Post modernism is the academic conribution to what Aldous Huxley has called life in a prison without walls, a prison constituted by a language adequately and skillfully modified to make sure that there are not and there cannot be any semantic references (though we are not quite there yet), a virtual reality devoid of all human dignity. I guess that when Antonio Gramsci grasped the idea that for the success of the revolution 'we' have to take control of all means of cultural production, he could hardly have expected such a spectacular success. I really enjoyed your talk. Thank you very much.
Richard Weaver mentions in his posthumous work that dialectic alone, minus its partner rhetoric, is dangerous for society (He says, "essentially revolutionary and without commitment to practical realities") "In brief the dialectician of our day has no adequate theory of man. Lacking such a theory, he of course cannot find a place for rhetoric, which is most humanistic of all the disciplines. Rhetoric speaks to man in his whole being and out of his whole past and with reference to values which only a human being can intuit. The semanticists have in view only a denantured speech to suit a denatured man. Theirs is a major intellectual error, committed by supposing that they were going to help man by bringing language under the survellance of science." (Weaver: Visions of Order, The Cultural Crisis of Our Time Do you agree with this assessment from Weaver? Secondly, in your studies and scholarship, 0:00 which writer or orator do you think gets the balance of rhetoric and dialectic right (or more right than wrong)? Lastly, I really enjoyed your video lecture and hope to view the rest of your series soon. Thanks.
@@LitProf For me it doesn't matter. Weaver points out that a balance of dialect and rhetoric is necessary, but he doesn't go out on a limb to identify those who have achieved this by name. Of course, I didn't read his book on rhetoric, just this last one mentioned above.
I am greatly enjoying your lectures in this playlist though I do have a question. In your previous lectures you have lamented the fact that universities are dropping these great writers and philosophers because they are "dead white men". It seems to me that this lecture has a lot of relevance in that matter, because as you have stated, in rhetoric, the character of the author matters even more than the truth of what they are saying. With this in mind do you think that what the universities are doing is valid if we view their actions through the lens of rhetoric? By valid I mean that they have concluded rightly, setting aside whether or not their conclusion is right.
I see. You are saying that it is better to side with those who acknowledge that there is truth even if they fall short of it, than to side with those who claim that there is no truth at all. And so in terms of rhetoric, they are the ones who have the greater flaw in character
Denying truth is silly and ultimately self-contradictory. If one were to speak at all in a matter-of-fact fashion, one cannot deny that accepting the notion of truth is a necessary precondition for this whole action making any sense. Truth claims on the other hand.... or the feeling of knowing something... these are pretty much assailable. The biggest problem I see is that commonly, "knowing" is conceptualised as a particular mental state one can have and be certain in. But whether or not one knows something is an objective question. In most cases, we cannot/do not know what we truly know and where we err. As long as defendents of concepts such as truth and knowledge don't take this "weakness" into account, those who use skeptical arguments will always have some force over them. In many instance, our "trust" in a certain proposition is what we take for knowing something, but we give trust to propositions for a variety of reasons - the amount to which we defer to others (be it individuals or institutions) is remarkable. Most things we think we know are beyond our critical judgment. And even if we use it, we cannot know if we have used it successfully, because error seems to those who err like correctness. (A very basic point here is the frequent occurence that there is a proposition in which one believes strongly and which is corrected successfully. Now, being totally baffled, if one is asked how one could find this proposition credible, one has to say: Well, I believed it for this and that reason. However, this ('mere' belief) is not how one conceived of this very same mental state before one was corrected. But wasn't it the same state before and after, phenomenologically speaking? Yes. Hence, what one takes to know is, in many cases, just belief. [I think there are some propositions that one can know to know, but they are very limited in number.])
Do I understand you right that 'logos' stands for the life of truth? That logos is the life of truth? The manifestation of truth in life? And in the case of rhetoric that the speaker lives according to his reason? That he is the bearer of truth? And if we apply that to scientific knowledge we ascent to scientific logos when the scientist does not cut corners when that is convenient or when his institute asks him to produce a fake narrative? When his scientific practice is an actualization of the rationality of the scientific method?
I came upon your page trying to find a lecture on Aristotle's rhetoric. Thank you so much for posting this!
Sophistry = our everyday political duopoly. Degrade the character, appeal to emotion, tell the lie, and make it noble, though it’s not even possible.
‘Science’ wasn’t taught anywhere until it was born from natural philosophy in the renaissance.
thank you very much for that abut aristo. with you abdellah marocco
Post modernism is the academic conribution to what Aldous Huxley has called life in a prison without walls, a prison constituted by a language adequately and skillfully modified to make sure that there are not and there cannot be any semantic references (though we are not quite there yet), a virtual reality devoid of all human dignity. I guess that when Antonio Gramsci grasped the idea that for the success of the revolution 'we' have to take control of all means of cultural production, he could hardly have expected such a spectacular success.
I really enjoyed your talk. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for a very good lecture on Aristotle and christianity!❤️
I would pay very good money to see you and Jonathan Pageau have multiple long discussions on literary theories.
That would be fun!
Now that I have seen a bit of Pageau I would be very interested.
Richard Weaver mentions in his posthumous work that dialectic alone, minus its partner rhetoric, is dangerous for society (He says, "essentially revolutionary and without commitment to practical realities")
"In brief the dialectician of our day has no adequate theory of man. Lacking such a theory, he of course cannot find a place for rhetoric, which is most humanistic of all the disciplines. Rhetoric speaks to man in his whole being and out of his whole past and with reference to values which only a human being can intuit. The semanticists have in view only a denantured speech to suit a denatured man. Theirs is a major intellectual error, committed by supposing that they were going to help man by bringing language under the survellance of science." (Weaver: Visions of Order, The Cultural Crisis of Our Time
Do you agree with this assessment from Weaver? Secondly, in your studies and scholarship, 0:00 which writer or orator do you think gets the balance of rhetoric and dialectic right (or more right than wrong)? Lastly, I really enjoyed your video lecture and hope to view the rest of your series soon. Thanks.
Yes, I agree with Weaver. I haven’t read this book but I am interested.
Are you talking about writers/ speakers from today or historically?
@@LitProf For me it doesn't matter. Weaver points out that a balance of dialect and rhetoric is necessary, but he doesn't go out on a limb to identify those who have achieved this by name. Of course, I didn't read his book on rhetoric, just this last one mentioned above.
I thought the academy was destroyed by Sulla in 86 BC.
Yes, that’s correct. But the teaching continued in a fashion until 529 AD, when the Emperor Justinian banned it.
I am greatly enjoying your lectures in this playlist though I do have a question. In your previous lectures you have lamented the fact that universities are dropping these great writers and philosophers because they are "dead white men". It seems to me that this lecture has a lot of relevance in that matter, because as you have stated, in rhetoric, the character of the author matters even more than the truth of what they are saying. With this in mind do you think that what the universities are doing is valid if we view their actions through the lens of rhetoric? By valid I mean that they have concluded rightly, setting aside whether or not their conclusion is right.
What does ‘concluded rightly’ mean to people who think that appeals to truth and reason are power moves?
I see. You are saying that it is better to side with those who acknowledge that there is truth even if they fall short of it, than to side with those who claim that there is no truth at all. And so in terms of rhetoric, they are the ones who have the greater flaw in character
@ReadingsfromWano They are in touch with reality.
Denying truth is silly and ultimately self-contradictory. If one were to speak at all in a matter-of-fact fashion, one cannot deny that accepting the notion of truth is a necessary precondition for this whole action making any sense. Truth claims on the other hand.... or the feeling of knowing something... these are pretty much assailable. The biggest problem I see is that commonly, "knowing" is conceptualised as a particular mental state one can have and be certain in. But whether or not one knows something is an objective question. In most cases, we cannot/do not know what we truly know and where we err. As long as defendents of concepts such as truth and knowledge don't take this "weakness" into account, those who use skeptical arguments will always have some force over them. In many instance, our "trust" in a certain proposition is what we take for knowing something, but we give trust to propositions for a variety of reasons - the amount to which we defer to others (be it individuals or institutions) is remarkable. Most things we think we know are beyond our critical judgment. And even if we use it, we cannot know if we have used it successfully, because error seems to those who err like correctness.
(A very basic point here is the frequent occurence that there is a proposition in which one believes strongly and which is corrected successfully. Now, being totally baffled, if one is asked how one could find this proposition credible, one has to say: Well, I believed it for this and that reason. However, this ('mere' belief) is not how one conceived of this very same mental state before one was corrected. But wasn't it the same state before and after, phenomenologically speaking? Yes. Hence, what one takes to know is, in many cases, just belief. [I think there are some propositions that one can know to know, but they are very limited in number.])
Do I understand you right that 'logos' stands for the life of truth? That logos is the life of truth? The manifestation of truth in life? And in the case of rhetoric that the speaker lives according to his reason? That he is the bearer of truth? And if we apply that to scientific knowledge we ascent to scientific logos when the scientist does not cut corners when that is convenient or when his institute asks him to produce a fake narrative? When his scientific practice is an actualization of the rationality of the scientific method?
This lecture was about rhetoric but of course the life of logos would entail what you say.