154 COMMONPLACE

certainty that many very ordinary propositions are true. In the register o f the definition of a theory of knowledge, the question of common sense suggests a way of approaching a common fund of knowledge, a common knowledge in which anyone with judgment can share. There is a community of judgments that can reconcile us all, despite doctrinal philo­sophical differences. Common sense suggests the possibility of a philosophical communicability:

There is this advantage in putting questions from the point o f view of Common Sense: that it is, in some de­gree, in the minds of us all, even o f the metaphysicians whose conclusions are most opposed to it.

(Sidgwick, Philosophy, 42)

The philosophical meaning of “common sense” presup­poses a defense of common sense. Reflection on common sense is in part continued by reflection on ordinary life in contemporary American philosophy—for example, in the work of Stanley Cavell {/n Quest of the Ordinary), who does not limit himself to saying that the formulations o f ordinary life are true in their ordinary sense. He tries to determine what their ordinary sense m eans-just as the philosophy of com* mon sense seeks the meaning of common sense.

Fabienne Brugere

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Cavell. Stanley. h Quest o<the Ordinary. Chicago: University o f Chicago P ré« . 19&8.

H um e David, Essays. M om l PoktKol ortd Literary. Indianapolis, W: U berty Classics, 193$. First published in 1777.

--------- . A Treatise o ( Human Nature. Oxford: C lareodoa 1985. First published

17J 9- 40-

Moore. George Edward. Philosophical Papers. London: Allen and Unwin, 1959.Re«d. Thomas. isscys a n the Intellectual Powers o f Man. First published in 178s. In

Jh o o w j fleid: PhilosophKo! Worts, edited by Derek 8rookes> 9 th ed. Edinburgh, Scot: Edinburgh University Press. 2002.

Schutthess, Daniel. Philosophy er sens common chez Thomas Re id. 8ern: Lang,

1983.Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper. O ioracffnjflcs o f Men. Manners. Opinions.

Times. Edited by Lawrence Klein. Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1999.

Sigdwick, Henry. Philosophy, Its Scope a n d Relotions. London: Macmillan, >902.

Taytot Charles. Philosophical Arguments. Cambridge; MA: Harvard University Press,

>995 .Wateer. Michael. Interpretation a n d Social Cnnasm . Cambridge. MA: Harvard

University Press, 1987.Whatety, Richard. O em entsofLogK. 9th ed . London: John W. Parket i8$i.

| COMMONPLACE____________________________

FRENCH lie u com m on

GREEK lo p o s [tonocl. t o p t g o r ia ItOJltiYOgiaJ, d e in t o is

(5civwoi<;| iatin k x u s c o m m u n is , in d ig n a t io

> COMPARISON. CONCETTO. CONS£HSUS.O(STM. 0 0 XA.IMAGC, INGENIUM.

MIMESIS, PATHOS, PROBABILITY, SUBLIME. TRUTH

The modern expression ‘commonplace," in the sense of a dichi or banal saying, has a history going back at least three centuries. If it has a pejorative connotation nowadays, for a long time it had a positive meaning, as an essential element of one's intellectual

and artistic development. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, lieu commun, or'’commonplace,*' was a technical term in France and across Europe. Broadly speaking, it had two very distinct meanings, which are both in their own way present in the modern sense of the term. On the one hand,'commonplace* was an element of oratorical training; on the other, it referred to the dif­ferent headings of a catalogue. These two senses in turn go back to the sense of topos in ancient rhetoric, defined by Aristo­tle as'that which groups together a multiplicity of enthymemes"(Rhetoric, 2i6.1403a16-17), those syllogisms of probability that characterize rhetoric.

I. Topos: The Commonplace as a Reservoir of PremisesThe first o f the three meanings goes back to Aristotle’s Rhet­oric. The Creek word was simply topos (toroc), “place" (or lieu in French, which was how Mideric Dufour translated it in his edition, Arisrote, introducing in French a distinc­tion between lieux propres or iieux speci/rcfues [particular or specific expressions] and /ieux communs [commonplace or general expressions] in 1.2.1358al3ff., and in 2.22.1396b28). The topos, according to Aristotle, is a stoicheion, an element of the enthymemes: “It is that which groups together a multiplicity of enthymemes” (eis ho potto enfhumemata empt- ptei (eu; o noAAoc evOuptipara epnintct], 2.26.1403al7). This is why, unlike premises, or “protases,” which are specific to only one of the oratorical genres—the deliberative, the judicial, and the epideictic; so, for example, the useful or honest instead of the deliberative—a “place” o r generality is always “common” (houtoi hoi koinoi [ourot ot xoivoi], or Jcotnei [Hotvfj]: “generalities are the commonplaces of law, of physics, of politics”; 135Sal3-14), for example, “the gen* erality of the more o r less.” As Jacques Brunschwig empha­sizes, “the topos is a machine that produces premises from a given conclusion, so that one and the same generality has to be able to deal with a multiplicity o f different proposi­tions, and one and the same proposition must be able to be to dealt with by a multiplicity of generalities” (preface to his edition of the Topics). In the subsequent history of rhetoric, this first meaning of “commonplace” will obvi­ously not be forgotten. In Latin rhetoric, that of both the ancients and the moderns, focus communis is contrasted, in a way that is clearer and more pedagogical than in Aris­totle, to the “particular” expressions of each of the three genres. “Commonplace" refers, then, to a list that has al­most no variants, which goes from the Definition (then the Etymology, the Enumeratio partium, etc.) to “Adjoining ex­pressions” (Adjuncta), by way of expressions o f Opposition and of Comparison. As in Aristotle, these expressions are, by hypothesis, “general invented expressions." Every gen­erality is indeed a reservoir, a “place-to-find” arguments (see COMPARISON). Moreover, Aristotle did not invent the term ropos, which in all probability goes back to the arts of memory. But his distinctive gesture was to have completely reconceived, as he so often did, a term tha t the usage of the Creek language gave to him in an unelaborated form. So it is logical that all the subsequent topics should refer topos as a concept back to the Rhetoric, and even more so to the Artistotelian Topics.■ see Box 1 .

COMMONPLACE 155

1Rhetorics o f th e topos, rhetorics o f th e ka iros> ART, LOGOS. MOMENT

{ Rhetoric, or rfiftwiW <ttchn t> [pnto<?imi: «texvri»). is a term that appeared for the firstI time in Plato's Gorgias. it only appears for its

claim to be an art. techn4, to be discredited. ! and reduced to the paradoxical status o f: a b g o n pragma (aAoyov n^ay|ja] (a thingI deprived o f logos lAoyoU, or if one prefers, a: 'practice without reason”; 46$a). It is thus the1 eloquence o f Gorgias and o f the Sophists: (their oratorical success and their teaching)1 that ts excluded from philosophkal discourse

and rationality. A good rhetoric still needs to j be invented: the philosophizing rhetoric o f

Pttoednis. that is, the*dialectK.“ 'th e art o f di- i viding and gathering together'(266b), whoseI aim is not to persuade but to elevate the soul| (this is what was termed 'psychagogy'; 261b).: The subsequent elaboration of rhetoricI in Plato, as well as in Aristotle, consisted in: devaluing, even prohibiting, a certain type! o f rhetoric in favor o f another type. Deprived

o f art and of reason, this rhetoric deals with j time and speech (a rhetoric o f improvisation,i schedioi logoi (oxe5ioi Aoyot], or 'hurried."j ex tm p o r t speech; a rhetoric o f the kairos{ or the “opportune moment.* whkhj is able to exploit the paradoxes o f speech: with these katabalbntes (xotaftaAAovisi;]

invented by Protagoras, o r catastrophic argu­m ents that are inverted a s soon a s they are spoken). This rhetoric is va lu ed a s authentic and truly technical; it fo cu ses o n w h at is said, and it brings tim e back to the sp ace bein g dom inated . D escribed b y th e philosophers, d iscourse w as an organism that w as w id e­spread and finely articulated, and one h ad to b e ab le to ‘d iv ide it up* w hile respectin g its overall p lan (cf. Plato, Phaedrus, 265b). It w as m ade up o f a h ierarchy o f su n (ouv). 'w ith ," w hich w ent from predicative syntax to the syllogism s, and conform ed to th e norm s o f ha m a [a^ia], or "at the sam e time.*' as p re ­scribed b y the principle o f noncontradiction. It thus privileged stability o f m eaning over th e disruptive e ffec ts o f th e signifier, o f hom ­onym y, o f pun s (the entire organon. Aristot­le's m etaphysical and logical apparatu s from the M etaphysics T to the Sophistical Refuta­tions); it describ ed "periods’ (literally, 'co m ­plete turns" that could b e taken in with a sin g le g lan ce ; Rhetoric, 3 .9 .1409b*) and used visual figures o f speech ("m etaphor," which carries across, and 'm eto n ym y,' which takes the part for th e w hole) at th e exp en se o f auditory o n es (those alliterations that claim to b e po etic ; 3 .14 0 4 3 2 4 -2 9 ) . The im portance

accorded to topos [t6ho<J. o r ‘ place," w as ob ­viously an essential part o f this system . It is e a sy to see h o w th e pow er o f place could fire th e im agination o f com m entators, and they proposed a w h o le series o f rich m etaphors relating to sp ace in order to defin e this term : mold, m atrix, seam or vein, circle, sphere, region, well, arsenal, reservoir, seat, store, treasure h ou se , and not forgettin g Ross's 'p ig e o n -h o le ' (Brunschwig, preface to Topics).

With topos. philosophizing rhetoric spa- tialized the tem porality o f speech , and suc­ceed ed in turning even invention into a kind o f thesaurus.

Barbara Cassin

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Cassia Barbara Veffet soph 15(117«* (Part 3} Pans: Galltmard / La PWiade. *995-

McCoy, Manna. Pktto on the Rhttonc of Philosophers and Sophists. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Poulato*, John. Sophistical Rhetor« in Ctosucol Greece. Columbia: University of South Carolina Prest i*9S.

II. The Latin Locus Communis:The Commonplace as a Part of Oratorical Training

This second sense bears the trace o f the other great thinker on rhetoric, Cicero, even if this meaning was already pres* ent in the Rhetoric to Herennius. In the Latin Europe of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, it was the predominant meaning, and also paradoxically the one we have lost from sight. On first analysis, it appears not to fit with the Aristote­lian topos. Even though it is also linked to doxa and to the gen* eral, its essential difference is that it cannot be defined solely in terms of invention. The topos is not a set of propositions (or of sentences, if one prefers), but the means by which propositions are produced. The /ocus co/it/nunis in Cicero's sense of the term is first o f all an often very oratorical embel* lishment. or quite simply a passage in a speech, or even what is commonly known as a tirade (so in Aristotelian terms, a set of propositions, of arguments, etc.). It is only very distantly and indirectly a "place.” Whatever the case may be, it would be best at this point to treat this new concept o r object as a simple homonym of its Creek predecessor.

The Ciceronian locus communis has three characteristics. The first is the fact that it gathers up received ideas, or doxa. The second is that it speaks in general terms, generaii- ter. Finally, this generalization is extensive; it is not limited to a brief statement, o r to a proverbial saying. One of the

clearest texts on this is without doubt Cicero's On Inven­tion, a t the end of book 1, §100-105. In a legal context, the canonical moment for the commonplace expression is the peroration. This is the moment when the prosecution makes its closing speech, and when the accuser speaks no longer against the accused he is facing, but against the crime in general—when our prosecutors inveigh no longer against Mr. so-and-so who has raped or killed, but against rape or murder in general, in ancient treatises, the usual example was parricide, which in Rome was the unforgiveable crime par excellence; in Cicero's For Mi/on, the classic example is the praise of self*defense.

As for the doxa, it is immediately apparent how serious the stakes are. Of course doxa is a matter of mere opinion, not of truth. But for the rhetorician, the fact that the doxa is not true does not mean it has no value. On the contrary, it is heavy with grtm'tas. We thus encounter one of the meanings of the word doxa in Creek, the positive meaning o f “repu­tation, fame”; the doxa is all o f the values that are current in a given society, and it is defined most clearly whenever these values are treated with contempt. Parricide aroused particular indignation among the Romans—and indigna- tio is precisely one of the words Cicero uses to refer to the commonplace. This new word has the advantage of being less formal than the expression focus communis, which for

156 COMMONPLACE

rhetoricians used to the very idea of "place” is grammati­cally incorrect. /n-ditjnario allows us to reformulate what is at work, since within the word we find dkjniras o r “dignity”, or even the “decency" of decer and non decet, which are close etymologically, that is, the notion of “decorum" (see MIMtSIS, Box 6; and the article "Decorum” in KT: Historisch« Wörter­buch der Rhetorik). Parricide, racism, even rape, shatter the decorum or, in the French of the seventeenth century, the biens&nce (rules o f social propriety), that is, they threaten the entire edifice of social relations.

In this legal context, this shift to the general also takes on a particular significance. By generalizing, a lawyer “elevates" the debate, as we still say, quite justifiably. This elevating movement also elevates emotion, raising it to a higher level, since in raising up we appeal to the great and general prin­ciples. General principles move the general public, by arous­ing great feelings. We are at the height of the effects that rhetorical art is capable of producing, what Cicero named movere, and which translates the Greek path« (naOo<J. And once the movement of generalization is a movement that raises up. at its highest point we inevitably find the question of the political. In Cicero himself, we go very quickly from parricide trials to properly political trials, whose theme is that one's homeland is in danger. When Verres crucifies a Roman citizen in Sicily with his eyes turned toward Italy, he is assassinating the very idea of Roman citizenship. As Quin* tilian notes, with this example we reach not only the highest point, or summum, but in a way what is above the highest point, the supra sum mum (“non modo ad summum, sed quodam modosupra summum"', Institutes of Oratory, 8.4.4). We are at the highest point of emotion and o f the intolerable, that is, the height of the sublime.

The third and final trait of the commonplace relates to an­other term that is no less important for rhetoric, particularly in Latin: length or extent, copfa. It is not just a m atter of long, flowing speech, of quantitative length, since copia is above all qualitative. Formed from opes (forces, particularly mill* tary forces), copia is an army of arguments, a Roman army. Depending on which of the images Cicero happens to like, copia is either a river that has burst its banks or a devastating fire, in both cases, it is irresistible. It is not for nothing that the canonical moment o f indignation is the peroration. The end of the river-speech sweeps one up and finishes one off; the last remaining dikes of resistance collapse. Indignation against the accused and pity for the victims are the two es- sential /oci communes, typical of peroration, for which Cice­ro's De inventione gives a list of particular “places," this time in the canonical sense of argument. One could ultimately compare such oratorical arguments with a great aria from an opera rather than with a tirade. What people expect the most is not the least enjoyable and arouses no less applause. Great emotion unites a public, and even more so a commu­nity. It can even, as in the case of Verdi, lead to the birth of a nation. So pathos is not vulgar, but worthy o f that beautiful name common, which has indeed, since Cicero, been one of the connotations o f focus communis.

It is clear, then, that the Ciceronian fecus communis is in no way a synonym for the Aristotelian fopos. The same word re* fers to two quite distinct realities. Now that these two senses have been identified, one might wonder what the Greek

equivalent is for focus communis or indtVjnafto in Aristotle, and theGreek rhetoricians generally, it would indeed be surprising if Aristotle's Rhetoric paid no attention to such an important phenomenon.

For the later Greek rhetoricians, and in particular those who came after Cicero, the answer is easy. As a technical term, the strict equivalent of indignatio is deinosis [6eivcu<ji<;]. A very full history of this term can be found in the article "Demotes" in RT: Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik, in par­ticular, column 468: “der früheste rhetorische Terminus, der mit deinos verwandt ist. ist deinosis (= lat. Indignatio).” The em­blematic figure for deinosis was Demosthenes; for example, when Quintilian quotes in Greek the word deinösis and associ­ates it with indkjnus and indujnitos (6.2.24; see also 8.3.88 and 9.2.104); or in Longinus (12.5 in particular: "Demosthenes is sublime in the deinoseis [ev Tai<; Seivtooei«;]"). Denys of Halicarnassus more than anyone, in his Demosthenes, at­tributed demotes (SctvottK) to his hero as one of his major qualities. The deinos was, first and foremost, the terrifying appearance of the sacred, the equivalent of the Latin terri- bile—so Phoebus Apollo's bow that sent down a plague was described as deinos (//fad, 1.49). From there the meaning shifts to “powerful” and also “skillful,” used for any artisan who is a master of his art, and. in particular, for the rhetorician or the Sophist. The artisan who is deinos, as a master of his art. is like a god whose techniques are hidden and whose effects are spectacular. How to become deinas is the only thing that Gorgias promises to teach (Plato, Meno, 95c). The adjective denotes an entire program: power and skill, mastery of the ef­fects on the public, a “huge" success, all o f the truly terrify­ing and sacred promises of rhetoric are condensed into this one word—the art of making oneself a master and possessor of the hearts o f men.

So when Demosthenes is deinos, he is no longer an orator, but a god who paralyzes and galvanizes his audience, who does what he wants with them, irresistibly. This is no lon­ger a "tirade,” but what one might call a thunderous "exit,” a cataclysmic lightning bolt hurled down by Jupiter. So deinosis limits the focus communis to its most visible dimension, that of the prosecution, and forgets pity (which in Cicero is also a construction, a commonplace). From this limitation we even move on to a further one. Longinus describes deinosis solely in terms of its brevity, so as to contrast it with the particular form of the Ciceronian sublime, which involves extension or copia. On the one hand, the thunderous “exit," on the other the devastating river of the Ciceronian commonplace; these are the two modalities of the same sublime. What is more, when Longinus writes in Greek to a Roman he invents the neologism topegoria [Torcqyogicc], which would never actually pass into general usage, to designate Cicero’s locus communis. The term was formed from ropes, but with a suffix that re­ferred to public speaking, o r agora (agoreuein [ayojgueiv]. "to speak in front of the Assembly"); On the SuWime, 12.5: Demos­thenes is sublime “in the deinoseis and the violent passions," Cicero "in the fope^oriai and the perorations."

As for Aristotle, his Rhetoric only uses deinosis incidentally, four times according to the Belles Lettres edition, which quite rightly translates the term as a “feeling of revolt, in­dignation. exaggeration." This incidental usage underlines the fact that Aristotle, for once, has not reformulated the

COMMONPLACE 157

term as a concept. He takes the usage as it is given to him and does nothing more with it. The usage he records is rather interesting since on the face of it, it is already codified by rhetoric: either pity or deindsis oikfort ¿deindsin (fj owtov ¡1 Seivwoiv)) (3.16.1417al3); “the passions (partis [ndOrj)) to be aroused when the facts are established are pity, deind­sis, anger {eleos kai deindsis kai orge [IAeo<; ncti 5eiWot<; >tai ofiYn])" (3.19.1419b26). We again find the crucial moment of the peroration, once the facts are established (see also its use in 2.24.130lb3), as well as the fundamental vacillation of the prosecution between pity for the client and indignation for his accuser. This vacillation is already in Plato, who also re* cords the usage of his time: "pity and deindsis (¿taivoAoyiccc; nai 5eivwo«w<] (Phaedrus, 272a). The vacillation recalls, in Aristotle's Po*tics(6.1449b28), the famous passage on kathar- sis (purification, purging), in which “pity and pfiobos[<po(>oq]” serve as emblems and as a condensed form of other passions [¿AiouMaiifioGou] (see also Poetics, 13; and in 19.14 56b 1 : “and the others o f this kind”; cf. CATHARSIS).

This detour through the Poetics is useful in putting our investigation onto the right track. Four incidental usages do not constitute a theory. But there is one place where the Khiroric systematically discusses inditjmirio, but gives a com* pletely different name than deindsis; this is in 2.9, which is the precise counterpart to 2.8, on pit)'. We are in the moment of fundamental vacillation, between pity and then sacred terror. The clue that Aristotle is at this point rethinking the trivial notion of dancsis is in the change of vocabulary. In 2.9 he names it nemesis [vepeot<J, as the goddess o r incarna* tion ofjustice. Most of the Latin translations o f Aristotle are quite content to render it as indujruHio, along with its derived terms, as is the French Belles Lettres translation, which talks of “indignation.” The immediate opening of the chapter un­derlines the fact, as if it were necessary, that the use of such a highly charged term relates to the sacred: “if we attribute indignation to the gods" {nemesan (vcpEoav); 1386bl4), it is because the gods feel this sentiment when they see that those who do not deserve to be, who are thus unworthy of it, are happy. Such a divine emotion is clearly distinguished from the more human envy, or phrhonos ((p0ovo<J, that we feel toward the happiness o f our equals and rivals, which in our eyes is undeserved, indeed, like spectators in a tragedy, we will be like gods if in this respect we have “no personal interest” (1386bl5—20). That we are clearly dealing here with a work of conceptualization is again emphasized by the com* parison with the Nic/iomachi?im Ethics (7.1108b 1), where it is once again stated that nemesis is to envy what true courage is to temerity. Nemesis is the "happy medium" of indignation, it is a just form of indignation.

By reformulating the concept, Aristotle draws out what is truly at stake. His description is clearly informed by that of dein&is, like Demosthenes’ “exit” o r Cicero’s peroration. But the sacred quality of deinos could always be suspect, and any­one who places himself in the divine role of prosecutor could be motivated by personal interests. The fundamental ques* tion is: who made you the prosecutor? In order to reach the truly sublime, the one who thunders must by this very fact be inhabited by a god, who for both Demosthenes and Cicero is the god of the homeland in danger. Or to put it another way, he has to have Justice with him, he has to be able to

appearas the very incarnation ofjustice. Here as elsewhere, Aristotle’s Rhetoric shows that it is truly an ethics, much like Quintilian’s (who makes a number of remarks along the same lines).

In the seventeenth century, the Christian rereading of this chapter is not entirely self-evident. Is one not. in feeling in­dignant toward those who are unworthy (indigne in French), acting as if one were God himself, and doubting his Provi­dence, which mysteriously rewards those on this earth who do not deserve it? A professor of rhetoric such as Christoph Schrader (at the University of Helmstedt) argues for the rights o f Christian indignation in the choices that depend on human free will. One should not, for example, in use and in public office "prefer the unworthy to the worthy (ne indujni dignis praeferantur)" (commentary ad loc, 332: this opens up the question of merit or worthiness). But other than this, and from a more metaphysical point of view [De rhitoricorum Artstorf/is sententia el vsv comm<7ilarius), he uses Aristotle's chapter as an incitement to asceticism, for example, toward the goods listed in 1387al2, “riches, power,” as well as the gifts one is born with, which is in fact everything tha t comes from Forrund or Providence. At that point we need to hold back our desire for indujnatio, and leave this feeling to God alone. We are not Nemesis, and this is a way of emphasizing the extent to which the sublime that is described here, from Aristotle to Longinus, is a manifestly pagan sublime.

III. Commonplaces as Categories of an Index

This is again a homonym. In the sixteenth century, “commonplaces" in the plural was used to designate the cate­gories under which a reader would classify thequotations that for him seemed noteworthy. So it was a sort of filing system, or index, or repertoire. This pedagogical tool had two objec­tives: to train one’s memory, and to develop one’s judgment.

One term from this period expressed this dual ambition, the verb “to digest,” and the noun "digest” is still used to convey this idea in English. Technically speaking, the verb refers to the idea o f classifying a quotation under such and such a category: digerere means to distribute elements, each one into the box where it belongs. The usual expression des­ignating this sorting out o f commonplaces is thus “per locos communes di^sta" (each thing in its own category). The word “digest” has to do with the body, but also with the mind. The mind will retain better what it has digested better. This is the meaning of the famous image of the bee that Seneca uses in his letter 84 to Lucilius, the terms of which are endlessly cited and reworked by Erasmus throughout his work—Eras­mus himself transforms it into a real cliche that is constantly borrowed and adapted during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The bee gathers pollen from flowers: this is the moment when a pupil notes down in his notebooks or on a slate the “flowers” of literature and history (cf. Hamlet noting down in his “common-place book” that his uncle is a “villain," just after he has seen the ghost!). When the bee is back in the hive, the pollen that has been gathered is re­distributed into the different alveoli of the hive: this is the moment of "digestion,” o f distribution, when the pupil cop* ies out onto the large in-folio of blank pages that he keeps at home, ft is then that the mind can make its own honey and incorporate knowledge from outside.

158 COMMONPLACE

It is d ea r that without any judgment or critical perspec- tive this act could turn into one of pure compilation. This was strongly emphasized by the Reformer Melanchthon (1497-1560), who was rector o f the celebrated university at W ittenberg after Luther. The pernicious double of digerere was congerere: to accumulate for the sake of accumulating. The solution was order a t every moment of the process (see the booklet t>e locis com/nimibus ratio). Order reigns, both in reading and in writing: to classify well was to think well, was to write well. One of the aims of commonplaces was to educate oneself in the field of knowledge one decided principally to pursue. As far as reading was concerned, for Melanchthon the category-words had to be organized in analytical order, which he preferred to the jumble of alphabetical order. The model was the encyclopedia, as a tree with branches. Whatever his domain, a student would develop his memory and his critical faculties by organizing his collection of commonplaces according to the big and then small categories of his discipline. As for writing, his discourse would also benefit from this same order, since without a well-conceived plan it could turn into a compi­lation of arguments. One has only to reread Quintilian's comments on dispositio to find the same aversion to what is, precisely, difficult to digest: “a copious abundance o f ideas, no m atter how large, would merely provide a heap or a kind of congestion (cumu/u/n atque conijtfsfum], if they were not put into order by this same disposition [in ordtnem ditjesfus]” (7, prologue l).

As an essential element of the pedagogy of the Jesuits, this method played a very im portant role in the organiza­tion of study across Europe and in all fields o f knowledge. For commonplaces in the sense of categories was by no means confined to literature, or even to the humanities more broadly speaking. The method was an often explicit adaptation of the first tool of Aristotle’s Topics (1.14.105a ff.), that is, the idea of collecting premises, commonly accepted propositions (endoxat (fv5o£ai)). Aristotle himself earned the sobriquet of “reader" because o f this: read everything, index everything. This was how he wrote The History of Ani­mals or PoJirics, beginning by drawing up an inventory and classifying—by "digesting”—all the available information. This was also how Bodin wrote his K?pub/iqu? in the six­teenth century: the vast compilation of all the existing con­stitutions was a prelude to his induction, which for Bodin would then reveal a new concept o f sovereignty.

What is the relationship between oratorical training and an index of categories? We might turn again to Melanchthon for the answer. We should first o f all em pha­size the context, which was not rhetorical but theological. His Licuxco/nmimsdi’ theologie (Commonplaces of theology), which appeared in 1521, was conceived as a manual, and we can see it as one of the first comprehensive works of Lu­theranism. The main doctrinal questions were addressed systematically and provided a coherent body of doctrine that was contrasted with the previous one. Order here was only necessary because of the context of theological con­troversy. If one's principles were not good, one could not formulate good discourses, and if Melanchthon drew at­tention to the term “commonplace," it was because the Re­former had read Cicero very well. He understood tha t for

Cicero the movement toward generality was a t the heart of his rhetoric. The movement upward from the particular to the general produced the essential ideas, the framework, and the overall articulation, and these ideas organized the arguments of the speech and aroused the moments of most intense emotion.

IV. The Commonplace in the Modern EraThe commonplace in the modern sense is both a faux ami, which looks deceptively like the word in its classical sense, and a true heir. It is a faux ami in a text as apparently simple as the following, written by Pierre Bayle in 1686:

C’est ce q ueje réponds au lieu commun qui a été si re- battu par les ignorants, que le changement de religion entrame avec lui le changement de gouvernement, e t qu’ainsi il faut soigneusement empecher que Ton n'innove.

(This is what I reply to the commonplace, which has become so worn out from use by ignorant people, that the change of religion brings with it a change of govern* ment, and that therefore we have to be careful to pre­vent any innovation.)

(Com m<,nwirc,phi/osophi<ju£ su re« paro/es de Jésus-Chrisi)

The proximity of lieu commun and rebattu gives the impres­sion that we are already dealing with its contemporary meaning. We are already, it is true, in generality, and even political conservatism, the very kind that Flaubert scorns so joyously in his Dieriortdry o f Received ideas. But what the /auxami prevents us from seeing is tha t Bayle is here refer­ring to an entire historical development. Those who are ignorant have for a long time, passionately, discussed the question that concerns, as in Cicero, the homeland in dan­ger. The category-word is something like ''Government" or 'Dangerous Innovations,” and on this subject arguments and quotations have been collected eagerly since it is known in advance that they can be reused. The author only gives us the substance of these long developments on a question of principle. He is the one who abbreviates it, and who gives us the false impression that the commonplace is reduced to one or two expressions, to what we nowadays understand as “cliche.”

And yet the very possibility o f such a reduction is not unfaithful. A cliché only needs to be expanded, ju st as the expansion itself can be abbreviated. This is not the main point, which is rather the excessive visibility tha t the method o f commonplaces has given to the commonplace. Bayle is not reproaching the commonplace for being over­used. but for being worn out through overuse by ignorant people. What we reproach the cliché for, following Flau­bert, is to be overused, period, by intelligent as well as by ignorant people. In o ther words, if the commonplace in the modern sense is truly the distant heir o f former meanings of the term , it is that the legacy itself has become too pon­derous. Doxa was once near to Wisdom, and we now find it closer to Stupidity.

Francis Goyet

COMPARISON 159

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Amossy, Ruth. Les id ies r e l ie f : Sémiologie du stereotype. Parir Nathan, 1991.--------- . Stiriotypes e l cbchis: lao g u e, discoun, socHU. Paris: Nathan, 1997.

--------- . and Michel Delon, eds. Critique t t legtttmité du preyugi fXVHk-XXt stick).

Brussels: Editions del*Universitede Bruxelles. 1999---------- . and Elisheva Rosen Les discoun du d ieh i. Par«: S o o é té d'édibon

d'enseignemen t supéríeur. 1982.

--------- . and Meir Sternberg. *Doxa and Discourse: H w Common Knowledge

Works.'floerics Today 2 1 {2002k 369-M i-

Anstotle. Am to*e:fthttonque. 3 vols. Edited and translated by M édéfK Oufour. Paris:

Presses Univerwtaires d e France; »973-

> The ’Art’ o f Rhetoric. Translated by John Henry Freese. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press, >97$.

. M elo n ;. In The Complete WorksofArrstotie. Boilirvgen Series, 71. Vol. 4 edited

by Jonathan Barnes. Princetorv NJ: Princeton University Press» >984.

> Topxjues. Edited and translated by Jacques Brunschwig. Pans: Les Belles

tettres, 2007. First published in 1967.

Bayle, Pierre, (om m entoue philosophique sur (es paroles d e ksus-C hm t: Confron tes <fentrer[= sur les conversions forcéesl In du vres dn en es. edited by R Husson et

a l, <727. voL 2. Repr. E. Labrousse, ed. H4deshe»m, Ger.: Olms, 1965.Bla*, Ann. The Theater o f Nature: iea n Bodin a n d Renaissance Science. Princetorv NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1997.Bodirv Jean. M ethod /or the Casy Comprehension o f History. Translated by Beatrice

Reynolds. New York: W W. Norton, >945.

Cauqueliiv Anne. Cart du Aieu com mun: Du bon usage de la doxa. Pam: Editions du

Sew* >999.Cicero. D e invention. De optimo genera orotorum: Topxa. Translated by H. M. HubbelL

Loeb Classical Library. Cam bndge, MA: Harvard University P rest >9 65 .--------- . The Treatise on Rhetorical Invention. In The Orations o f Marcus TuMiii Cketo.

v o l a, translated by C. CX Yonge. New York: Dodo Press, 2006.Copeland, Rita. Khetonc, Hermeneutics, a n d Translation in the M iddle Ages: Aca­

dem ic Traditions o n d V tm ocu hr Texts. Cam bridge: Cam bridge University Press,

’ 991-Couzmet, Marie-Oommtque. M istare t t m ith o d e ó fa Renaissance: Une lecture de

ia M ethodus ad facilem historiarum cognittonem d e ie a n Bodin. Paris: Vrin,

199«Dionysius o f Halicarnassus. "Demosthenes.* In The Cntical Essays, translated by

Stephen Usher. Vol. i. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge. MA: Harvard University

Press. 1974.

G o yet Francs. ¿e ioW me du "heu commun *■ /'Invention rhitortquedans fA n tiqvitie t

á lo Renaissance. Paris: Champion, 1996.

/H am let, étudiantdu XVle s «c le .*A *fii7u e i i3 (»998!: 3 -15 .

Hesk. Jon. "D esp isers o I the Commonplace': Meta*Topoi and Para-Top oi in Attic

Oratory ’ Rhetorxo 25 (2007): >61-84.Longinus. On the Sublime. Translated by Jam es A Ariel! and John M. Crossett. New

York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985.--------- . Poetics. Edited and translated by W. K Fyfe. Loeb Classical Library, >99. Cam­

bridge, M A Harvard University Press, 1995.M elanchthoi\ Philipp. De locis communibus ratio, fascicle bound w ith De form ando

studioof Rodolphus Agncola. Sále: H. Petrus, i$3 i.

Mor tensen, Daniel E.*Tbe Loci of CkeraTM erorico 26 <2008): j i - $ 6 .

Moss, Ann. *Commonplace-Rhetonc and Thought-Patterns in Early M odem Culture* In The Recoveryotfthetoik: P ersu aw e Discourse a n d DrsfipHnarityin the Human Sci­

ences, edited by R. H. Roberts and J.MM . G o od 49-60. Charlottesville: University Press ol Virginia of Virginia, >99).

> fru ited C om m onpbxe Books o n d the Structuring o f Renaissance Thought.

Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.

Murphy, Jam es J. Rhetonc in the Middle Ages: A History o f Rhetorical Theory from

Saint Augustine to the Renaissance. Berkeley: University ol California Press,

>974 .Quintilian. 77ie Orarort Education, jv o h . Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge. M A Har­

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sted t Ger.: H. D. Muller, 1674.

Summers. David. “ The Proverb Is Something Musty': The Comm onplace and Epis*

tern« Cnsis in Hamlet*Homier Studies 20 («998): 9-34-

I COMMUNITY

“Common” derives from Latin communis, “what belongs to everyone,” from cum, “with," and munis, “what fulfills its task, its duty ' 1 (related to munus, office, gift); it corresponds to Greek Jcoínos [moivóç], “common, public,” in which we probably see the same root as in the Latin cum, and which contrasts with idios [fôioç], “peculiar, private.” “Community" designates the fact o f being in common, what is held in com* mon, and the group o r institution that shares what is held in common.

I. Common and Community1. What is held in common is opposed to what is one’s own

and to property: see PROPERTY.2. “Common" can be used in reference to different levels of

community, it can refer to humanity as a whole: see LOGOS, S£NS COMMUN, UNIVERSALS, as well as AUTRUl, HUMANITY [MENSCHHEIT], IDENTITY. [l/ME/MYSELF, SAMOST’, SELBST]. Or it can refer toa particular human community defined as a people (see PEOPLE and NAROD; cf. HEIMAT), or as a culture (see BILDUNG, CIVILTÀ, CULTURE, TO TRANSLATE) considered distinctive because o f some privileged trait (see MALAISE).

II. Political Community and Society1. The entry CIVIL SOCIETY explores the main systems

used to describe the community, as opposed to society and the state. For Greek, in addition to Jopíndnia poíifikê (xoivttfvía noAiTiHii] (CIVIL SOCIETY, I), see the entries for POLIS, OIKEIÔSIS. OIKONOMIA. For Latin, in addition to sociemctviiis (CIVIL SOCIETY, I), see PIETAS, RELIDO, and cf. LEX. On the distinction between Gemeinsthafr and Gesell- schaft in German, see CIVIL SOCIETY, Box 1 .

2. In mir [Mtip], Russian has a special constellation that refers simultaneously to peace, the world, and the peas* ant community; see MIR and SOBORNOST’ (conciliarity, communion), and cf. NAROD (people); cf. CONCILIARITY.

3. The contemporary avatars of the political promotion of the community are considered in the entry LIBERAL. Box 3.

> ALLIANCE. CONSiNSUS. OBLIGATION. STATE

| COMPARISON_______________________________

FRENCH c o m p a ro is o n

g r e e k su g k n s is (o u Y H p io iC l- a n tith e s is ( a v t i f i w t c ) ,

p a ra th c s ts ( t t a p a O e o id

I t a l i a n p a r a g o n s

l a t i n c o m p a r a u o , co n tro p o s itu m , a d p o s it u m

> ANALOGY. COMMONPLACE. CONCETTO, IMACt. INGENIUM, MIMESIS. PROPERTY

Com parison or simile has suffered by the recent success o f metaphor. It has served as a foil for its brilliant alter ego.To restore its interest, w e have only to recall that the apparently canonical comparotio-met- aphora pair is deceptive.This pair com es from a passage in Quintilian that has been taken out o f context. In Latin, com paratio designates