precisely because it breaks the rules of ordinary behavior that it achieves its value, and not just for primitive people but also for contemporary Western culture. Wheelock, for example, shows that it is because ritual language breaks the rules of ordinary discourse—because it is repetitive and apparently noninformative—that it achieves its power.' Instead of being devoid of meaning and function, as Staal suggests, ritual achieves a meaning and function that is beyond the potential of ordinary, pragmatic behavior and language.

The link between epideictic and ritual is not merely coincidental. Epideictic also achieves a meaning and function that is beyond the potential of ordinary, pragmatic language. In fact, it may be true that the value of epideictic can be understood only when it is considered as a ritual. The traditional denigration of epideictic as meaningless display is a result of the misunderstanding of the role that epideictic, as ritual, performs in a society. But when it is understood in terms of that role, then epideictic can be appreciated as a valuable form of rhetoric. To demonstrate this value, I will review

'Fritz Staal, "The Meaninglessness of Ritual," Numen 26 (1979): 2-9. 'Wade T. Wheelock, "The Problem of Ritual Language: From Information to

Situation," fournal of the American Academy of Religion 50 (1982): 55-58. *The growth in interest in the study of ritual has indeed been dramatic. The

Religion Index offered no citations under the subject heading "Ritual" in the period 1971-1972. It had 10 citations in 1975-1976, 37 in 1981-1982, and 105 in 1985-1986. And in 1987 a scholarly journal dedicated specifically to ritual was inaugurated—The journal of Ritual Studies.

'Wheelock, 63-65.

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some of the most important of the recent scholarship on ritual and then will apply the features of ritual to a particular example of epideictic rhetoric, the funeral oration in Plato's troublesome Menexenus. 1 have chosen this example because, among other reasons, even though Plato's obvious purpose in the dialogue is to mock the epideictic oration, this purpose seems to be undercut by the oration itself. Thus, Socrates' funeral oration provides a fascinating counterpoint to Plato's attack on rhetoric in Gorgias and Menexenus. This counterpoint comes to light when the funeral oration is considered as having ritual functions and is therefore much more effective than Plato, perhaps, could have known.

THE FUNCTIONS OF RITUAL

To the rhetorician interested in epideictic, the scholarship on ritual is helpful not only because it is much more extensive than our own scholarship on epideictic but also because it reveals a power of language that we often ignore. This scholarship suggests three major functions of ritual. First, ritual generates a kind of knowledge that is different from the knowledge generated by ordinary discourse. Second, ritual constitutes and promotes community. And third, ritual offers its participants guidance in conducting their lives. I will explore each of these functions here.

First, the extraordinary epistemic value of ritual. Urban T. Holmes describes ritual as the link to "primordial" or "primeval" knowledge, by which he is not referring to chronological time: "The primordial is located, one might say, at the expanding edge of our horizon of knowing. It is feeling and intuition, not common sense or thinking." H. Patrick Sullivan defines ritual knowledge as anamnesis, a remembering or a reawakening from the sleep of forgetfulness. Unlike Plato's anamnesis in Meno, this kind of remembering is achieved through the repetitive symbolism of ritual and becomes, Sullivan says, "an initiation into a mystery." Evan M. Zuesse describes the knowledge associated with ritual as "pre-conscious."'" Ritual, then, does have epistemic value, but the knowledge it generates is quite different from everyday knowledge

'"Urban T. Holmes "Ritual and the Social Drama," Worship 51 (1977): 201; Patrick H. Sullivan, "Ritual: Attending the Worid," Anglican Theological Review (Supplemental Series Number Five) (June 1975): 18-19; Evan M. Zuesse, "Meditation on Ritual," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 43 (1975): 519.

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and is therefore difficult to define. To understand the "primordial" and "preconscious" nature of ritual knowledge, it is necessary to investigate how it achieves this kind of knowledge. The scholarship on ritual suggests three ways.

One way is by connecting its participants to the cosmos or to a transcendent principle. Sullivan's investigation of classical Chinese and Indian cultures led him to conclude that ritual performed two functions: first, "ritual both expressed and established cosmos— meaningful and intelligible order;" and second, "ritual was the basis for human creativity—that is, of the ongoing creation of human culture." Both of these elements provide the connection to something beyond the ordinary. "Ritual," says Zuesse, "gestures forth the world as meaningful and ordered. It estabhshes a deep primary order which precedes the word that can be spoken, and out of which the word proceeds, and to which it returns." Robert A. Segal points out that one of the functions of ritual is to show human beings how they fit in the cosmos by portraying in actions and words their position in the universe and in society. In fact, he says, rituals "serve above all to fuse those places [the universe and society]. They do so by at once conferring cosmic sanctions on social norms and validating those cosmic convictions through social practices."" Ritual also provides a link to the cosmos by engaging its participants in the recreation of the very act of creation itself. Ritual acts often mimic a founding act, the creation of a group, a religion, or the cosmos. Each repetition, then, joins the participants in that founding act, establishing connections with the creative energy associated with common beginnings.'2

The second way that ritual achieves primordial knowledge is that is takes the participants out of ordinary time. Louis Dupre describes this quality as "the sacralization of time": "With one stroke the privileged time of ritual reverses the direction of our ordinary sense of duration." This extraordinary sense of time comes, Dupre suggests, from the participants' awareness of immortality, an awareness that elicits a sense of being beyond the mortal and temporal: "As an irreducible model that restores order against an ever invading chaos it has its foundations outside the ordinary succession of time—in illo tempore." Thus, ritual contributes to a

"Sullivan, 9; Zuesse, 518; Robert A. Segal, "Victor Turner's Theory of Ritual," Zygon 18 (1983): 329-30.

'^Sullivan, 25-29; Zuesse, 529.

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kind of knowledge beyond the quotidian by "constituting meaning where none existed before. "'^

The third means by which ritual attains its special epistemic status is through its ability to generate a sense of harmony by unifying the contraries that one finds in Ufe. Sullivan says that this is a result of the symbohc consciousness that ritual encourages, an extraordinary kind of consciousness that "transfigures the world by reuniting it—indeed by perceiving its unity, the coincidentia oppositorum." According to Zuesse, the difficulty in understanding ritual comes from the fact that ritual brings together very different realms of existence that are unified, in action, "in a way that defies logic. Being-For-Itself and Being-In-Itself, consciousness and 'objective reahty,' reflective and pre-reflective consciousness, thought and passion: all are mediated in ritual." Zuesse calls this the "ritual mesocosm," a link between the body and the world, the self and the other, the microcosm and the macrocosm.'" Eugene G. d'Aquili offers a fascinating explanation for the power of ritual to create a sense of harmony in its participants. For him, ritual is a way to "gain control over an essentially unpredictable universe" by uniting the superficial antinomies that confuse us. The source of this contiol, d'Aquili argues, is psychobiological. He cites evidence showing that prolonged exposure to rhythmic and repetitious stimuli sparks a strong discharge of both the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems which "powerfully activates the holistic operator allowing various degrees of gestalt perception." The result of this perception is a strong sense of oneness in which the participant is aware of both the antinomies and of their unity. '̂

These are some of the ways in which ritual achieves its extraordinary epistemic function. Another crucial function of ritual is creating and enhancing a sense of community among its participants. This recognition of the connection between ritual and community is largely a result of the work of anthropologist Victor Turner. Turner's extensive observations of primitive peoples led him to oppose the tradition that views ritual exclusively as a primitive "science," a way of explaining and controlling the world, and to claim instead that ritual is a way of generating what he calls communitas, one of

"Louis Dupre, "Ritual, The Sacralization of Time," Man and World 19 (1986): 145-46, 147, 149; see also Zuesse, 521.

'^Sullivan, 17; Zuesse, 518, 522. '^Eugene G. d'Aquili, "The Myth-Ritual Complex: A Biogenetic Structural

Analysis," Zygon 18 (1983): 261-65.

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the two social forces acting on a group of people. Whereas societas is the force that supports the political, social, and economic divisions of a populace, communitas is the anti-structure, the force that breaks down the boundaries that separate people. Ceremonies, Turner says, are a way of promoting and perpetuating societas, but the source of communitas is ritual.'* This communitas has been described by others as creating "the essential and generic human bond without which there could be no society," as eUciting "the greater transparency of one person to another," and as exposing "the implicit cognitive, emotional model or idea every culture has for itself. "'7

Turner has had a major impact on the study of ritual, but other scholars have also focused on the role of ritual in creating and reinforcing ideas of community. For Kenneth L. Schmitz, for instance, ritual is both "a transmission of cohesive forces" and "a set of signals for identification." As such, it provides an "important form of social communication, even for modern nation-states, secular societies and many other kinds of social groups." Schmitz, then, takes ritual well beyond the strictly religious. It is through ritual that we gain a sense of belonging to a broad social group. To a large degree it is the repetitive nature of ritual that creates this social identification: "In repeating the act the participants join their action to past and future repetitions and participants. They identify with a community in time and space."'* Randie L. Timpe reinforces this view of ritual through a psychological perspective. Rituals, she says, "serve to identify and coalesce subgroups within a larger group." Their purpose, then, is socialization, providing a structure for social interactions in situations that are novel and transmitting cultural meaning and symbolism."

In addition to its extraordinary epistemic and communal functions, ritual also guides its participants in conducting their lives.

'^Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine, 1969), 96-97; Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca: Cornell Univ Press, 1974), 48-57.

"Mary Collins, "Ritual Symbols and the Ritual Process: The Work of Victor W. Turner," Worship 50 (1976): 342; Holmes, 203; Volney P Gay, "Ritual and Self-Esteem in Victor Turner and Heinz Kohut," Zygon 18 (1983): 273.

'^Kenneth L. Schmitz, "Ritual Elements in Community," Religious Studies 17 (1981): 169, 163-64, 175.

"Randie L. Timpe, "Ritualizations and Ritualism in Religious Development: A Psychosocial Perspective," Journal of Psychology and Theology 11 (1983): 311-12; see also Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 24.

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According to theologian Theodore W. Jennings, this guidance is an indicator of the "pedagogical character" of ritual. He points out that ritual "serves as a paradigm for all significant action. While the ritual itself may be specifically 'religious,' it serves as a paradigm for all important action whether or not that action is, in some restricted sense, religious." Ritual accomplishes this pedagogical function by inciting both an imitation of and a reponse to the ritual action. Ritual, he argues, must be understood as praxis; it has the power to transform the way its participants view the world and how they act in the world: "The performance of ritual, then, teaches one not only how to conduct the ritual itself, but how to conduct oneself outside the ritual space—in a world epitomized or founded or renewed in and through the ritual itself, "̂ o Certainly, such effects may not be immediate, observable, and measurable. But the teaching function of ritual may yield more beneficial and longer-lived consequences than those of more direct kinds of discourse.

Ritual, then, is not the meaningless activity that its popular connotations often suggest. Instead, it generates an extraordinary knowledge beyond the commonsensical and everyday, it constitutes and promotes a powerful concept of community, and it acts as a guide for important action. This understanding of ritual suggests that it is not at all a diminished act but rather an augmented one, with the potential for profoundly affecting its participants.

THE RITUAL FUNCTIONS OF EPIDEICTIC RHETORIC

Discovering the value and power of ritual guides us in discovering the value and power of epideictic. Like ritual, epideictic discourse possesses the potential for achieving an even greater value than more obviously pragmatic discourse precisely because it does not have the clear and practical consequences of the latter. Beale, in his definition of epideictic as a rhetorical performative, underlines this connection to ritual by describing epideictic as a "more or less unified act of rhetorical discourse which does not merely say, argue, or allege something about the world of social action, but which constitutes . . . a significant social action in itself. "2' Like ritual, in which what is said is less important than that it is said, the

Theodore W. Jennings, "On Ritual Knowledge," Journal of Religion 62 (1982): 115-19.

2'Beale, 225.

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value of epideictic is intrinsic—the seemingly impractical value of being "a significant social action in itself." Its "impracticahty," however, allows it to function in ways that are substantially different from ordinary discourse—and potentially more valuable. To illustrate the ritual functions of epideictic, I will use Socrates' funeral oration in Menexenus.

Menexenus is an especially intriguing case because it is perhaps Plato's most baffling dialogue. Jowett was suspicious of the authenticity of the piece and placed it under the heading, "Inferior works not necessarily spurious." I. M. Crombie admits, "The only reason for attributing it to Plato is that it is so very un-Platonic that those who included it in the canon must have had compelling reasons for doing so."^ It has been described as "a worse puzzle to the reader than any other work in the Platonic corpus" and "Plato's most confusing work and, among his numerous portraits of Socrates, . . . his most paradoxical. "23 The greatest difficulty with the dialogue is understanding what Plato is doing with the speech, how far we should take the satire, and what exactly is being satirized. The gross distortions of the time of presentation and historical record are well known^" and certainly appear to indicate irony; yet the oration not only seems to be in accord with other parts of the Platonic canon^' \)^^^ n jg also curiously effective. Paul Shorey calls it "a strange blend of . . . satire and patriotic eloquence." Ronald B. Levinson observes that "modern taste does not easily tolerate such extreme interpenetration as we have here of jest and earnestness. . . . And so as we read our Menexenus we find the experience, to say the least, a trifle disconcerting," particularly the "ironic merrymaking" at the expense of so great a man as Pericles and at the occasion of honoring war dead. A. E. Taylor notes that though the purpose of the dialogue is "to satirize popular 'patriotic oratory,' " the speech does contain "noble passages on the duty of devotion to one's State and the obhgation of perpetuating its finest

^B. Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 2 (New York: Random House, 1920), 707-10; I. M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato's Doctrine (vol. 1, Plato on Man and Society) (New York: The Humanities Press, 1962), 15.

^A. E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and his Work (New York: Meridian Books, 1952), 41; Paul Friedlander, Plato: The Dialogues (First Period) (New York: Pantheon Books, 1964), 216.

^*R. E. Allen, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale Univ Press, 1984), 320; Harold S. Stern, "Plato's Funeral Oration," The New Scholasticism 48 (1974): 503-5.

25Friedlander, 228; Stern, 506-8.

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tiaditions. . . ." And R. E. Allen describes a long classical tiadition of reading the oration as a serious piece, including Cicero's report that the Athenians of his time recited it publicly each year on their version of an Independence Day. 2*

Menexenus, then, is a study in contrasts, both in the piece itself and in the response to it. Understanding the oration as ritual helps to explain why, despite Plato's obvious attempts at sabotage, it still remains effective both for Menexenus in the dialogue, for later audiences in the classical period, and for many readers today. But the main reason I am using Socrates' funeral oration as an illustration is because it provides an ideal subject for demonstrating the relationship between epideictic and ritual. First, it is a fine representation of its genre. Its topoi, organization, and style correspond very closely to other extant epitaphia and encomia of that time, exhibiting, as Taylor observes, "a close parallel with the discourse of Pericles in Thucydides, the 'funeral speech' included in the works ascribed to Lycias, the Panegyricus of Isocrates, the discourse of Hyperides on Leosthenes and his companions in the Lamian War."^'' And even if the oration were intended as a parody, the successful parody must capture the essence of its object and is thus valuable as a means of understanding that object. Second, the speech of Socrates provides a revealing counterpoint to Plato's attacks on rhetoric in Gorgias and in the brief framing dialogue of Menexenus. In fact, some commentators see Menexenus as a companion piece to Gorgias, the former a practical illustration of the theoretical discussion found in the latter.28 ^g 3̂ 1 illustration of bad rhetoric, Plato clearly used the worst kind of rhetoric he could imagine, a public funeral oration. Thus, it is particularly interesting that his illustration seems to undercut his major criticisms of rhetoric. The counterpoint of Socrates' funeral oration becomes especially clear when it is considered as ritual. In the following analysis, then, I will treat the functions of ritual as they apply to this oration, showing how each function acts as a counterpoint to Plato's criticism.

The first ritual function I will discuss is the power of epideictic to generate extraordinary knowledge for its participants. Plato spe-

2«Paul Shorey What Plato Said (Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press, 1965), 137; Ronald B. Levinson, In Defense of Plato (New York: Russell and Russell, 1970), 335; Taylor, 43; Allen 321.

Baylor, 42; see also Friedlander, 220. ^E. R. Dodds (qtd. in Allen, 322); Robert S. Brumbaugh, Plato for the Modern

Age (New York: Crowell-Collier Press, 1962), 53.

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cifically addresses the problem of rhetoric and knowledge in Gorgias where Socrates shows that rhetoric is grounded in pistis rather than episteme and that, whereas pistis can be both true and false, episteme can only be true (454d-55a). So the funeral oration is set up as the exemplar of false pistis, full of exaggerations and falsifications of history. But Plato does not seem to understand the power of the kind of pistis associated with the epideictic rhetoric he has chosen to ridicule, particularly its power to create belief, the extraordinary knowledge described by ritual theory as "primordial," "primeval," and "preconscious." It is this kind of knowledge that, according to Rosenfield, is characteristic of epideictic, but instead of using Plato's terms, Rosenfield reverses the valuation by making a distinction between cognition and understanding. The former is the ordinary knowledge associated with daily affairs and conventional thought. It tends to rely on "a predetermined system of analysis" and is "limited by needs, aims, formal rules, and static categories." Epideictic, however, does not work through cognition. It is grounded in understanding, a different way of knowing, which Rosenfield describes as having a "pliancy," as offering a "celebration of experience." Instead of depending on the logic of the enthymeme or the example, epideictic reUes on the "prelogical yet psychologically consequential" support of amplification, in which the speaker seeks to magnify and preserve the excellence of a person or an event. "In sum," says Rosenfield, "the celebration that is called for by the epideictic encounter is understanding, the mental activity of free men. Cognition, on the other hand, traffics in truth and verisimilitude; it is the mental baggage of debators, merchants, intellectuals, and others whose minds are not on such good terms with what is."2'

But how can epideictic achieve such extraordinary knowledge? Ritual theory suggests three ways, which I will apply to Socrates' oration: first, it connects its participants to the cosmos or to a transcendent principle; second, it takes its participants out of ordinary time and thus invites an extraordinary perspective of reality; and third, it addresses the mysteries of life by creating harmony among its apparent contradictions. First I will focus on how it connects its participants to the cosmos. Part of the power of epideictic, as suggested by ritual theory, lies in its ability to make life meaningful by establishing some intelligible order and by connecting the partici-

J'Rosenfield, 148-49.

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pants to the ongoing creation of their culture. It shows the audience how they fit in the cosmos by establishing a transcendent principle that gives cosmic sanction to their own social order. And it engages the audience in the act of creation itself by joining them together in the founding act, the beginnings of their identity as a culture.

Socrates' funeral oration achieves such a connection to the cosmos. One part of the speech that most obviously does that is at its beginning, where he takes his audience back to the foundation of Athens.30 It was, according to the myth, the place where, of all the other animals originating elsewhere, man was born, "who surpasses all others in understanding and alone acknowledges justice and the gods. It is a great proof that this account is true that our land gave birth to the forefathers of these our dead and of ourselves ."" (237d-e).3i He takes his hearers back to their common roots, a celebration of their beginnings, and their special place in the cosmos.

Socrates also spends much of the speech establishing for his audience a meaningful conception of their cosmos. He does this by fixing before them a transcendent principle that makes their otherwise chaotic and brutal history inteUigible and even worthy of celebration. The obvious focus in this funeral for the victims of war is on war; it must be explained and justified so that the deaths of the men they are honoring can be explained and justified. But instead of finding explanatory value in the vagaries of the gods, as earUer Greeks had done, Socrates finds his principle in virtue, a sense of justice, and a love of freedom. He estabhshes his theme of war as a virtuous defense of virtue early in the speech: the men of Athens, because they had "been nobly born and nurtured in full freedom,"

'"By "audience" I do not mean Menexenus, Socrates' real audience in the dialogue. Plato emphasizes the absurdity of the oration by making it appear to be a canned oration delivered only to Menexenus. Moreover, there is some confusion as to whose speech it is. Socrates calls it Aspasia's, but Menexenus chides him at the end, protesting that it must really be Socrates'. And, of course, it is actually being written down by Plato, probably under the influence of the famous speech of Pericles. However, I would like to follow Friedlander's suggestion (216) and set an appropriate scene: Socrates delivering his oration, standing above the funeral bier bearing the bodies of dead soldiers, addressing their families and the multitude of Athenians arrayed in grief before him. Perhaps this is an unlikely scenario, but it does provide the context for realizing the epideictic speech as meeting its ritual function.

'̂I am using R. E. Allen's English translation.

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found "it necessary to fight on behalf of freedom: to fight with Greeks in behalf of other Greeks and with Barbarians in behalf of all the Greeks" (239b). The reason for fighting the Persians needed little justification, to avoid being enslaved by the Barbarian (239d-41e), but the wars between Athenians and other Greeks required particular attention: "First jealousy, and from jealousy, grudging envy, whereby this city became engaged against her will in war with other Greeks" (242a; my emphasis). The theme of freedom also played a role in these wars, as Socrates points out that after the Persian Wars the Athenians "were the ones who first came to the aid of Greeks against Greeks in behalf of freedom" (242b). And the Athenians even fought with the restraint accorded to their virtue. They spared the lives of their fellow Greeks, "believing it right to wage war against their fellow tribesmen only to the point of victory, and not through the private anger of a city to destroy what is common to Greece, whereas against Barbarians war ought to be waged to destruction" (242d). Then a third war, the Sicilian Expedition, "unwanted and terrible" (242e), was taken up "in behalf of the freedom of Leontini; they sailed and aided Leontini because of sworn oaths. . . . The very enemies who fought them had more praise for their temperance and virtue than other men receive from their friends" (243a). The most difficult of all the wars to justify was the civil war. But even then Socrates describes his forefathers as fighting "in such a way that if it were fated for men to stand in party strife, there is no one who would not pray that his own city should suffer such illness in a similar manner" (243e). Socrates sums up Athens' miHtary history this way: "Indeed, if one wished to lodge a just accusation against the city, it could rightly be accused only of this, that it is ever too prone to pity and the servant of the weak. Even at such a time as that, she would not harden her heart or hold to her resolution to refuse aid to anyone being enslaved against those wronging them; she was moved by entreaty and helped them" (244e-45a).

It is suitable, in a setting in which the dead of war are being honored and buried, to look for reasons, some justification for war; otherwise, they have died for nothing, victims of a world gone crazy. Socrates uses the occasion of his funeral oration to do the suitable thing, to create an intelligible order for his auditors. War is virtuous. The reasons for going to war are virtuous, a love of freedom and a sense of justice, and war itself lives up to its virtuous motivation by being fought with honor and propriety. Plato was

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surely trying to ridicule epideictic rhetoric by putting such historical inaccuracy and jingoistic claptrap into the mouth of Socrates. Nevertheless, it is effective epideictic rhetoric because it addresses the situation, a time of great mourning, by explaining and justifying the event that has led to the mourning. It fixes before the auditors a transcendent principle that brings order and meaning to an otherwise chaotic and meaningless series of events. And in doing so, it achieves a ritual sense of extraordinary knowledge that extends beyond logic—and beyond the deliberate falsifications of the history.

The second way that the funeral oration generates extraordinary knowledge is by taking its hearers out of ordinary time, by making time, in a way, sacred. Ritual theory suggests that this special conception of time creates an awareness of immortality, a sense of being outside the temporal. In doing so, it also offers its participants a different foundation of order beyond everyday perceptions. Socrates also achieves this sacralization of time in his speech. He begins his story of the Persian Wars by entreating each member of the audience to "mentally place himself in that time . . . " (239d). Thus, the history itself, though a common history heard many times before, takes the audience out of ordinary time. Through it the listeners become aware of an historical immortality to which they belong, an immortality based on the memories of the men who died before and the men who are eulogized now. In fact, it is the ritual of the funeral oration itself that helps to create this sense of immortality because the participants of the ritual recognize that they are involved in an act that is removed from ordinary time: "All these men warded off the greatest and most difficult danger, and by reason of that virtue we eulogize them now as they will be eulogized in the future by those who come after us" (241c). Through the ritual oration the participants embrace past, present, and future. This is especially true at the most powerful moment of the oration, when the dead, through personification, speak to those they have left behind. Ordinary time is erased, a sense that is expressed at one point in the speech of the dead when they also link past, present, and future: "We who might have lived ignobly instead chose nobly to die, before we disgraced you and those who come after you, and before bringing shame on our own fathers and all our previous race" (246d). There is a strong sense of immortality here, of time beyond time, of life beyond life, of something more than what we perceive now. Such awareness of immortality helps to restore order and security at

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times of chaos because it can bring to the hearers of the epideictic oration a sense of belonging to something greater than what can be perceived by ordinary means.

The third way that epideictic can generate extraordinary knowledge is by creating harmony among the antinomies that characterize our lives. It has the power, as SulHvan said, to "transfigure[s] the world by reuniting it." Ritual knowledge is based in part on the idea that life is a mystery, a confusing array of contraries whose unity defies logic. One of the functions of ritual, then, is to address the mystery, the contraries of life, by helping its participants discover harmony therein, an awareness of both opposition and unity that logic cannot offer. Socrates' oration is sown with such antitheses, both as figures and as themes. As befits a funeral oration, the primary antinomy he addresses is Hfe and death. The dead soldiers, for example, "accepted death in exchange for the safety of the living" (237a). Many other references to death and life create a powerful sense of their disparate oneness, almost a symbiotic relationship: the dead have died for the lives of the living, who in turn keep the memories of the dead alive. Certainly the most dramatic presentation of the mysterious harmony of death and life occurs when the dead men dehver their exhortation to the living. Supposedly said to the speaker as the soldiers left for battle, the words have special power for the listeners because they give the effect of the dead being brought back to life, the boundaries between life and death melting away.

The speech is full of Gorgian antitheses, appropriate to the parody. More important, though, is the way Socrates deals with contraries in other ways. There are many antithetical themes, far too many to discuss in detail: Greek/Barbarian, freedom/slavery, justice/injustice, noble/ignoble, virtue/cowardice, words/deeds, mortality/immortality, grief/honor. Interestingly, even the constitutional government of Athens is treated in terms of opposites. Socrates calls it "Government by the Best, aristocracy, with the approval of the multitude" (238d). The government itself is, in a way, a mystery that can only be understood as a joining of opposites, so that "while the multitude has control over most things in the city, they give authority and rule to those they believe are the best . . " (238d). He also incorporates a number of paradoxes, figures composed of apparently contradictory terms that are nevertheless united. One is Socrates' reference to a defeat of the Athenians at the hands of the Spartans in which he shifts the ideas of defeat and victory: "We remain undefeated by others: we con-

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quered and defeated ourselves" (243d). A similar paradox explains the frustrating and confusing role of Athens in her later wars: "She helped the Greeks and released them from slavery, so that they were free until such time as they again enslaved themselves" (245a). In this paradox he combines the opposing terms of freedom and slavery, two great themes in the oration, to redefine what the other Greeks were doing, using their freedom to enslave themselves. We find another interesting paradox in the exhortation by the dead, who ask their parents not to grieve in excess, "[f]or they prayed not that their children should be immortal [athanatous], but that they should be good and well-renowned: and these, the greatest goods [megiston agathon], have been given them" (247d). The paradox is that it is in their death that they have achieved what their parents prayed for, uniting the seemingly contradictory terms megiston agathon and thanatos. Death becomes the greatest good because it is the path to the fame and honor their parents prayed for. The paradox offers paralogical answers to the mysteries of death and grief, the only kind of answers appropriate to such mysteries. In this way Socrates' oration addresses the mysteries of life, the mysteries embodied in apparently unresolvable contraries. It seeks resolution not through the logic of words, which cannot do it, but through the magic of words, which can.

Thus far I have considered the power of epideictic to achieve ritual knowledge, an extraordinary understanding that is beyond the merely cognitive. Now I will turn to a second ritual function, building communitas. Menexenus contains Plato's famous line: "If one had to speak well of Athenians to Peloponnesians, or of Pelo-ponnesians to Athenians, he would have to be a very good orator indeed to be persuasive. But when one performs before the very people he is praising, it is perhaps no great thing to appear to speak well" (235d). This seems to be a direct reference to Plato's argument in Gorgias that rhetoric is flattery, the counterpart to cookery, disguised as corrective justice (462d-66a). Plato takes great pains to illustrate this flattery in Socrates' funeral oration by inserting long passages in which an Athenian flatters Athenians. Obviously he is making fun of this particular aspect of the standard epitaphios. But he does not seem to understand that what he calls flattery is the power of epideictic rhetoric for creating among its listeners a sense of communitas, the anti-structure that breaks down societal divisions and defines a sense of community. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca also consider the power of epideictic in reinforc-

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ing communal bonds. Its purpose, they say, "is to increase the intensity of adherence to values held in common by the audience and speaker." Thus, it does not attempt to change beliefs but to strengthen the beliefs that already form a bond among the participants.^^ Done well, such discourse connects a people to a greater consciousness, creates order, and binds a people to the cosmos and to a community that is a reflection of that cosmos. And epideictic still serves its functions of social communication today. According to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, "Any society prizing its own values is therefore bound to promote opportunities for epideictic speeches to be delivered at regular intervals: ceremonies commemorating past events of national concern, religious services, eulogies of the dead, and similar manifestations fostering a communion of minds. "33

One cannot read this funeral oration without feeling overwhelmed by the fervor of Athenian nationalism, particularly in the whitewashing of its military history. But viewing the speech as ritual requires that we look beyond the superficial nationalism to see the communitas that it represents. And on the occasion of a funeral for the war dead, building communitas is critical. Socrates addresses the communal relationship of his auditors early in the speech and addresses it directly:

The cause of our constitution is equality of birth. Other cities are compounded of varied and unequal conditions of men, therefore their constitutions are also unequal in their diversity—they are tyrannies and oligarchies. And therefore they live acknowledging one another either as slaves or as masters. But we and those who belong to us, all of us brothers sprung from a single mother, do not think it fit to be either slave or master to each other: our equal birth according to nature compels us to seek equal rights according to law. We defer to each other in nothing except the appearance of virtue and wisdom. (238e-39a)

And from there to the end of the speech, when Socrates says, "But now you and all the rest, having lamented for the dead in common according to law, depart" (249c; my emphasis), the focus of the speech is on the common experience and common bond of the hearers. The heroes of Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea serve to unite the citizens, almost like relics of common worship. There is

'^Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 52, 54. '^Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 55.

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no mention of disagreements over any of the policies that sent Athenians to war so often, always leading to the death of its citizens and sometimes to more disastrous consequences. Even the reference to the civil war is an occasion for talking about unity, as Socrates points out that it is "necessary to reconcile them [the dead of that war] to each other by prayers and sacrifices so far as we are able, praying to those who govern them since we have been reconciled here" (244a).

Perhaps the most effective means Socrates uses to create a feeling of communitas is his treatment of the city of Athens itself, which becomes a central character, unifying both the speech and its hearers. Athens is described in terms of both father and mother (e.g., 237c) and its inhabitants as brothers (239a). It exists above the internecine wranglings of day-to-day life. It is the city that makes decisions; it is the city that wages war; it is the city that celebrates its victories; and it is the city that mourns its dead sons. And at the end of the speech when the parents and children of the dead are assured that their needs will be met, it is the city as beneficent surrogate who will take care of them: "You must surely recognize the concern of the city: she has laid down laws to care for the children and parents of those who die in war, and highest authority has commanded that they be watched over beyond all other citizens, in order that the fathers and mothers of these men not be wronged." The purpose of these devices is to create in the members of the audience a recognition of their oneness, a sense of communality that disregards, at least for a time, societal divisions such as class and wealth. This is much more than mere flattery. On this occasion of mourning, a sense of oneness, of communal bond, should be the goal of the speaker.

The third ritual function of epideictic rhetoric is to educate the audience, to serve, as Jennings suggested, "as a paradigm for all significant action." The possibihty of such an educational function is specifically ridiculed by Plato in the framing dialogue of Menexenus when he has Socrates describe the effect of epideictic oratory not as education but in terms of bewitching [goeteuousin] (235a) and seduction [the pejorative sense of anapeithomenoi] (235b). "This ascendancy," he says, "stays with me for three days together, and the sound of the speaker's voice rings so fresh in my ear that until four or five days have passed I can hardly recall who it is 1 am or where in the worid I am. I almost suppose I'm dwelhng in the Isles of the Blessed. So skillful are the orators" (235b-c). The humor at the expense of rhetoric is broad, the image of Socrates seduced into

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befuddlement by the words of funeral orators. This concept of the effect of epideictic is an elaboration of the line in Gorgias in which Socrates defines rhetoric as a knack for "producing a kind of gratification and pleasure." To which Polus innocently responds, "Then don't you think rhetoric is beautiful, if it can gratify people?" (262c). Plato's purpose, of course, is to show that epideictic rhetoric functions only to sweet-talk its audience into a deluded ecstasy, a dreamy thoughtlessness—and then to take advantage of it.

Plato either misunderstood—or understood all too well—the power of the epideictic speech to guide the behavior of its audience. Oravec touches on this power in her consideration of Aristotle's use of the term theoria, a word also used for audiences at Greek dramas, to describe the audience of epideictic. Oravec suggests that theoria implies an active rather than a passive role: "The audience of an epideictic speech understands or theorizes as a preparation for learning and ultimately for practical action." That practical action is not just a "cognitive" response but also an aesthetic one, because the seemingly excessive display of poetic language in epideictic oratory is actually a way of recounting "the 'truth' about the praiseworthy person since the essential quaUty of the object, not necessarily the empirical facts of his Ufe and deeds alone, produces the effect of verisimilitude." Rosenfield also focuses on the theoros of an epideictic speech, defining him as a " 'witness' . . to the radiance emanating from the event itself." Instead of judging or evaluating, the auditor's role is to recognize and appreciate the Being, or "'radiance," that emanates from an event or a person worthy of our acknowledgment. And this radiance becomes approachable through epideictic rhetoric because epideictic is located at the "nexus oi aletheia and thaumadzein," the former "the unconcealment of things in their 'thisness,' " and the latter "a beholding wonder, an overwhelming sense of exultation that sweeps over us when we catch a glimmer of excellence abiding in a familiar object or event. "3"

Thus, the pedagogy of epideictic oratory is one of the oldest and most effective: to exempUfy and model the praiseworthy (or blameworthy) by creating vivid (even if exaggerated) images with words. At the beginning of the dialogue, before the speech, Plato has Socrates say, "Actually, Menexenus, in many ways it's a fine thing to die in battle. A man gets a magnificent funeral even if he

«Oravec, 166, 171-72; Rosenfield, 136-40.

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dies poor and people praise him even if he was worthless" (234c). In the context of the educational value of modeling, these words sound particularly hollow. In the speech itself, however, Socrates seems to be very much aware of the pedagogical potential found in the "radiance" that derives from great acts of men. For instance, he says that the men of Marathon "taught [didaskaloi] others that the power of Persia was not invincible, that every multitude and all wealth yields to virtue. For the rest of Greece looked to the deed and having become students [mathetai: learned lessons] of the men of Marathon, dared to risk the battles that came afterward in defense of their own safety" (240d-e). And it was through the "sailors of Salamis that the rest of Greece was educated [paideu-thenai], taught [mathontas], and accustomed not to fear the Barbarians by land or by sea" (241c). Even the topoi of the oration—"Let us then first praise their nobility of birth, and second, their nurture and education, and after that let us proclaim the nobility of their deeds, and how worthily it befits their background" (237a-b)—are appropriate for learning through exemplification. But the pedagogical value is realized only insofar as those noble deeds are put into words, told and retold to every succeeding generation. That is why these men are eulogized, called to mind. At the end of the historical review, Socrates says.

Many beautiful things have been said of the deeds of those who lie here, and of many others who died for the city. And things still more numerous and more beautiful remain to be said: many days and nights would not suffice to recount them all. Therefore it is necessary that all remembering these men should exhort their children, as in war, not to desert the station of their forefathers, nor retreat and give way through vice. Therefore 1 also exhort you, children of good men, now and in times to come, wherever I may encounter some one of you, I shall remind you and continually exhort you to be as good as possible. (246a-b)

There is a direct relationship between the words of speakers and storytellers and the deeds of the listeners, who must imitate the goodness represented by the images created in the words.

And when, through Socrates' mysterious personification, the war dead address their children, it is actually all the dead heroes of Athens addressing all their "children," the citizens of Athens, the participants in the ritual. Socrates brings his models to life and puts the exhortation into their own mouths. This is powerful pedagogy. And this is what makes the personification so effective for all the

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listeners, not just those most immediately affected. The shadows of the heroes demand that their "children" should treasure the "beautiful and imposing" reputations of their ancestors, to live up to and even surpass those reputations and pass them on to their own children: "If you practice these precepts, you will come to join us as friends to friends, when your apportionment sends you forth. But if you neglect these precepts and behave basely, no one will receive you kindly" (247c). With these words Socrates invites Athenians to conduct their lives according to the models he has presented in his speech, to adhere to the values that have driven the city in the past and should drive it in the future. The true worthiness of each individual man who is eulogized is irrelevant here. The focus is on the image, the falsehood that is all the more true for being false, the fiction that inspires imitation. That is what epideictic rhetoric is all about.

I have my own interpretation of the ending of Menexenus. During the speech, Socrates had, in his imagination, transported himself to the burial ground outside Athens, the eyes of the multitude on him as he performed to perfection his funeral oration. And in his mind, as he dismisses the mourners, he sees the silent approbation on their faces, grateful for his words of explanation and consolation. Then he is abruptly brought back to reality by Menexenus' suspicious tone of voice as he says that such a fine speech really could not have been composed by Aspasia, a woman. Socrates grins sheepishly, realizing that he has gotten carried away and that the speech that had begun as a satire had become, despite his best intentions, a successful funeral oration. Then, slightly embarrassed, he dismisses Menexenus quickly with the vain promise of reciting more speeches later.

Socrates had become bewitched by the power of his own words; and indeed the power of words is an important theme in the oration. It is established in the opening lines of the speech when Socrates says that the city has already shown support of the dead by its deeds and it is now time to honor them with words: "For those who hear of well-done deeds well spoken of give honor and renown to those who do them" (236d-e). Socrates observes that the very earliest battles of the Athenians have been "sufficiently hymned" by the poets: "But of things which no poet ever yet has worthily grasped as gloriously worthy, and still therefore lie forgotten—these things, it seems to me, I should call to mind both by praising them and wooing others to do the same in song and

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Story befitting the doers of the deeds" (239c). Thus the words of the epideictic orator have a value similar to the words of the poet in maintaining the collective memory of the culture. Moreover, in reference to the heroes of Marathon, Socrates says, "Let these men therefore be given the highest awards by our words" (239e; emphasis mine). And words have the power to, as Socrates says many times, "call to mind" the events of the past. They provide a crucial link between past, present, and future: "We eulogize them now as they will be eulogized in the future by those who come after us" (241c). In eulogizing the war dead of Athens, their deeds become words and live only as there are words to give them life. And the words themselves influence the deeds, or at least the values, of those who listen now and in the future.

It is not surprising that Socrates would be bewitched by the power of his words, because epideictic oratory is about the power of words. Instead of understanding language as purely instrumental, the tool of poUtics, of justice, of the marketplace, epideictic reveals to us that language has power beyond the efficient, beyond the practical, beyond the measurable. Perhaps Plato was unaware of this power. Or perhaps, as Jasper Neel claims about Plato and writing,^' he was acutely aware of the epideictic potential in language and sought to sabotage it by criticizing it so forcefully and so eloquently. Either way, the funeral oration in Menexenus offers an ideal case for examining the ritual power of epideictic discourse because it provides a direct counterpoint to Plato's criticisms. He condemns it for leading not to episteme but to doxa, which can be false, but it actually leads to extraordinary knowledge that is beyond the merely logical. He accuses it of flattery, but what he labels as flattery is actually the building of communitas. He laughingly dismisses it as a form of seduction, leaving the audience with a giddy feeling while praising the less than praiseworthy, but he does not credit the educational value of creating vivid models, their ability to show people the values of society and offer them guidance in the conduct of their lives.

It is by understanding epideictic as ritual that these functions become clear. Our Western tradition of dogmatic pragmatism, however, has radically devalued noninstrumental uses of behavior and language. If we don't understand ritual, we are apt to condemn it as

35Jasper Neel, Plato, Derrida, and Writing (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1988), 1-99.

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mere ritual. And if we don't understand epideictic, we are apt to condemn it as mere meaningless display. But the study of ritual, because of its important role in both secular and religious cultures, has led the way in recapturing the value of noninstrumental behavior and language. Ritual, thus, offers a way to understand epideictic, a guide for explication as well as a standard for evaluation. Ritual is particularly useful because it provides an accessible paradigm that allows us to treat epideictic as a common human experience, not as something isolated and unusual—and therefore suspect. Finally, ritual enables us to conceive of epideictic not as diminished because it breaks the rules of instrumental discourse, but, for the same reason, as an augmented rhetoric that possesses a potential that is beyond instrumental language.

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the ritual functions of epideictic rhetoric: the case of ...-ch. perelman and l. olbrechts-tyteca,...

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