THE BRAWL IN THE LECTURE HALL

A video on youtube –

Dramatises two distinct modes of dialectic.

The area of contention is neither here nor there.

Nor does it matter whom you believe took the day.

What the debate points up is the difference between a statement intended to weather objective scrutiny –

Peer review –

And one content to work a room.

Persuade in person.

Now.

Between academic argument –

Set out on a page –

And legal –

Presented in a courtroom.

Betwixt proving and persuading.

Disproving and dissuading.

Or attempting to do so.

One deals in eternals.

Transcendentals.

Universals.

The second in the temporal.

Local.

Personal.

THE RUMPUS IN THE CAMPUS

Chomsky’s delivery is deliberate.

Passionless.

Dull, even.

He cites sources.

Invites the audience to test them.

Falsify him.

Anticipates challenges outside the room.

Subsequent reappraisal.

A drawing through the dialectical wringer.

Be wary of me, he cautions –

I may be tricking you.

Dershowitz’ patter is imbued with character.

The personal.

Touching.

He is content to charm as much as convince.

So, doesn’t ballast his delivery with detail.

Knowing it’ll bore his listeners.

He drops names as often as references.

Friends.

Fellow travellers.

Offers anecdotes rather than sworn statements.

Employs all the old oratorical tricks.

Aware that he’ll have to clinch the sale with his spittle wet on your shirt-front or not at all.

Academic versus attorney –

The first appeals to the global community.

Out of time.

Space.

Offers handouts for closer reading.

The second addresses those in the room only.

Today.

Chomsky versus Dershowitz –

The distinction is fundamental.

Foundational.

It’s the difference between philosopher and Sophist.

Scientist and salesman.

Socrates and Protagoras.

Belief in eternal forms versus man is the measure of all things.

Idealist versus realist.

SOPHISM HONESTLY

Convention has it that Sophists and Rhetors faced an extinction event in the classical world.

This is not the case.

Their concerns segued into law.

PR.

Politics.

Anywhere that truth can be contested.

Commodified.

The higher one ascends on the social scale, the more sophistical one becomes.

The summit is negotiable only after faith in everything –

Barring ambition –

Is renounced.

Perhaps this is the consequence of Protagoras’ dictum that man is the measure of all things.

If truth is contingent –

Motiveful –

The only skill worth acquiring is how to mask this fact.

Win an argument.

Convince an opponent –

Audience –

Jury –

That my truth is the truth.

WRESTLER KAYFABES RHETOR

Plato had Socrates rubbish Rhetors in the gorgeous Gorgias.

Sophists in the problematic Protagoras.

Why did author make antagonist so hostile to both practises?

He anticipated the charge that –

For all Socrates’ claims to be in the service of hard truth –

His method demonstrated its malleability.

Mutability.

Plato’s equivocal portraits resulted from cognitive dissonance.

Serve as surreptitious attacks on a man he rated.

But realised had flaws.

Think Nietzsche and Wagner.

The Antichrist never denounced the sorcerer’s music.

But everything else -?

Conversely, Plato admired Socrates’ aspirations –

Methods –

But had reservations about his art.

How else to account for all the dialogues that end in Socrates not proving his point?

WHERE’S MY PET PHILOSOPHER?

My father once told a joke about a man who accused his neighbour’s cat of consuming his family’s Sunday roast.

The pet’s owner asked how much the joint weighed.

Then, sat his cat on the scales.

And protested: if my cat ate your beef, where’s my cat?

Similarly, if Plato’s Socrates was the historical Socrates, where’s my Plato?

If not, who was the real Socrates?

Perhaps Plato repurposed him into PlatoSocrates.

No one’s certain of the correct chronological order of composition of the dialogues.

What is evident, however, is that their author incorporated critiques of the stonemason’s son in his adventures.

Did he realise the awful truth?

That Socrates was a Sophist-Rhetor?

Another contemporary asserted as much dramatically.

The Clouds is a satire that scourges the Sophists.

No City Dionysia prize for guessing whom Aristophanes made their representative.

PERSPECTIVAL RELATIVISM

PlatoSocrates argues that Sophists peddle fallacious propositions.

Undermining faith in objective truth.

Given Protagoras’ dictum, PlatoSocrates’ objection reminds us of Woody Allen’s Love And Death.

The scene where failed assassin Boris Grushenko tells Napoleon:

‘You’re a tyrant, and a dictator, and you start wars!’

And the emperor responds:

‘Why is he reciting my credits?’

Similarly, Protagoras might have responded to PlatoSocrates’ condemnation:

Why is he reciting my mission statement?

HAVE ROW, WILL TRAVEL

Sophists charged for doling out wisdom.

So, were employed by nobles, in the main.

Travelled to argue the highest bidder’s case.

Or not argue same?

Their reputations must have projected a fastest-gun-in-the-west bluster.

Entitled them to profit from a brand of the hustler’s dilemma.

Let on you believe truth subjective –

No case incontestable –

Prove yourself able –

And you’ll scare away most challengers.

Or compel them to concede untried.

In any case, PlatoSocrates painted them as superficial.

Mercenary.

As if that gainsaid their belief.

Wouldn’t have remained a valid criticism were it incontrovertible.

Why did PlatoSocrates insinuate otherwise?

He feared the upshot of the realisation that nothing is worth fighting for inherently –

Though anything can be defended actually.

Its insinuation that philosophers practise an occupation merely.

Otherwise, the sordid question of remuneration was of no consequence.

PlatoSocrates took no money for what he did.

Does that make what he said true?

It doesn’t mean he wasn’t a Sophist even.

Merely an unpaid blockhead.

Neither does it follow that he was –

On that account –

A lover of truth.

Or beloved of it.

Besides, PlatoSocrates must have been recompensed for what he did.

In kind if not coin.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to do it.

Maybe PlatoSocrates was a full-time stonemason?

Philosophised on his weekends off?

That doesn’t render his pronouncements truer than those of the materialistic Sophists.

RHETORIC FLOURISHES

PlatoSocrates claimed that rhetoric was unassociated with truth-seeking.

Proving.

As if it’s only in philosophy that expression is distinct from message.

That this isn’t the case in every form of communication.

No matter how objective a pronouncement seems –

Rational –

Logical –

It remains a brand of rhetoric.

Agenda motivates every articulation.

An unspoken desire.

Will to prove something.

No matter how pure it sounds.

Why did PlatoSocrates fail to follow this train of thought through to its inevitable conclusion?

Doing so would have sabotaged his own enterprise.

CONCRETING OVER ABSTRACTO

Mathematicians project perfect universes in which to work their wonders.

These have little correspondence with the one they inhabit.

In bed, we glimpse familiar objects through closed eyelids.

On opening our eyes, we know –

Without investigation –

That corresponding artefacts in the waking world were unsullied by our unconscious adventures.

Similarly, PlatoSocrates conjured perfect word-views.

Abstractions crude as cave paintings.

Never proved that the objects they represented could pass through the flambéed hoops the tokens were subjected to.

So, his victories were verbal merely.

Verified/repudiated the syllogistic skills of his opponents only.

TEMPORARY SOPHISTRY

Russell was harsh on the Schoolmen.

Accused them of special pleading.

Rather than philosophising proper.

Since they knew the answer in advance of every enquiry.

But we all behave similarly.

Believe first.

Root about for proof afterwards.

Vindications of instinct.

Sophistry commodified a natural inclination.

We believe in nothing –

Anything –

Until the second we pronounce faith in something.

It sticks within us.

Weighs us down.

Until another belief surfaces to dislodge it.

Then, we renounce the old faith.

Denounce it.

This is a failing of the Sophists for PlatoSocrates.

Their ability to assert the validity/invalidity of any proposition temporarily.

Without having a particular reason –

Passion –

For so doing.

Synthesising faith, they betray the superficial nature of all syllogisms.

Paint them as products of art merely.

Effort.

Not objective exposition.

Intimate they’re as strong as their handler only.

As valid as their champion’s facility for convincing solely.

Their sleight of mind.

PlatoSocrates was one of these tricksters of the light.

The worst of them.

For being the best of them.

His beliefs weren’t truths revealed via language.

Only appeared true due to the persuasiveness of his language.

So, even if he was adjudged to have defeated Protagoras on the day –

History has him losing to him ever after.

Proving his larger point:

You don’t have an ideal –

Have to have one –

Merely a will.

TECHNICIAN OMISSION

PlatoSocrates’ attack on the mercenary nature of the Sophists is a red herring.

Their freely given suggestion that philosophising is application of technique is their unpardonable transgression.

The insinuation that it is the art of affirming will.

That all that a syllogistic victory demonstrates is the force of the arguer.

Not the argument.

PlatoSocrates claimed that all can be made to uncover the truth.

What he meant was that all can be made to sound like PlatoSocrates.

To him, the same thing.

To everyone else this seems indistinguishable from what Protagoras was peddling.

PlatoSocrates’ method of denunciation –

Relying on an ability to demonstrate that an opponent is not expert in their subject field –

Is a talent itself.

Not a product of an innate understanding of all things.

So, when he argued that the gift of a rhapsode is to relate a message –

Not verify it –

Understand what was contained within it –

He proved he was capable of disproving without true knowledge of the object.

Negating everything without knowing anything.

Associating him with the Sophists’ closest latter-day counterparts.

Lawyers argue over events they have no true knowledge of.

In an effort to sway an equally ignorant jury.

That PlatoSocrates had something to say on every subject implies as much.

Though he conceded that he knew nothing –

He pronounced on everything.

KNOW NOTHING KNOW-ALL

PlatoSocrates was the Chauncey Gardiner of the ancient world.

The commoner-gardener ascended the acme of American society –

Eventually becoming a presidential prospect –

After his simple-mindedness was mistaken for wisdom.

PlatoSocrates wasn’t joking when he claimed he knew nothing.

But the Pythia may have been pulling our leg when she affirmed he was the wisest of Greeks.

Unless she, too, was signalling that wisdom is a product of technique.

PUTTING PERSPECTIVE IN PERSPECTIVE

Protagoras’ dictum is now a commonplace.

PlatoSocrates didn’t credit it.

Believed instead that there was such a thing as impersonal truth.

That he could reveal it, moreover.

That there was a solution to every problem.

And that he could provide it.

That it was possible to sculpt abstract till it acquired the patina of object.

Transmute a philosophical contention into a law of natural science.

Claims as hubristic as Protagoras’.

More so, because personal.

Not man is the measure of all things –

Moi, PlatoSocrates, am the measurer of all things.

THE PINK ELENCHUS IN THE ROOM

Elenchus was something PlatoSocrates never deconstructed.

Accepted on faith.

As a gift from the gods.

Believed in the gods only in so much –

For as much –

As they gifted it him.

Consequently, he regarded every victory it brought him as proof of an absolute truth.

Not personal triumph merely.

Local.

SUCCESS TO EXCESS

The sheer volume of PlatoSocrates’ upendings undermine their claim to objective worth.

He encountered a stranger –

An intelligence never experienced –

Ideals unknown –

And ruptured them.

Always.

His conclusion:

Truth won.

Ours:

PlatoSocrates won.

Always would.

Winning was his art.

Sport.

Truth never at issue.

Virtue.

PlatoSocrates merely insinuated –

Frustrated –

And persuaded.

Demonstrated will to power applied to truth telling.

But will to power nonetheless.

That Elenchus succeeded in every instance suggests it was technique.

Bears out his solidarity with Sophistry.

Its mission.

Not truth but victory.

IT IS UNFINISHED

Christ was accused of being a Sophist.

Small wonder, then, that parallels with PlatoSocrates abound.

Astound.

The Oracle at Delphi was PlatoSocrates’ Baptist.

Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes his disciples.

Both seers were blind to worldly wealth.

Social status.

And were sent to trial before a Sanhedrin.

A Pilate.

People.

Both were implored to carry their own crosses as a consequence.

Even the New Testament’s problem passages –

The agony in the garden –

Lament on the cross –

Have analogues in Plato’s gospel:

All those dialogues that end in aporia.

Why did Plato show PlatoSocrates failing so often?

Perhaps the betrayals of earthly fallibility were incorporated to conjure verisimilitude.

Make us believe because they were absurd.

Or was Plato making a point?

That the duty of the philosopher is to question.

Inspire inquiry.

Not satisfy ego by silencing competition.

Settling on a conclusion.

PlatoSocrates won every argument he engaged in.

Or drove it into an impasse.

Except when it mattered.

At the trial for his life.

Or did he want to die?

His behaviour on the last day intimates he phaedo’d away willingly.

Like Jesus.

Why?

Perhaps PlatoSocrates realised that mastery of dialectic was, finally, self-defeating.

Self-cancelling.

APE TO APORIA

A state of aporia arises when both debaters are unable to find a way through.

Or neither can be bothered to go on.

The latter may explain why one appears to prevail too.

The silent party doesn’t lose their way.

Or the argument.

Just the will to persevere.

So, Plato was hinting that PlatoSocrates’ principal gift was tenacity.

He was alleged to have had an extraordinary constitution, after all.

Demonstrated as much in battle –

Braving the elements –

The wine cup.

Perhaps he had more staying power than those about him when it came to argument as well.

OVERWEENING AMBITIONLESSNESS

PlatoSocrates’ encouraged others to do as he did.

What was that?

The single –

Defining –

Feature of his character was his will to undermine.

Deconstruct.

PlatoSocrates was more concerned with questioning propositions –

Deposing givens –

Than constructing alternatives.

That’s why he never wrote himself.

The stonemason’s son was a battering ram.

Not a crane.

The will to build wasn’t in him.

And, why bother when you can conquer in conversation?

Never have to plug niggling inconsistencies?

Aporia, then, wasn’t an occupational hazard –

But the object.

So, Plato didn’t fail in ending some dialogues that way –

But in not ending every dialogue that way.

THE CHARM CHARM

PlatoSocrates’ greatest gift was charm.

His winning personality.

Ability to convince others that his prejudices –

Allied with wondrous wordplay –

Were wisdom.

This vindicated Sophistry.

Its intimation that personality –

Persona –

Instils conviction.

Compels as truth.

Or was this Plato’s point, rather?

Was he the crypto-Sophist?

PROPRIETORIAL EDITORIAL

It is unknown when Plato penned his attacks on the Sophists and Rhetoricians.

What is certain is that he had reason to do so after he inherited property.

And established a school.

The Academy’s principal attendees were upper-class men.

Sophists and Rhetoricians, then, were the competition.

SOCRATES-PROTAGORAS NOW

After first viewing the video, I came down on the side of Chomsky.

The academic.

I dismissed the advocate’s argument.

Method of argumentation.

Second time round something occurred to me:

Academic arguments always fail.

Why?

They prove susceptible to bias.

Mood.

So, though they may be our best hope –

Like the scientific method –

They are, finally, only broader versions of the attorney’s argument.

The best we have, but imperfect.

And the reason why one fails is the reason why t’other does:

Personality.

Not individual –

Personal –

But cultural.

So, though academics strive to be objective –

Follow the facts –

Somewhere along the way they slide back.

Revert to types.

Reveal that every academic argument is a form of Soylent Green.

And behind it all is people.

Inviting an accusation even Protagoras couldn’t debate away:

Ambition.

Which came first:

The belief that man is the measure of all things?

Or the realisation that a career might be built on the contention?

Consequently, scientist and salesman aren’t so very different.

Apparent distinctions revolve around the fourth dimension.

The difference between a single game of football and an entire season.

Any team can win one game.

The day.

It takes one of quality to own a season.

Yes –

But does that make it a better team necessarily?

On every score?

Analogy transposed to actuality, is an academic argument better necessarily?

It lasts longer.

Usually.

But is it sounder?

As in all combat, each opponent believes they have God on their side.

Their god.

Objectivity.

Truth.

Are fighting in its name.

Embodying its ideals.

Virtues.

But they’re facing living entities merely.

Not immortal values.

So, the victory is over a person only.

People.

Not the belief they purport to personate.

And victory is over them as they were then.

Not as they are now.

Will be.

So, it is ephemeral.

Sophistical.

A lawyer’s.

On that day.

In that courtroom.

A longer day –

In a larger courtroom –

Yes.

But if it held for the term of the universe –

Was achieved in a courtroom the size of the universe –

Before a jury composed of all the living –

Everyone who has ever lived –

Would it be truer?