Logos and T/truth

          I’d like to use this moment to work toward an understanding of logos for the Greeks. To do that, though, I might need to start with a question that seems only tangentially related to such an endeavor: what is the goal/role of language for Plato on one hand and the soph-rheto-philsophers on the other? As I work toward answering this question, I want to lay bare an assumption and put forth a thesis. First the assumption: conceptions of logos and truth are intricately connected to one another and both are related to language. I haven’t the space here to trace out the connection, but I believe it’s an important one. Which brings me to my thesis about truth, logos, and language: transcendent Truth a la Plato must come from a logos that can be equated to reason and articulated through dialectic. If Truth exists independently of human actions and knowledge, then what we need is a system or faculty to discover said Truth. For Plato, this system is philosophy, which can be understood through dialectic. A sophistic view of truth based on kairos and to prepon, on the other hand, necessitates a flexible, semiotic logos that is capable of creating consensus through language.

Plato’s insistence on a transcendental truth achievable only through philosophy/dialectic appears in each of his dialogues. For example, in Phaedrus Socrates concludes the dialogue on the usefulness of rhetoric with a definition of the philosopher:  “if their compositions are based on knowledge of the truth, and they can defend or prove them, when they are put to the test, by spoken arguments… then they are to be called, not only poets…but are worthy of a higher name, befitting the serious pursuit of their life.” Here, we see that the defense of Truth is undertaken in logos or logical defense. Similarly, in Timaeus, Plato’s titular Timaeus asserts that “when reason is concerned with the rational, and the circle of the same moving smoothly declares it, then intelligence and knowledge are necessarily perfected.” The perfecting of knowledge and the discovery of Truth are undertaken through logos as reasoned discourse. And we’re back to my initial question about language. For Plato, reason is the key word; though discourse reveals a pre-existing truth, it does so only through logic.

Unlike Plato, however, the sophists offer a definition of logos apart from a dependence on transcendental Truth and separate from a reliance on reason. Both Protagoras and Gorgias espouse a significantly more kairotic sense of logos. Protagoras’ approach to argument is best articulated by Clement in his Miscellanies: “every argument,” he says, “has an opposite argument, say the Greeks following Protagoras” (13). The truth of an argument, then, relies not on its internal nature (its unassailable logic or inherent Truth) but on the degree to which it persuades its audience. After all, “of all things the measure is man, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not” (18). This is not a prototype of “if a tree falls in the forest”; it’s not existential. Rather, it’s an articulation a relativistic epistemology in which truth cannot exist apart from those who agree to call it truth.

Likewise, Gorgias suggests a kairotic and relativistic view of truth and therefore a constructivist view of logos. His view of logos/truth is clearest in On the Nonexistent. According to Sextus’ recollection of this treatise, Gorgias claims that nothing exists, and if it does we can’t understand or know it. And even if we can, we can’t communicate that knowledge to others. What we’re left with, then, is logos or speech. This speech does not communicate the thing itself but creates something altogether different: “it is clear…that logos arises from external things impinging upon us, that is from perceptible things…but…logos is not evocative of the external” (46). After all, “visible bodies are to the greatest degree different from words” (46). Similarly, we see logos translated (according to an editor’s note by Dr. Brian Donovan to his translation of the Encomium of Helen) elsewhere as “speech” or “words,” as it is in On the Nonexistent.  In fact, in the Encomium of Helen, Gorgias repeatedly uses logos to denote the structure of his speech.

McComiskey connects Gorgias’ use of logos as speech/language to his relativistic and kairotic epistemology: “opinions are communal and governed by logos” (20). According to McComiskey, Gorgias’ reliance on communal agreement instead of Platonic transcendental truth means that “pure knowledge does not exist and no logos can be purely rational” (23). According to McComiskey’s translation of the passage above from On the Nonexistent, in fact, Gorgias says that “logos is the means by which we communicate” but not the substance of some existent thing (26). It is best, then, to see logos not as reason or rational thought but as a linguistic system through which it is possible to create agreed upon aletheia (a distinct word for truth that reflects communal agreement as opposed Platonic epistemic truth).

Consigny’s focus is different than McComiskey’s, though they appear to reach some of the same conclusions. Instead of tracing Gorgias’ relativistic epistemology, Consigny focuses on his style, agonism, conventionalism, and anti-foundationalism. Consigny suggests that Gorgias’intricate, metaphorical, antithetical and parodic style reveals an altogether different purpose than has so far been attributed to him in the Encomium: “[Gorgias] uses parody, paratropic figuration, and histrionics…to disabuse the audience of the illusion that any account of things…is an objective representation” (169). The other three features (agonism, conventionalism, and anti-foundationalism) Consigny attributes to Gorgias suggest that his epistemology was not simply relativistic (because that would still suggest a kind of foundationalism according to  Consigny); rather, Consigny argues that Gorigias’ writings suggest that “individuals fabricate themselves by engaging in conventions” and is therefore a conventionalist (128) and an anti-foundationalist arguing for an even more radical repudiation of Platonic epistemic truth than even McComiskey suggests.

The sophistic sense of communal agreement as the basis for truth and reason apparent in both Protagoras and Gorgis is particularly attractive to post-modern rhetoricians for a variety of reasons. For Jarratt, the sophistic reliance on agreement rather than transcendence offers a new, third way of seeing truth and reason in the form of nomos, which has to do with collective habit and practice. This third way does not negate the power of reason, however:  “sophistic style does not exist outside of reason, in a polar opposition to it. It does not come from a prior state of innocence before the formation of logic” (72). Rather, both Sophistic and feminist discourses are “encompassing and mixed…fully in charge of the power of patriarchal logic, calling it into play on occasion” (72). According to Jarratt, sophistic discourses seek to create space for alternative voices in the same way that nomos opens space for a social construction of ethical truth (60).

Vitanza, however, finds Jarratt’s feminine sophistic problematic specifically because of this reliance on the existing order: it seeks, he says, “a third term” instead of “the excluded middle.” Though he agrees with her (and McComiskey’s and Consigny’s) depiction of logos as communally created and decidedly un-transcendental, he argues that Jarratt’s third term actually reinforces the existing binary of mythos and logos as well as feminine and masculine. Why is Vitanza so adamant about the difference between the third term and the excluded middle? As he says in his Excursus on Jarratt’s project, “it is not a matter of male/female or female/male; it is everything that has been excluded because of this silly disjunctive logic, which gives us congregation (consensus, community) byway of segregation.” Vitanza ‘s argument is this: even in  Jarratt’s feminist reading and re-appropriation of the sophists, we are still being forced to play by Plato’s rules. The presence of a third term reinforces the separation of logos and mythos and cements the exclusion created not by the terms but by the system of separation they represent. Vitanza’s project, on the other hand, is to embrace the hysteria and irrationality attributed to the sophists as a way to puncture the binary established in Platonic discourses.