Abstract

Reviews 437 culture. Reversing the usual emphasis on the uniformity of classical rhetorical culture, Poulakos's discussions provide ample food for thought, and a number of contentions that readers will quarrel with, such as the claim that for Isocrates rhetoric resumes the role Plato had dreamed for it: "instruction in philosophy" (p. 9). The use of Greek is inconsistently accompanied by translations and transliterations, creating a sense that this is only half written for the Greekless reader. In the general project of reclaiming Isocrates as much more than a hack, Poulakos's work joins that of Kathleen Welch and others in reminding us that neither philosophy nor classics have been particularly kind to rhetoric. C. Jan Swearingen Texas A&M University David Roochnik, Of Art and Wisdom: Plato's Understanding of Techne (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996) xii + 300 pp. Roochnik claims that the conventional view of Plato's texts that link techne with moral knowledge must be modified. According to Roochnik, moral knowledge cannot be analogous to techne without insurmountable logical problems resulting. Roochnik reads many of Socrates' arguments in Plato's early texts as proving that wisdom cannot be rendered technical. Because wisdom is not a techne, Plato wrote dialogues rather than technical treatises to illustrate the performance of nontechnical wisdom. The book is organized into four lengthy chapters accompanied by four useful appendices. Chapter one provides a thorough examination of the preplatonic meanings of techne in Homer, Solon, Aeschylus, Sophocles, the Hippocratic writings, Gorgias, Isocrates, and Anaximenes of Lampsacus. The chapter culminates with an examination of the rhetorical techne of the sophists to illustrate the claim that the sophists believe that moral knowledge could be taught as a techne. I note in passing that in his analysis Roochnik accepts the conventional accounts of the rhetorical technai of the sophists that Thomas Cole and I have been doing 438 RHETORICA our best to challenge. While he cites some of our work, he is apparently unpersuaded of the need to revise the conventional account. In chapter two Roochnik reads such Plato commentators as Martha Nussbaum, Paul Woodruff, Daniel Graham, Rosamond Sprague, C. D. C. Reeve, and Terence Irwin, as finding techne in the early dialogues offered as a positive theoretical model for the moral knowledge Socrates seeks. Roochnik contends that while Socrates does seek knowledge of arete, such knowledge cannot be a technical knowledge. Roochnik supports his case by a very careful reading of Socrates' use of the techne analogy in the early dialogues. He concludes that the early dialogues point their readers toward a nontechnical moral knowledge: "It is a Doric harmony of word and deed, a way of life spent seeking wisdom and urging others to do the same. It is a life spent turning a searching eye inward and therefore turning away from the external objects that become the subject matters of the ordinary technai" (p. 176). Chapters three and four contrast the rhetorical knowledge of Gorgias, Protagoras, and Isocrates with the philosophical knowledge sought by Socrates. Roochnik distinguishes between techne! and techne2. Techne! is a "fixed" and formulaic techne akin to mathematics, while Techne2 suggests that one can improve a set of skills without having to use them in a mechanical way. It is this second sense of techne that Roochnik assigns to Protagoras' and Isocrates' rhetorical education. Interestingly, Roochnik notes that what some call "postmodernism" he calls "rhetoric" (p. 11), and that Isocrates' views on rhetoric are "alive and well today" in the texts of such writers as Stanley Fish and Richard Rorty (p. 82). It is precisely because rhetoric pretends to be a moral techne that Plato is compelled to argue against rhetoric. Roochnik argues that "given Plato's conception of techne, rhetoric is not one". Though rhetoric generates nontechnical knowledge, "it is not the nontechnical moral knowledge that Plato thinks can be achieved by the philosopher" (p. 14). The way of Socrates is the search for rules, definitions, and universals (p. 250). Though Socrates may not find any human accounts of such things that survive his Reviews 439 scrutiny, it is the search itself that Plato portrays as exemplifying the life of philosophy. Roochnik says he is motivated, in part, by the...