What do you think?
Rate this book
Studies in Rhetoric & Communication
Logos and Power in Isocrates and Aristotle
This specialised study of ancient rhetoric compares and contrasts the works of Isocrates and Aristotle, arguing that Isocrates was every bit a worthy intellectual rival to Aristotle, despite the historical limelight focusing on the latter. Haskins' review of their rhetorical theories and practices, placed within the contemporary intellectual climate, leads to the conclusion that Aristotle's works about rhetorical education may have been a reaction to Isocrates. `Haskins develops her consideration of Isocrates and Aristotle in chapters on orality/literacy, poetic/rhetoric, kairos /genre, identification/persuasion, and social change/social performance. These frames... create the ground for analysis that is both historically informative and theoretically provocative' - from the editor's preface.
172 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2004
19 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 27, 2025
An original recasting of Aristotle in order to rehabilitate Isocrates. Here are my notes
Logos and Power in Isocrates and Aristotle by Ekaterina Haskins
P.11 When perceived through Aristotle’s conceptual lens, rhetoric is akin to an instrument. It is an arsenal of persuasive means that are external to rhetors and their historical situations. Isocrates extant writings do not methodically specify the governing rules of rhetoric but in his self-reflexive and politically charged prose, he assigns discourse to a socially constitutive, not merely instrumental function.
P.16 His avoidance of the courts and the assembly– the places where citizens could influence the affairs of the polis through the power of their oral performance– marks Isocrates for his fellow Athenians as one of the quietists…. These individuals’ choice of reading and writing as well as their absence from public spaces of the polis signal “disenchantment” with democracy and the desire for different social and political discourse.
P.31 Aristotle shares with Plato a distrust of the performance-centered culture and its effects on the training of citizens. It is, by contrast, Isocrates’ view of performance (mimesis) as a source of civic education that Aristotle counters with his separation of performance into poetics and rhetoric.
P.41 In the Antidosis, Isocrates reiterates his objection to the Platonic search for an art that “will implant justice in the souls of the citizens.” (Gorgias 504d), using nearly the same phraseology as Plato “ I think that an art that can produce self-control and justice in those who are by nature badly disposed to virtue has never existed and does not now exist.
P.69 Muthoi of Homeric epics are often boastful tirades of powerful men who challenge the authority of their peers or defy words of command uttered by gods. Martin catalogues heroic muthoi into types according to situations: prayer, lament, supplication, commending, insulting, and narrating from memory
P.72 Isocrates’ ideal speaker seeks out the most historically and culturally memorable types of speech even as he promotes his compositions as both unique and timely. He does not invent new discourses but orchestrates the already heard and repeated utterances.
P.72 In his advice to Demonicus, Socrates states that there are but two occasions for speech– when the subject is one you thoroughly know and when it is one on which it is necessary to speak.
P.80 Isocratean education (paideia) conceives of the process of discursive imitation and performance as a never-ending and fully externalized development of a political agent
P.83 [Burke] .. to be persuaded, one must be ready to identify with the language of persuasion
P.84 Identification as a theory of rhetorical “oneness” is perhaps Burke’s most profound contribution to contemporary social thought.
Identification is affirmed with earnestness— precisely because there is division. Identification is compensatory to division. If men were not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity. If men were wholly and truly of one substance, absolute communication would be of man’s very essence. It would not be an ideal, as it is now, partly embodied in material conditions and partly frustrated by these same conditions….
P.85 All these different senses of power are anchored in the function of language to produce , through a web of social practices, willing compliance in individuals. Consent, in turn, makes individuals into subjects in both social and discursive senses. This understanding of power as a productive rather than merely oppressive mechanism of socialization is now shared by many social theorists. But the debate about constraining and enabling aspects of power continues. As representative voices in this ongoing debate, Louis Althusser and Judith Butler are of particular interest with regard to the identity-shaping power of language. Althusser’s notion of interpellation posits a structure of power relations to which the subject is ineluctably subordinated. Butler’s is more of a performative and, as such, more rhetorically productive theory: she imagines the subject as a crucible of negotiation of power relations, not as a mere receptacle of the voice of authority
P.86 Butler thus points out the central drawback of Althusser’s theory: its failure to conceptualize the locus of power within the subject. …In other words, the process of identification (to use Burke’s term) is constantly thwarted by a possibility of failure, of refused or subverted identification…. From Plato’s perspective, the voice of authority emanating from the “inspired” poet is absentmindedly performed by a rhapsode and passively yet ecstatically received by the listeners. Plato assigns the same pathological identification to the democratic crowd that delights in the numbing repetition of praise for anonymous Athenians fallen in battle. The direct consequence of this chain of identifications is the weakening of the authenticity of self and its substitution by a fictitious identity.
P.90 Isocrates depiction of logos as hegemon reinforces an image of a unifying communal exchange. In this picture, agonistic deliberation and introspective contemplation are continuous with each other rather than segregated into discrete areas of the public and the private.
P.93 The distinction of Isocratean address from speeches of other rhetors is that he elects to examine the state of the politeia not for the sake of any immediate action but in order to further the collective reflection. This apparent incongruity between the discursive form of the composition and its functions is noteworthy
P.94 Isocrates posits the identity of an Athenian citizen as a political and aesthetic model to be emulated by whoever happens to heed his discourse
P.95 The self-understanding to which Isocrates seeks to inspire allegiance among his various audiences is more a rhetorical composite rather than a historically or geographically bound moral code. As such, this composite portrait assimilates both the features of an aristocratic ethos passed on from the archaic times through the performance of poetry and drama and the notion of answerability of a political agent inherent in a democratic political exchange. For Isocrates, then, power is not tied to or controlled by institutions; rather, it is a contingent effect of identification.
P.99 Over and against readings of the Rhetoric that point to audience participation in the construction of enthymemes as a sign of a robust theory of civic discourse, I contend that Aristotle actually constructs rhetoric as a tool for rectifying the “unnatural” condition of democracy. In other words, rhetoric can be viewed as a discursive mechanism for redirecting a democratic audience toward the condition Aristotle describes as constitutional government (politeia) in his mature public philosophy. In such a regime the many fulfill their functional role in the partnership (koinonia) for the good life without aspiring to rule.
P.105 For Farrell, a community is a “conscious and civilized audience” whose “collective nerve endings are alive to the interests of others within a society”... This ideal, espoused by the best American progressives, including Dewey and Mead, posits a relationship in which the human community is an extension of self and self is a reflection of the other. Farrell, too, sees his concept of social knowledge as “merely the surface tracing of a deeper identity, between the self and is conscious extension– the human community. This is a powerful and ameliorative vision. However, if it is indeed indebted to Aristotle, as Farrell claims, this ideal has little to do with the type of discourse Aristotle calls rhetoric.
P.107 Farrell’s noble intention– to find a theory of discourse that “allows us to envision the audience as something more distinctive than the popular contemporary models of “target,” “market,” “mass,” or “voyeur” – projects onto Rhetoric some of the constructs that Aristotle reserves for ethics.
P.121 Aristotle aspires to make the public language of democracy, with its conflicting values and its tradition of display and contest, conformable to the purposes of a properly habituated moral agent…Asa neural capacity, Aristotle’s rhetoric cannot stand on its own as a discourse of civic identity and political deliberation. To become such discourse , it must be animated by phronesis, which is autonomous from and superior to techne. The rhetorical gent arrives on a scene that has already been settled through extrarhetorical means and uses existing means of persuasion
P.125 The democratic tenor of Isocratean political aesthetics may seem suspect, for it is complicated, if not tarnished, by the nationalism of Athenian democracy and misappropriation of Isocrates’ heritage by modern nationalistic historians. Yet by acknowledging both of these tendencies – one past, the other still present– we can move beyond labeling Isocrates’ discourse as progressive or reactionary.
P.126 Isocrates’ rhetoric challenges our traditional association of politics with institutions and our equation of democracy with rational decision making by the populace.
P.128 In contrast with Aristotle’s rigid conception of citizenly virtue asa procedural function of a well-ordered state, Isocrates aestheticizes and thereby makes desirable the identity of a citizen. In so doing, he builds upon a longstanding and mutually reinforcing relationship between virtue and democratic discourse. By fusing idea of individual merit wit the performative ideal of accountability to the polis, Isocrates resists the inclination of theorists such as Plato and Aristotle to disconnect the discourse of ethics from the discourse of democracy.
P.132 Contemporary cultural mimesis, like that of classical Greece, is a process by which new generations acquire intellectual skills and political identities. Unlike the Greks, contemporary Americans are habituated by mass media into patterns of thinking and acting that often benefit not themselves or their communities, but corporate interests. The ethos such cultural reproduction fosters is that of detached cynicism and political apathy.
Logos and Power in Isocrates and Aristotle by Ekaterina Haskins
P.11 When perceived through Aristotle’s conceptual lens, rhetoric is akin to an instrument. It is an arsenal of persuasive means that are external to rhetors and their historical situations. Isocrates extant writings do not methodically specify the governing rules of rhetoric but in his self-reflexive and politically charged prose, he assigns discourse to a socially constitutive, not merely instrumental function.
P.16 His avoidance of the courts and the assembly– the places where citizens could influence the affairs of the polis through the power of their oral performance– marks Isocrates for his fellow Athenians as one of the quietists…. These individuals’ choice of reading and writing as well as their absence from public spaces of the polis signal “disenchantment” with democracy and the desire for different social and political discourse.
P.31 Aristotle shares with Plato a distrust of the performance-centered culture and its effects on the training of citizens. It is, by contrast, Isocrates’ view of performance (mimesis) as a source of civic education that Aristotle counters with his separation of performance into poetics and rhetoric.
P.41 In the Antidosis, Isocrates reiterates his objection to the Platonic search for an art that “will implant justice in the souls of the citizens.” (Gorgias 504d), using nearly the same phraseology as Plato “ I think that an art that can produce self-control and justice in those who are by nature badly disposed to virtue has never existed and does not now exist.
P.69 Muthoi of Homeric epics are often boastful tirades of powerful men who challenge the authority of their peers or defy words of command uttered by gods. Martin catalogues heroic muthoi into types according to situations: prayer, lament, supplication, commending, insulting, and narrating from memory
P.72 Isocrates’ ideal speaker seeks out the most historically and culturally memorable types of speech even as he promotes his compositions as both unique and timely. He does not invent new discourses but orchestrates the already heard and repeated utterances.
P.72 In his advice to Demonicus, Socrates states that there are but two occasions for speech– when the subject is one you thoroughly know and when it is one on which it is necessary to speak.
P.80 Isocratean education (paideia) conceives of the process of discursive imitation and performance as a never-ending and fully externalized development of a political agent
P.83 [Burke] .. to be persuaded, one must be ready to identify with the language of persuasion
P.84 Identification as a theory of rhetorical “oneness” is perhaps Burke’s most profound contribution to contemporary social thought.
Identification is affirmed with earnestness— precisely because there is division. Identification is compensatory to division. If men were not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity. If men were wholly and truly of one substance, absolute communication would be of man’s very essence. It would not be an ideal, as it is now, partly embodied in material conditions and partly frustrated by these same conditions….
P.85 All these different senses of power are anchored in the function of language to produce , through a web of social practices, willing compliance in individuals. Consent, in turn, makes individuals into subjects in both social and discursive senses. This understanding of power as a productive rather than merely oppressive mechanism of socialization is now shared by many social theorists. But the debate about constraining and enabling aspects of power continues. As representative voices in this ongoing debate, Louis Althusser and Judith Butler are of particular interest with regard to the identity-shaping power of language. Althusser’s notion of interpellation posits a structure of power relations to which the subject is ineluctably subordinated. Butler’s is more of a performative and, as such, more rhetorically productive theory: she imagines the subject as a crucible of negotiation of power relations, not as a mere receptacle of the voice of authority
P.86 Butler thus points out the central drawback of Althusser’s theory: its failure to conceptualize the locus of power within the subject. …In other words, the process of identification (to use Burke’s term) is constantly thwarted by a possibility of failure, of refused or subverted identification…. From Plato’s perspective, the voice of authority emanating from the “inspired” poet is absentmindedly performed by a rhapsode and passively yet ecstatically received by the listeners. Plato assigns the same pathological identification to the democratic crowd that delights in the numbing repetition of praise for anonymous Athenians fallen in battle. The direct consequence of this chain of identifications is the weakening of the authenticity of self and its substitution by a fictitious identity.
P.90 Isocrates depiction of logos as hegemon reinforces an image of a unifying communal exchange. In this picture, agonistic deliberation and introspective contemplation are continuous with each other rather than segregated into discrete areas of the public and the private.
P.93 The distinction of Isocratean address from speeches of other rhetors is that he elects to examine the state of the politeia not for the sake of any immediate action but in order to further the collective reflection. This apparent incongruity between the discursive form of the composition and its functions is noteworthy
P.94 Isocrates posits the identity of an Athenian citizen as a political and aesthetic model to be emulated by whoever happens to heed his discourse
P.95 The self-understanding to which Isocrates seeks to inspire allegiance among his various audiences is more a rhetorical composite rather than a historically or geographically bound moral code. As such, this composite portrait assimilates both the features of an aristocratic ethos passed on from the archaic times through the performance of poetry and drama and the notion of answerability of a political agent inherent in a democratic political exchange. For Isocrates, then, power is not tied to or controlled by institutions; rather, it is a contingent effect of identification.
P.99 Over and against readings of the Rhetoric that point to audience participation in the construction of enthymemes as a sign of a robust theory of civic discourse, I contend that Aristotle actually constructs rhetoric as a tool for rectifying the “unnatural” condition of democracy. In other words, rhetoric can be viewed as a discursive mechanism for redirecting a democratic audience toward the condition Aristotle describes as constitutional government (politeia) in his mature public philosophy. In such a regime the many fulfill their functional role in the partnership (koinonia) for the good life without aspiring to rule.
P.105 For Farrell, a community is a “conscious and civilized audience” whose “collective nerve endings are alive to the interests of others within a society”... This ideal, espoused by the best American progressives, including Dewey and Mead, posits a relationship in which the human community is an extension of self and self is a reflection of the other. Farrell, too, sees his concept of social knowledge as “merely the surface tracing of a deeper identity, between the self and is conscious extension– the human community. This is a powerful and ameliorative vision. However, if it is indeed indebted to Aristotle, as Farrell claims, this ideal has little to do with the type of discourse Aristotle calls rhetoric.
P.107 Farrell’s noble intention– to find a theory of discourse that “allows us to envision the audience as something more distinctive than the popular contemporary models of “target,” “market,” “mass,” or “voyeur” – projects onto Rhetoric some of the constructs that Aristotle reserves for ethics.
P.121 Aristotle aspires to make the public language of democracy, with its conflicting values and its tradition of display and contest, conformable to the purposes of a properly habituated moral agent…Asa neural capacity, Aristotle’s rhetoric cannot stand on its own as a discourse of civic identity and political deliberation. To become such discourse , it must be animated by phronesis, which is autonomous from and superior to techne. The rhetorical gent arrives on a scene that has already been settled through extrarhetorical means and uses existing means of persuasion
P.125 The democratic tenor of Isocratean political aesthetics may seem suspect, for it is complicated, if not tarnished, by the nationalism of Athenian democracy and misappropriation of Isocrates’ heritage by modern nationalistic historians. Yet by acknowledging both of these tendencies – one past, the other still present– we can move beyond labeling Isocrates’ discourse as progressive or reactionary.
P.126 Isocrates’ rhetoric challenges our traditional association of politics with institutions and our equation of democracy with rational decision making by the populace.
P.128 In contrast with Aristotle’s rigid conception of citizenly virtue asa procedural function of a well-ordered state, Isocrates aestheticizes and thereby makes desirable the identity of a citizen. In so doing, he builds upon a longstanding and mutually reinforcing relationship between virtue and democratic discourse. By fusing idea of individual merit wit the performative ideal of accountability to the polis, Isocrates resists the inclination of theorists such as Plato and Aristotle to disconnect the discourse of ethics from the discourse of democracy.
P.132 Contemporary cultural mimesis, like that of classical Greece, is a process by which new generations acquire intellectual skills and political identities. Unlike the Greks, contemporary Americans are habituated by mass media into patterns of thinking and acting that often benefit not themselves or their communities, but corporate interests. The ethos such cultural reproduction fosters is that of detached cynicism and political apathy.
Displaying 1 of 1 review