Sarah Spring
1 article-
Classical Greek Rhetorical Theory and the Disciplining of Discourse by David M. Timmerman and Edward Schiappa ↗
Abstract
Reviews 457 Disagreements are often treated as differing appearances or perspectives on a singular reality (after Perelman and Obrechts-Tyteka, for example) or as prompts for the invention of an agreement or unity to come. However, building on Canpanton's example, Dolgopolski's work develops a sustained and insightful construction of what might be termed Talmudic rationalism where the ontological entailments of expressions are drawn from the careful and charitable articulation of disagreements. As such, What is Talmud? is an important new contribution to the study of rhetoric. In addition, What is Talmud? is a necessary reorientation and elaboration on current studies of Rabbinic discourse and textuality, which has been dominated by praise for Rabbinic tolerance and appreciation of polysemy. What is Talmud? puts on the table the possibility that in accepting the Talmud as the historical anchor (if not the core symbol) for an appreciation of polysemy and multiple truths, we have done so at the expense of Talmudic understandings of disagreement. David Metzger Old Dominion University (Norfolk, Virginia) David M. Timmerman and Edward Schiappa. Classical Greek Rhetor ical Theory and the Disciplining of Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 192 pp. ISBN 9780521195188 Traditional accounts of rhetoric's emergence in fifth-century Greece have encountered many recent challenges and revisions. Among these challenges, Edward Schiappa's prolific scholarship on classical rhetoric has always been exceptional. In this vein, Schiappa has long argued for the importance of a later origin of rhetoric as a distinct discipline than has been presumed. It arose as a discipline, that is - something that could be studied - he says, in the fourth-century in the wake of Plato's invention of the term rhetorike. This latest volume, coauthored with David Timmerman, continues to provoke the reader to question accepted rhetorical histories and is located well within the scholarly trajectory of Schiappa's earlier work, in particular, the Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). However, by emphasizing the role of "terms of art," Classical Greek Rhetorical Theory and the Disciplining of Discourse adds a refined focus on discourse in the formation of rhetoric as a discipline. Timmerman and Schiappa explain "terms of art as bits and pieces of disciplinary jargon that have "specialized denotative functions" (p.l) for those within a distinct knowledge community. Their introductory chapter provides a nuanced theoretical and historical explanation of such terms in the context of the history of rhetoric. The authors contend that the emergence of this kind of technical vocabulary is evidence of the expansion of the available "semantic field" and of corresponding "conceptual possibilities" (p. 6) available to rhetorical practitioners. Terms of art, in this way, are a 458 RHETORICA fundamental marker of discrete knowledge communities (i.e. disciplines). Consequently, they shape "the pedagogical, political and intellectual goals of rhetorical theory" (p. 2). Rather than simply revealing the historical importance of terms of art, however, Timmerman and Schiappa endeavor also to make a "methodological intervention" in the field of history of rhetoric (p. 171). They contend that the use of terms of art as an analytic framework has the advantage of shifting "our focus to the relevant pedagogical and theoretical texts to examine how the relevant terms ... are employed in those texts" (p. 172). The origin of rhetorike as a term in the fourth century (rather than fifth) has even further implication, for the authors, when understood in this light. In this context, Rhetorike is not merely Platonic shorthand, but an essential component in the technical development of the entire rhetorical knowledge community. The book takes up a variety of case studies that are united by their focus on terms of art. The first of these studies concerns dialegesthai (dialogue or dialectic) and its assorted meanings. In considering these variations, Timmerman and Schiappa demonstrate the ways in which words can be contested in technical contexts as terms of art. By synthesizing and analyzing the philological evidence, the authors contend a sophistic conception of dialegesthai was an established term of art for the Athenian intelligentsia. Thus, Plato's refinement of the term into what we understand as dialectic challenges this earlier technical usage. Parsing the similarities and differences that emerge in...