Listening to the Logos: Speech and the Coming of Wisdom in Ancient Greece

279 Pages·2009·10.46 MB·English

by  Christopher Lyle Johnstone

STUDIES IN RHETORIC/COMMUNICATION
Thomas W. Benson, Series Editor
LISTENING to the LOGOS
Speech and the
Coming of Wisdom
in Ancient Greece
CHRISTOPHER LYLE JOHNSTONE
THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA PRESS
Man is conscious ofa universal sou/within or behind his individual life,
wherein as in a firmament, the nature ofJ ustice, Truth, Love, Freedom,
arise and shine. This universal soul he calls Reason: it is not mine,
or thine, or his, but we are its property. . . .
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature"

Contents
SERIES EDITOR'S PREFACE ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi
Prologue 1
ONE The Greek Stones Speak: Toward an Archaeology
of Consciousness 4
TWO Singing the Muses' Song: Myth, Wisdom, and Speech 13
rHREE Physis, Kosmos, Logos: Presocratic Thought and the Emergence
ofNature-Consciousness 36
FOUR Sophistical Wisdom, Socratic Wisdom, and the Political Life 86
FIVE Civic Wisdom, Divine Wisdom: !socrates, Plato, and Two Visions
for the Athenian Citizen 146
SIX Speculative Wisdom, Practical Wisdom: Aristotle and the
Culmination of Hellenic Thought 188
Epilogue 215
NOTES 225
BIBLIOGRAPHY 269
INDEX 295

Series Editor's Preface
In Listening to the Logos: Speech and the Coming of Wisdom in Ancient Greece,
Christopher Lyle Johnstone explores how the ancient Greeks thought about
the connections between wisdom and speech. He finds not a unified idea of
how these connections can or should develop but a consistent inquiry into the
issues of speech, language, dialogue, and argument on the one hand and the
pursuit of wisdom on the other. Are these separate, perhaps even competing
or incompatible, disciplines and practices, or interacting principles, or resources
for one another?
Johnstone focuses on the Greek world in the period 620-322 s.c.E., when,
according to his account, understandings of the world that had been grounded
largely in myth were joined rapidly by new rational, naturalistic, and philo
sophical modes. The three centuries studied in this work saw the interacting
development of what came to be called philosophy and rhetoric. Johnstone's
book is not so much a history of early Greek philosophy or early Greek rhet
oric as a synthetic account of the emerging and enduring sense of the connec
tions between speech and wisdom from early Greek thought to the flowering
of systematic rhetorical and philosophical thought.
Johnstone traces the complex relations among language and thought as
variously understood in Homer, Hesiod, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedo
cles, Protagoras, Gorgias, Socrates, Plato, !socrates, and Aristotle. At the same
time, Johnstone draws widely on generations of scholarship that inform our
understandings of these issues and thinkers.
Johnstone provides an appreciation of the achievements of fourth-century
B.c.E. Greek rhetorical and philosophical thought without, however, losing his
simultaneous appreciation of the earlier modes of thought and expression
from which they emerged. Listening to the Logos is the fruit of one scholar
teacher's lifetime of study and reflection and a book to which scholars and stu
dents of rhetoric may tum for instruction and refreshment.
w.
THOMAS BENSON

Acknowledgments
The author is grateful for permission to use previously published material
from the following sources: "Sophistical Wisdom: Po/itike Arete and 'Logoso
phia,"' Phi/nsophy and Rhetoric 39, no. 4 (2006): 265-89, © 2006 by the Penn
sylvania State University, by permission of the Penn State University Press,
University Park; "'Speech Is a Powerful Lord': Speech, Sound, and Enchant
ment in Greek Oratorical Performance," Advances in the History of Rhetoric 8
(2005): 1-20, © 2005 by the American Society for the History of Rhetoric, by
permission of the American Society for the History of Rhetoric; "Eros, Logos,
and Sophia in Plato: Philosophical Conversation, Spiritual Lovemaking, and
Dialogic Ethics," in Communication Ethics: Between Cosmopolitanism and Provin
dality, edited by Kathleen Glenister Roberts and Ronald C. Arnett (New York:
Peter Lang, 2008), 155-86, © 2008 by Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., used by
permission of Peter Lang Publishing.
Research for this book commenced during a 1986-87 sabbatical leave sup
ported by the Pennsylvania State University and by Dennis Gouran, then head
of the Department of Speech Communication. I am also grateful to the Clas
sics Faculty Library at Cambridge University for granting me visiting-scholar
status during the summer of 1986 and to the American School of Classical
Studies at Athens, Greece, for my appointment as senior associate member in
1987 and again in 1991, 1997, 2002, and 2007. I am especially appreciative to
Richard Leo Enos, Edward Schiappa, and Janet Atwill, all of whom read early
versions of several chapters and provided encouraging and helpful feedback.
Stephen Browne, Thomas Benson, and Michael Hogan provided useful guid
ance in the later stages of the project. Bill Rawlins read and provided very
helpful comments about my discussion of Plato and engaged me in "loving
conversation" about key ideas in it. I also want to acknowledge Michael Hyde,
who once asked me, "Why study the Greeks?" In a way, this book is my answer
to his question.
Over the years when I was studying the materials on which I draw here, I
taught both graduate and undergraduate courses that focused on one or
another set of these texts. Discussions and debates with the students in those
xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
courses were important sources of insight into the ideas I write about in this
book. I cannot name them all here, but among those who deserve my acknowl
edgment and gratitude are George Elder, Pat Gehrke, Gina Ercolini, David
Tell, and David Dzikowski. Thank you for taking these texts, questions, and
ideas seriously. I am also indebted to two reviewers for the University of South
Carolina Press, whose comments, suggestions, and encouraging responses to
the manuscripts were instructive and affinning. The second reader in particu
lar and james Denton, acquisitions editor at the press, provided valuable guid
ance and exhibited great patience. Finally, I owe more than words can ever
express to my soul mate and life partner, Patty, for never losing faith in me and
this project.