Seduccion en Gorgias.pdf

7/29/2019 Seduccion en Gorgias.pdf

1/34

The Seductions of GorgiasAuthor(s): James I. PorterSource: Classical Antiquity, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Oct., 1993), pp. 267-299Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25010996

Accessed: 20/08/2009 13:30

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the

scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform thatpromotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Classical

Antiquity.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25010996?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucalhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucalhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/25010996?origin=JSTOR-pdf


2/34

JAMES I. PORTER

The Seductions of Gorgias

SUBLIME RHETORICWHEN DOES HETORICALUASIONranscend itself and become sublime?Foran answer, we might look to the author of On theSublime, who in turnwouldseem to be looking back toGorgias, when he writes at the outset of his treatise:

Sublimity is a kind of eminence or excellence of discourse.... Forgrandeur produces ecstasy rather thanpersuasion in the hearer [oi y&aeig 3?Et0i)TOVg&XQOWFoVIOVgXX'iS;EXOcaoLvyeLt t iUneQpqI];andthe combination of wonder and astonishment always proves superior tothe merely persuasive and pleasant [xdvTlq6b ye oiVvixnkFet To,tL0avov xal tov nriog xatLv &a? xQatx xb Oavujtaoov]. This is becausepersuasion ison thewhole somethingwe can control,whereas amazementand wonder exert invinciblepower and force [b6vaoriav xai piav&icaXov]and get the better of every hearer.... Sublimity, produced atthe rightmoment [xaLQiog], tears everything up like awhirlwind, andexhibits the orator's whole power [6vvaCtLv]t a single blow.1.4, trans.Russell (emphases added)Longinus stands at the far end of the rhetorical tradition;Gorgias, at itsorigins.The relationship between these two authors iscomplex and too often neglected,

This essay is forMartin Ostwald, an inspiringteacherand friend. I am indebted to the followingfor comments and especially for eye-opening criticisms,not all ofwhich Ihave been able tomeet, butwhich helped me see this essay to its current form:Alina Clej, Alan Code, Eric Downing, MarkGriffith, Dalia Judovitz, Donald Mastronarde, Sara Rappe, Thomas Rosenmeyer, Froma Zeitlin,and anonymous readers.

? 1993 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA


3/34

268 CLASSICALNTIQUITY Volume 12/No. 2/October 1993but just a few observations areworth making here. In themost general of terms,Longinus andGorgias agree on the essentials. As D. A. Russell says ofGorgiasinanother context: "Now the emotional impactof poetry-its power to terroriseand sweep us off our feet-is, as Gorgias makes clear, universally acknowledged. Logos ingeneralmust then be seen to have the same force."'At theveryleast, the effects of the rhetor's logos are for the two authors too close to needcomment. Indeed, the language of description used by each is at first glanceremarkably similar (eig ixoTacoLv&ye, EotarTIaav[Hel. 17]; oirv exTnklEL,exjtXayevTeg[Hel. 16]; uvvaoreiav, 6uvv6ong (?ecyagHel. 8]; 3itav&aaxov,(o3tel ei [laTrxQovi l'rQnadortlHel. 12, conj. Diels]; xaLQeto, evT. 3,a6ovxtXQovwp [Hel. 17, Pal. 32; cf. fr. B 13]), and the parallels can be multiplied (cf. the"blows on themind" inflictedby the rhetor, [Long.] 20.2-3, Hel. 13; discoursesthat, "filled with the god" [Long.] 13.2, 18.1, Hel. 10, bloom like "beautifulstatues," [Long.] 30.1, Hel. 18; bewitching charms:xlXeLv[Long.] 39.3, yorpteiaHel. 10; etc.). And even though the gripping, emotional effects of languageandthe goal of persuasion are for neither author ultimately incompatible, inpracticefor both the latter tends to be extinguished by the former, just as in the exposition of each theory persuasion proper commands a lesser interest,giving way inGorgias to its analogies in literature and the senses, the same analogies oftentaking pride of place inLonginus's treatise. In the end, the effect of Gorgias'slogos, irrespectiveof the claimsmade on itsbehalf, includingthose claimsmadefor itby Gorgias himself, is (and alwayswas-historically at least, aswe shall seefurther below) one of "marvel" and "paradox"; and these are for Longinus noless paramount, being the source and vanishing point of all sublimity (1.4; cf.35.5, TO JaCa5boov). Longinus, whether he acknowledges it or not, owes a greatdebt toGorgias's original insight into the literaryand esthetic ends of rhetoric. IsGorgias an important and unacknowledged forerunner in the theory of the sublime?The question, intriguingthough itmay be, isnot one thatcan be gone intohere. (Nor are Longinus's views on the sublime free of complications of theirown.) The excursus on Longinus has amuch simplerpoint. It is thatpersuasionand persuasiveness do not always hold a supreme and unchallenged value in theancient rhetorical tradition.Nor need they, inprinciple.2The point having been made, it isworth noting how differentlyGorgias isconstructed in the tradition throughwhich he isreceived today.From Plato to thepresent, Gorgias ofLeontini has enjoyed the reputationof a supreme sophistbenton one end: the "enslavement" of his audiences through persuasion (tELtOd@),which is the sum and substance of his art (Plato, Gorgias 452d-53a). Quite apartfrom the outlandish nature of his claims for his own art and about reality, what isstrikingabout this reception ofGorgias is the continuedwillingness to credit him

1. Russell (1981) 23.2. Cf. [Plut.] De Homero 2.6 (Kindstrand 8, 44): ou? ya a&ei To6 lOavov EiTEtaL, v o TO

Jlabd6ogov xai zniqtevov CQ6XELTaL.


4/34

PORTER:he Seductions of Gorgias 269

with aprogram that he apparentlyholds butmanifestly fails to carryout. From theolder handbooks to the more recent scholarly literatureone finds accounts thatseem to takeGorgias and Plato literallyat theirword: conjured up in all theseaccounts is the imageof a hearer irresistiblyoverwhelmed-in theory, that is-by

Gorgias's apagogic andpsychagogic persuasions. Gorgias's own description of hisart, ineffect, replaces our description of it. "DieBeweise sindvorwiegend in dieapagogischeForm gefa3t, die denEindruck derUnentrinnbarkeit macht."3 "Thuslogos is almost an independent external power which forces the hearer to do itswill."4 "Incurably deceptive," logos has an "enormous power" that acts uponopinion, which is "easy to change."5

What ispuzzling in all this is that the urge to describe or paraphraseGorgias's art has caused commentators to overlook the very best witness of it that wehave: itsenactment, which is to say theperformative value ofGorgias's writings,especially the speeches. For ifGorgias's literary remains do nothing else, theydemonstrate how one can do thingswith words without being explicit aboutwhatisbeing done (the artof speaking is, after all, an art of silence too [fr.B 6]), evenif thismeans contradicting, performatively,what isbeing said-as for instance inthe statementsmade so unconvincingly on behalf of the ostensible aim of rhetoric, "persuading the hearer." Was Gorgias persuasive inpractice?Was persuasion even the goal? The figure that thePlatonicGorgias cuts isanything but thatof a master of suasion, all his claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Primafacie, there are no grounds for doubting the historical accuracy of Plato's portrait,6which instead shows Gorgias unable to offer a convincing definition ofrhetoric, deforming the ones he offers with his own example (Socrates is surelyno thrall to what he hears), and producing exasperation and bafflement morethan any other response in his audience. How straightforwardare Gorgias'sdefinitions of his art, here or anywhere else? His claims to verbal supremacyclearly do not appear to have been matched by his practice. It is a separatequestion whether they in fact could have been so matched, and a third questionwhether theywere ever intended to be. Gorgias, after all,was renowned for hisrnaQabouokoyia (DK 82A 1 [Philostr.Vit. soph. 1.9.2]; cf. Isoc.Hel. 1), and heprovoked reactions at times much stronger than mere exasperation.7 Persuasion

3. Schmid-Stahlin (1940) 66.4. Segal (1961) 121; cf.Walsh (1984) 82-83.5. Kerferd (1981a) 79-82.6. See also Dodds (1959) 9-10.7. Much of the evidence is anecdotal. The reactions of Isocrates (toXoioCavTa,Hel. 3) andPlato are sufficiently representative; Philostratus (DK 82A 1) andDiodorus (A 4) are deprecatingwitnesses who attest mainly to his spellbinding novelty. The author of MXG still findsGorgias's

contradictory arguments objectionable (979a34); and Gorgias was attacked by Antisthenes (Ath.220c). Gorgias's stay inArgos is said to have earned him the loathing and censorship of that polis,and a penalty for his pupils (Olympiodorus, In Plat. Gorg. 7.2, p. 51, 16-18 Westerink; SchmidStahlin (1940) 59 n. 10). His frank amoralism (Plat. Gorg. 453a) can only have contributed to hisnotoriety.


5/34

270 CLASSICALNTIQUITY Volume 12/No. 2/October 1993and paradox make strange bedfellows. This was no secret to Longinus. CanGorgias have been unconscious of theirdilemma?

Persuasion but not paradox iswhat defines the view of Gorgias's theory ofdeceptive speech that is taken by virtually all his commentators. One influentialline on the issue represents a stronger version of the claims put forwardby thePlatonic Gorgias (butwithout any reference to Plato's presentation or its implications). Gorgias's sophistic program as it is found, say, in his Encomium ofHelen is assumed to embrace the exceptional powers of logos and persuasion.8The speech itself gives some warrant for this reading: o6yog, after all, is a"powerful lord," a 6vvado-rg [Eyag (8); Helen can be absolved, by words, fromcharges of crime (which are themselves mere words).9 The linguistic theoryimplied by Gorgias's philosophical writing appears only to certify the power oflogos. There is, for instance, the claim from On Not-Being; or, On Nature thatlanguage is self-contained and can convey nothing of what exists outside itself.Since this is so, the argument runs, logos enjoys absolute mastery in its ownrealm (the sphere of verbal communication); it exists autonomously, in selfconfirming isolation, and in a world apart. "Autonomous" and (therefore)utterly given over to the logic of persuasion, logos dominates our psychologicalreality.A reading such as thiscontains unsuspected andpossibly insuperabledifficulties.To beginwith, itmust overlook the genuine problem thatGorgias's view ofpersuasion is, in itself and in the evidence that has survived to attest to it,glaringly unpersuasive. Gorgias's individualarguments inhis best-preservedwritings, includingeven those that concern persuasion, tend tounravel one another.

His Encomium of Helen is a case in point. If the speech is a demonstration of theoverwhelming powers of logos, it is a curiously self-defeating one; and ifwe arepersuaded by Gorgias's claims on behalf of persuasion, this is likely to be owingto a desire on our part to be persuaded, but not thanks to any power that isintrinsic to the speech itself. Indeed, the gap between assertion and applicationin Gorgias is precisely one of the least analyzed features of the "persuasionthesis," and (Iwill argue) itsgreatest barrier.

A second problem with the view just sketched above has to do with the way acontradiction inGorgias's own thinking is quietly smoothed off. Itmay be thatlanguage can convey nothing of what exists outside itself. But this is properlyspeaking a limitationon language; itpoints to a fundamental incapacityof logos,which is difficult to square with the theory of language as power put forward inthe Encomium of Helen. Gorgias's rather severe strictures on logos, as these arestated in On Not-Being, are occasionally taken into account, but less so now thanthey once were. If scholars formerly took pains to reconcile Gorgias's two seem

8. Apart from the references given inn. 4 above, see alsoRosenmeyer (1955),Guthrie (1971),Cassin (1980), Kerferd (1981a, 1981b),Mourelatos (1987).9. Translations fromHelen are adapted fromKennedy, inSprague (1972).


6/34


ingly incompatible accounts of logos,10the autonomy thesis seems designed tosidestep their variance in a definitive way. Below I shall try to show how theincompatibility is present where it least ought to appear: in the rhetoricalspeeches themselves, where the claims to authoritative persuasion have to be

weighed againstGorgias's tacit and open acknowledgments in those same contexts that logos has limits that are intrinsic to itself.We would do well to paycloser heed to the dissonances that run throughGorgias's writings. Itmay be thatGorgias had two theories of language; perhaps he was confused. Alternatively,Gorgias's theory of persuasion (to the extent that it is one) might be usefullyviewed as the embodiment of a paradox. The theory of persuasion cannot beboth self-contained, an end in itself, and be about the self-containment of language, without falling into self-conscious subversion. In otherwords, the theorycannot be true without being self-canceling.'1This is the view that I will besuggesting inwhat follows below. A more positive account of this paradoxicaldemolition will be given in the final section of thispaper.There are other difficultieswith some of the standard views of Gorgias, andthese need to bementioned briefly. First, the "autonomy thesis,"which appearsto flow unimpeded fromGorgias's writings, ought on several counts to provokesuspicion rather thanparaphrases.'2What isautonomy?One candidatemight befreedom from external determination. If so, how absolute isautonomy, and howreciprocal is the relation? IfX is (absolutely) autonomous ofY, isY autonomousof X? It is a thesis that is difficult to get a handle on, in part because, Iwouldclaim, theconcept of autonomy isnot justambiguous; it is incoherent. Inparticular, autonomy is a relational concept that appears to name a property standingoutside all relation. Gorgias, we shall see, was conscious of this problem, andexploited it fully. Second, what is "logos"?To claim that language exists byitself, self-governing and self-constituting, in exchange for its referents in thereal, is tantamount to saying thatwe are immersed in signs and conventions, in aculturalmedium that is symbolic and social and fromwhich we can never entirelyemerge. In this case, logos just is these signs and conventions and the intersubjective realm that embraces them-the content, the medium, and the

10. Cf. Calogero (1977) 262-65. Citations are to the second edition of thiswork; the essay onGorgias (chap. 4) isunchanged from its firstprinting (1932).11. The resort to "esthetic autonomy" is aimed at protectingGorgias from subvertinghis ownthesis. See Segal (1962) 119with n. 82,Verdenius (1981) 125. So isany appeal to truth, forwhich seeKerferd (1981a:81-82), who hopes that a deceptive logos can nonetheless "get at" the truth (the truereality); but how it can is anything but clear; and, I am arguing, it ispart ofGorgias's irony that thisclaim (which isGorgias's) is self-canceling.12. Cf. thepreceding note and, e.g., the referencesmentioned in n. 8 above, as well as Cassin("autonomie du discours," 1980: 98), who does not, however, hold the persuasion thesis (ibid. 9091). The word isused, e.g., byRosenmeyer ("the autonomy of speech," quoted by Segal [1962] 110;cf. ibid. 112, 145 n. 60), and it is implied in formulations like the following by Kerferd: "Gorgias isintroducing a radicalgulf between logos and the things towhich it refers," viz., between logos andthe reality that is "irretrievablyoutside [logos] itself" (1981a: 81); Bett (1989) 152 n. 24 sees anincoherence lurking inKerferd's account.


7/34

272 CLASSICALNTIQUITY Volume 12/No. 2/October 1993

exchange all rolled into one. Logos is of course all these things: it is the verbaldomain and individual instances of thatdomain, which only renders claims about"logos" themore slippery.The same considerationsmake abstracting logos fromitsmaterial circumstancesmore difficult thanmight at firstappear.Third, it ishabitually stated that because logos iscut off from reality itenjoysa special potency (deceptive and persuasive powers) in its own domain.13Butlogos just is thisdomain. We are already deceived thanks to the linguisticmediation in our experience14-twice deceived, ifwe do not acknowledge our deception. The very instabilityof opinion, used to argue the power of logos, is anargument against the ability of logos to controlwhat is intrinsicallyunpredictableand unstable. But what is the distinction between logos and itsostensible object,doxa? Inprinciple, there isnone, if to be susceptible to logos (tobe in language)is to be already in a state of deception (apate, doxa). The tendency here is toassume that logos ismore powerful thanopinion, when in fact these two are eachother's condition. How could we ever tell them apart?Again, the fallacy lies in

making logos into an agent of itself. It isdifficult to see how persuasion could bemore powerful than the deception that is caused by or justcomeswith language.Nor is linguisticdeception fundamentally different in kind or degree from thatwhich comes with sensation in each of its realms (sensation and perception yieldno truth and no criterion; cf. MXG 980a 12-19 and fr. B3 [65]). Finally, Gorgias's claim, endorsed by critics, that logos impinges quasi-physically upon arealm that (presumably) is not constituted by languagebut isonly "shaped"by it(the VpVxyi) latly goes against the assumption of the autonomy of logos, whichrequires that language be cut off from everything that lies externally to it.Theissues involved in all these problems are complex and fraughtwith difficulty. Iwill be suggesting, however, thatGorgias was more aware of this degree ofdifficulty than his theory, as it is found and often admired in our handbooks,ever allows.

Rediscovering some of the clues to thisawareness in thework ofGorgias willbe one focus of thispaper-as will tappingsome of the far-reaching potential ofGorgias's provocative writings. To glance ahead,what is"wrong"with the autonomy thesis gives us what is "right" about Gorgias's theory of language andreality. In other words, to the extent thatGorgias suggests a version of theautonomy thesis, his theory isnot falsifiedby itsrefutation; it carrieswithin itselfthe necessity of its own refutation. That Gorgias made a paradoxical use ofrhetoric is a well-accepted fact. As a fact, it also attracts to itself a certainindifference. We need to make Gorgias unacceptable again, to read him less for

what he says than for what he does. Gorgias is not somebody who can be takenlightlyat hisword.

13. See, e.g., Segal (1962) 109,Kerferd (1981a) 80, Bett (1989) 153.14. Segal (1962) 111-12, Kerferd (1981a) 81 ("So all logos is to that extent Deception"), Cole(1990) 148.


8/34

PORTER:he Seductions of Gorgias 273HELEN'S FOUR CAUSES

We may begin by considering the palpable structure and content of theEncomium of Helen, themost celebrated of Gorgias's speeches. Its purportedaim is to absolve Helen of the blame she has earned "unanimously" at the handsof poets, by telling the truth about her. As such, it smacks of the genre of theparadoxon enkomion, and is a bit like discoursing in praise of salt.15But thespeech also becomes a platform for arguments about the nature of languageandpersuasion, which it is tempting to detach from the context and to view apart.

Why the theoryof logos should somehow be immune to the aporiasof the speechthat contains it isanythingbut clear. In any event, Gorgias does all that he can tomake such a separation difficult to carry out, as a brief overview of the speechwill show.

Helen's birth and origins are narrated first; then four competing explanations (aitLat, 5) for her behavior, each with the coherence of a separate narrative, are considered in turn.An explanation is to be sought either (1) in fate(riTxTX),he gods, or necessity; or (2) in violent force (rape); or (3) in thepersuasion of words; or (4) in the seductions of desire (erOs);and inany of thesecases, who could blameHelen for being the victim of external compulsion?Thefour aircia are synonymous with Gorgias's logos ("account") and its truth, orrather (we should say) with his logoi, since what he in fact offers is on the onehand a single account, as forecast in 5, iTOU tEUovMog k6yov, "the account tocome," and on the other the individual accounts of the individual aLxTl'aL hatcollectively make up that coming account. Logos and aitia are wedded to oneanother, each giving the structure of the other, as in 15: "I will pass on to thefourth aitia with my fourth logos." But account and aitia also stand apart and intension, cleft as they are by competing arguments and even by competingmeanings: ai'tLa combines, ambiguously, "accusation," "cause," "reason," and "responsibility" (Gorgias plays upon all of these), while logos has ambiguities of itsown, some of which have been mentioned already (these will be explored atgreater lengthbelow). A question to ask, then, iswhether logos can sustain thiscarving-up of its substance, that is,whether it can be successfully held togetherover the course of the speech.

Gorgias's elaborate defense falls, as we said, into four parts. Once the alternatives have been run throughand explored at different lengths,Gorgias's exoneration of Helen has, in his own eyes at least, the force of self-evidence, thoughnot yet the character of accepted truth-or so he presents the matter, in arhetorical question put at the end of the speech (20): "How then can one regardblame of Helen as just, since she is utterly acquitted of all charge, whether shedid what she did though falling in love or persuaded by speech or ravished byforce or constrained by divine constraint?" So ends the acquittal, the "ill" effects

15. See Cole (1991) 143 with n. 7.


9/34

274 CLASSICALNTIQUITY Volume 12/No. 2/October 1993of one logos (a defamation), as it is frequently put, having been cleansed bymeans of the "good" effects of another logos,16one that is either an encomium(21) or an apology (a&nokoyioaoOal, 8)-Gorgias is intriguinglymixing hisgenres, a fact thatwould irkhis pupil Isocrates, but with consequences that rundeeper than even Isocrates allowed. The acquittal, at any rate, is followed by aconclusion, which reads, "Iwished towrite a speech [koyog] thatwould be anencomium of Helen and a diversion tomyself" (21)."Diversion," literally"plaything"or "game" (jtaiyvlov), is the finalword ofthe speech. It isdevastating, quite literallyso, inasmuchas it scandalously empties out the contents of whatever comes before it. It has also achieved some ofwhat itwas intended to do: invite endless speculation.As a result,Gorgias hasbeen accused of everything from nihilism to nominalism.17But letus save theselabels for the end and instead turn back to the speech, itsorganization, and itspeculiar production of meaning. For it is here that the real scandal of Helenoccurs.

First, it should be observed that the Helen who emerges fromGorgias'sspeech ispainted, as itwere, innegative relief.Her innocence isestablished by aseries of negations, namely, the refutationsof responsibility thatgo hand inhand

with each exposition of an aitia. Little, curiously, of a positive nature speaks inher favor (morewill be said about thisbelow). Meanwhile, the apparently lucid,overt structureof Helen's defense is belied by another,more complicated form.For upon closer inspection, Gorgias manages, through a never-spoken logic ofentailments and verbal repetitions, to equatewithout quite conflating necessity,violence, persuasion, and er6s, by "showing" ineffect thateach of the termsmaybe viewed as an aspect of the remaining terms: (divine) necessity is a kind ofviolence; persuasion is a form of seduction; but eros can be violent and "necessary," like divinity and persuasion; etc. G. E. R. Lloyd once observed, "Inneither speech [sc.Helen and Palamedes, which share structuralsimilarities]arethe alternatives such as to be formally mutually exclusive and exhaustive."18 It ispossible to imagine a scenario inwhich all four causative factors were co-present,all impinging, either in turnor at once, upon Helen. But Gorgias takes things astep further, in the direction of encapsulation and assimilation.His four alternativesdissolve into a series of approximations and analogies. They are convergentto thepoint of identity.We may consider just enough examples tomake the point graphic. Itwill beintuitivelyobvious, for instance, thatmetaphysical compulsion (fate, thegods, ornecessity, avayxqr) cannot be neatly separated from force (Pia), the topicof the

16. Cf. Hel. 14,where Gorgias mentions "an evil persuasion" (EtL0oi xCax), towhich his ownisassumedly opposed.17. Nihilism: Dodds (1959) 8, debunking the label conferred on Gorgias byGomperz (1912)35. Nominalism: Rosenmeyer (1955) 231-32 ("Logos creates its own reality"); cf. Guthrie (1971)215.18. Lloyd (1979) 83.


10/34

PORTER:heeductionsfGorgias 275following aitia (7), for "it is thenature of things . . . for theweaker to be ruled anddrawnby the stronger, andgod isstrongerinforce [Pid]and inwisdom and inother

ways" (6). Nor can persuasion be considered apart frommetaphysical compulsions, forwe learn in 8 that "speech isapowerful lord,"a 6vvo'rrlS; ?ycg;,which"bymeans of the finest andmost invisiblebody [aGolXQOTxaTG)lAatt]effects thedivinestworks [OELO6xaagya]." Needless to say, the incantationsof persuasivespeech are "sacred," literally vEo?0t, fullof thegod" (10). In view of 12,which isspoiled at itsbeginning by a few hopelessly corrupt lines, the forceof persuasionand thatof necessity at thevery leasthave the samequality or power (6MvacuLg):19"The persuader, like one who compels [(bgdvayxdoag: lit., "one who necessitates"], does thewrong, and the one persuaded [Helen], likeone compelled [Cogavayxaso0ioa, "necessitated"] by speech, iswrongly charged."The ambiguousparticle cogcreates a precise confusion in the italicized portions: the logics ofanalogy ("like") and explanation ("since")appear tooverlap in their discontinuity;and it is thisvery uncertainty, between analogical and factualdescription, thatwill prove to be symptomatic of Gorgias's speech as a whole. Language in itseffects is,moreover, a kind of rape: in 12, "under the influenceof speech" (orsong: iAvog), Helen's fate was to have been overwhelmed, "just as if she wasravishedby the forceof themighty [iOoajceELipLaicv i/l^Q3cnaoOr]]."20inally,through the violence (and necessity) of language, divinelymasterful persuasionapproximates the compulsions, necessities, or justfatalitiesof (divinely)masterfulseduction (Ei Aev 0e6g (6ov EXeL)OECov0iav 6Uvva(ltV; cf. T6rlX ayQEvoaaV . . .?QTog avdayxaLg,19), the last of the aitiai. IfGorgias is trying to keep his aitiaiapart, he is trying no less hard tomake that task next to impossible.21

Above, Helen's status was seen to emerge as the sum of a series of (hypothetical) negations: "If shewas driven by external forceor [etc.], she isnot to beheld responsible for what she did."Here, we see those negationsmelting awaybefore our very eyes, through a countertide of negations, that is, through thedoubling back of Gorgias's language upon itself and upon itsown ambitions: intheireffects, not to say in theirdescriptions, fate is indistinguishablefrom force,etc.How are the indirectionsof the kind documented justabove, the erosions ofdistinctions and even of clarity, essential toGorgias's point? Inotherwords, howcanwe explain the peculiar, self-canceling structureof Helen, which is likely to

19. Diels proposes this sense (cf. app. crit. ad loc.): "Persuasiondoes not have the [outward]form of necessity, but it does have the same power." The analogy is clear however thewording isconstrued. (Donadi's recent text provides no solutions.)20. This ismost certainly the forceof the comparison,whatever the text (Diels's conjecture ex.grat. isadopted here, andKennedy's translation is slightlymodified). The syntaxof Vlvog is likewiseuncertain. For viovogmeaning "speech,"Xen. Apol. 26; cf. Calogero (1957) 416-17.21. Cf. Aesch. Ag. 385-86, where Gorgias's "four causes" are already conjoined and associated with the illusory image (qpaoua, 415) of Helen; and Porter (1990) 35 with n. 26. In Helen thephraseological echoes and links of the sort mentioned abound. For instance, ooqpia is connected withfate (6); uo6voarr ev and Xoyct with force (7); trvXlloaevwith logos (15); ETvXe nd dv&yxqwithdesire (15, 19); etc.


11/34

276 CLASSICALNTIQUITY Volume 12/No. 2/October 1993be a crucial part of the speech's content?22The four "explanations"may bereducible to four different, if comparable, perspectives on a single "event."Butthequestion raised so pressingly byGorgias iswhether Helen is in turnreducibleto these accounts of her behavior. The story of her first appearance containsuntold perspectives of its own.Helen's mythical birth and origins are exposed inencomiastic fashion in 3:"Now it is not unclear, not even to a few, that in nature and in blood the womanwho is the subject of this speech is preeminent among preeminent men andwomen." The passage looks back to the preamble and forward to the sequel. Ifbeauty, wisdom, virtue, and truth(1) are all statedor implied in theaccount of herpedigree (hermother was Leda; her father, Zeus or Tyndareus, depending onwhom or what you believe), so too are divinity, power (xQndroTog,TQWavvog),rape (eros), and speech. As it happens, these latter are also the "causes" that

Gorgias will soon claim to be the source (and exculpating factors) of her blame.Had Gorgias wished towrite anunequivocal palinode aboutHelen, he would havedone well tocover up the scandalof her origins. Instead, likeEuripides in anotherso-called "palinode"ofHelen (Hel. 17-21,255-66), he obtrudes themquietly intothe foreground, in part just by remindingus of them, but in equalmeasure bymaking them all but illegible.Helen's mythical origins forecast the structuralattributes she is to acquire asvictim inGorgias's text: those origins are double, and they are ensnared in thedialectical perplexities of being and saying. Enmeshed in the squabblings overher pedigree, Helen has entered, in other words, into language.This iswhereGorgias's own languagebegins to freight itselfwith complication: b6Xovyag ;bg

IrqTQTg6Vv Ab6atg, 7taxQog 6e TOi3 [tv YEvogpvouv 0eoi, keyo evovu 6b OvqTOb,Tvv6dQEWxal AL6O("For it is clear that hermother was Leda, and her fatherwas a god, but allegedly amortal, Tyndareus andZeus")-and here the crucialcontamination of an assertionwith its own rhetoric comes in:wv 6 Rev 6t& TOeIvaitEoGev, 6 6Ea 1tqTavaC ?lX0T [AX: kX0,Qrr], xaLi yv Rev&v6QxvxQdzLoaog6 e jvTcvtv xQavvog ("ofwhom the one [Zeus], just because hewas, appeared the father, and theother [Tyndareus], justbecause hewas said tobe [or"justbecause he saidhewas"], was disproved tobe the father;and the onewas themost powerful ofmen and the other the lord of all," 3).The Greek is bafflingly compressed and antithetical; like the speech as awhole (in theway described above), the languageof this passage threatens tolapse into a general confusion.23One scholar rightly calls the sense that results

22. Not to speak of the catalogue of virtues and vices that frames the speech, and thatdependson the acceptance of a clearly defined pattern of oppositions (?vactvia, 1).23. Compare fr. B 26 (Proclus),where the antitheses likewise threaten to collapse parodicallyinto each other: "Gorgias claimed that being is invisible, unless coupled with appearance; and thatappearance is strengthless, unless coupledwith being" (kekyebe TO6v Eivacadpaveg dtiTVX6OVOiboxEtv, TO E boxeTvaYo0eve;i) TIUXOVOi Eiva). For two tellinglyopposite interpretationsof thisdictum, see Guthrie (1971) 199 n. 1,Cole (1991) 148-49. Calogero (1977) 268 n. 72 ("un richiamoall'eguale necessity di entrambi imomenti") comes closer to themark.


12/34


from the reading accepted by virtually every editor ("was refuted to be") "absurd," and prefers instead the conjecture of the apographs, "was said to be."24Gorgias, however, is entitled to his absurdity,which appears to be carefullycalculated, consisting as it does in balanced near-contradictions and in obscurities that, regardless of the solution we may opt for, simplywon't go away.25One way of making sense of Gorgias's "absurdity"("was refuted")was alludedto above, and itwill increasinglyclaim our attention below: here as elsewhere inthe same speech, the accent falls on the vulnerability,not the power, of logos;just to speak is to be open to devastating refutation-or else, on the alternativereading, to empty tautology ("was said to be-because of the claim to be").26

Gorgias's "confusion" ismeaningfully constructed. In the passage before us thesubjects of the clauses are gradually blurred (who is "themost powerful," andwho "the lord of all"?). The logic of their respective identities totters in anuncertainty that is as disquieting asHelen's disputed and, even after clarification,troubled, forever bifurcated, and-most importantof all-symbolically complexorigins.27InGorgias's compressed tale, language and reality falteringly approach oneanother. Later on in 15 the accent falls once again on the defective interchangebetween saying and being, on the alleged nature of Helen's crime (TIYv ngkeyoevrIS YEyovevatLagQTag aintav, "the charge [cause] of the offense thatwas said to have takenplace)." This tension runs through the whole of thespeech, which principally takes the form of what goes unsaid about things thatturn out not to be. And as above, Helen's identity is to be located somewhere intheirmidst.

ON WHAT IS NOT SAID ABOUT WHAT ISNOT (HELEN AS MYTH)Who or what exactly is Helen? Helen's status is first and last that of a

mythical being. InGorgias's play upon the then-currentphilosophical vocabulary, she has all the being of a nonbeing. If we take Gorgias at his word, she is afigure universally condemned, nrEQig 6oI6qocpvogal 6Ot6puXogyEyovev i T?eTOrVJOtLYTC)VXovoavTcv tLOTI;M TooE 6v6OarTOg cPTRl , 6 TeOvovtcpoQov

24. MacDowell (1961) 121. But see id. (1982) 13,where "antitheticalparadox" isrecognized tobe a hallmark of Gorgias's authenticwritings.25. The passage as a whole is structured chiastically and by reversal. The chiasmus, moreover, requires a second antithesis. Hence 'i'yX08vcan easilymean "refuted," not "proved" (whichis also possible); but the indeterminacy between these may just be symptomatic of Gorgias'sdeepest strategies.26. Alternatively, "was proved to be" / "because of the claim to be" exposes circularities ofanother, related kind.27. Other conventional allusionsmay be at play, furthercomplicating Gorgias's associations,but reinforcing the point thatHelen's complex genealogy forecasts her manifold "aetiology." Cf.Eur. Hec. 816 (Peitho), Hipp. 538 (eros), both being "tyrannosofmen"; frr. 431, 136.1 N2 (on thislast, see Turato 1976: 171 n. 69).


13/34


[vqlRn4yeyovev ("[a woman] about whom both the belief of those who listen topoets and themention of her name, which has become a token [reminder]of hermisfortunes, have come to be [viz., are] univocal and unanimous," 2). But in theliterary tradition,which is the tradition thatGorgias cites here at the start of hisspeech, and which supplies the speech with its primary frame of reference,28Helen is hardly damned unequivocally. The discrepancy needs to be underscored. One need go no further than Iliad Book 3 for evidence of a waveringview of Helen's guilt.As Priam says toher on theway to thewalls, inwords thatnot by chance will sound a familiar note for the reader (or hearer) of Gorgias'sspeech, oi Ti Lot iCiTq EoaiL, 0eoi vY [IOLactloiL LV (3.164; cf. 6.344-58,24.761-76).29Helen in theOdyssey is likewise rivenby conflictingand contestedinterpretations (one thinks of Bks. 4 and 15 in particular: her andMenelaos'sdivergent accounts of her behavior at Troy; and the sympathetic portrait ofHelen andTelemachos, which turnson the twin themes of fidelity and, tellingly,memory).

Gorgias's claim that the poetic tradition about Helen was in any way"univocal"and "unanimous" (6c(p6qvog xcaio6lRopvXog)liesdirectly in the faceof the tradition that he invokes. In fact, ambivalent complexity should be recognized as defining the tradition associated with Helen, as the poets were alwaysaware, and as audiences could be expected to echo in their own awarenesses.Stesichorus isperhaps themost striking counterexample toGorgias's claim, andthemost appropriatewitness tomy claim about the fundamentallydivided representation of Helen inGreek poetry. Stesichorus'sportrayalofHelen isdivided initself. But with one more interpretive leap he can be seen to be commentingsymbolicallyon a fact about thepoetry thatcomes before him.When Stesichorusmakes himself into a penitent and atoning victim of his victimization (he says"revilement")ofHelen, he is not contradicting, palinodically, the tradition;he ismerely dramatizing the contradictory tendencies of that tradition (its victimization and rehabilitation of Helen), by polarizing and exacerbating them.30Stesichorus claims that the Helen who went to Troy was a phantom (Eiowkov), abeing that is not (a pure semblance). But this isonly a literaryruse,whichmakesof thephantom a signof poetic fictionandpoetic negation: he isexplicatingwhatis already present as an excess in Homer, in the guise of a critique of what is

missing inHomer and his literary succession.31 Helen was never of one voice or28. This fact of the speech has been noted, but variously construed. See Norden (1903) 203-4,with Segal (1962) 145n. 63, 129;Rosenmeyer (1955) 232-33; Verdenius (1981) 127.29. Cf. el ovv TTij Tv6Xrl xai TxL 9OsL Tnqv caitiav d&vcaOTov, TIv 'EX'wvvTrgS 6voxXEcia

atokXvTov, "If then one must place blame on Fate and on a god, one must free Helen fromdisgrace,"Hel. 6.30. Revilement and "palinode," after all, jointly comprise the "dialectical" unity of Stesichorus's one poem, as it is generally understood today; see Kannicht (1969) 1:21-41, esp. 40-41.31. Cf. &ae tLOVoux6gWv(Plat.Phdr. 243a). The eid6lon, inotherwords, ispointedlymetaphorical, a piece of poetic cunning, like Stesichorus's "blindness" (rivalingHomer's own). Cf. also Zeitlin(1981) 202. Stesichorus's immediate inspiration inHomer can be furtherpinpointed; see infra,n. 38.


14/34

PORTER:he Seductions of Gorgias 279mind (or appearance); and neither was the poetic tradition that enshrined her.Be this as itmay, Lesky states thatGorgias pulls off his stunt, his defense ofHelen, "without availing himself" of this "alternative"myth.32It was once fashionable to state such denials. Lesky is repeating the pointmade by Bruns,33who readGorgias's speech as a characteristicallysophistic corrective to the version put forwardby Stesichorus (andEuripides, by his dating):Helen can be absolved just as she is,without dragging in gods and alternativemyths. But Gorgias precisely uses "gods," and he suggests alternativemythicalstories (any of which could be the "true" story) even as he undoes them. AndGorgias could not accomplishhis one-upmanship even onBruns's readingwithoutimplicitlymaking allusion to Stesichorus (hismention ofHelen's "revilement" isitself one).34At the very least, Gorgias's logicwould be producing functionalequivalents of Stesichorus's phantom (the causal accounts forHelen's behaviorthatare rejected, "palinodically"). It does. But themechanism ofGorgias's playof fictions is farmore complex thaneither Bruns or Lesky suppose.More recent readers of Gorgias simply ignore the possibility thatGorgias'sHelen might be a figure for a phantom, in other words, a being that is not. Ofcourse, such a premise would make havoc of the speech from the start. But whydefend the speech against the absurditywith which it also closes?Helen qualifiesas an exemplary nonbeing just by virtue of being literary and mythical, and

multiply overwritten.35Paradoxically, Gorgias's glaring simplificationof the poetic tradition in 2 can only be seen as an allusion to the very complexity of thistradition. Itmakes no difference thatGorgias's entire speech isovertly premisedon her sailing off to Troy, as in 5: "I will lay out the causes [motivations,explanations, accusations] throughwhich it was likely [probable, reasonable:eiX6g] forHelen's voyage to Troy to occur [yeveoOact]." tatements like thisaddress only the logicof Helen's abduction; they tell us nothing aboutGorgias'sendorsement of that logic, and if anything they suggest a coy distance from it.36Recall thatGorgias isaddressing Ti7V frgXEyoEYV1rgeyovEvataRLaQciagitiav,"the charge of the offense thatwas said tohave takenplace" (15).Gorgias, afterall, is speaking to an audience who "know what they know" (xo;g ei66oLv &loaoL,5)-traditionally, awink frompoets, and a signof irony.37 orgias's own

32. Lesky (n.d.) 352.33. Bruns (1905) 88-90.34. With Stesichorus's xaxnyoiQct (Plat. Phdr. 243a), compare Gorgias's xcatokoyoQ0Erl7)and ToviS IE?po?Tvovg 'EXEviv(2).35. Sykutris (1928) 17creditsGorgias with an insight into theplasticity ofmyth: "ErstensmupdasWerk als ein Deutungsversuch einesMythos-nicht allein des Helena-mythos-mit ahnlichenErscheinungen der Zeit verglichen ... werden. .. Als Stoff ist er ihm ein jrayvLov." Parallelsdeserve to be explored. They rarely are; but see Solmsen (1934), and the criticalnotice byKannicht(1960) 1: 58. Zuntz (1960) 223, Turato (1976), andZeitlin (1981) are all relevant here.36. Compare Donadi's rendering ad loc. (1982).Cf. Immisch (1927) 15, 53.37. As inPind. 01. 2.83-86 (wpov6evtaOVveToiotv),Aesch. Ag. 38-39 (pac0o'otv tav6 xova0oot 5iX.0otKal).


15/34


stated role is not to ply his audience with mere conviction (niortv), but withpleasure (TEQ@Lv,). It is a pleasure thatwe, fromour great distance, have partlyceased to share.

With this knowledge, it is possible to redefine from a new perspective theform thatGorgias's speech assumes: forwhat the speech now appears topresentare in factplural "versions" of the scene ofHelen's seduction, as represented bythe four aitiai atwhose door the responsibility forher actions hypothetically is tobe laid, if not laid to rest. Insofaras theycoexist without displacing one another,these alternative "stories"may be seen to reenact the complexities of the tradition of Helen itself, the poetic overdeterminedness of Helen's tale. What ismore, they do everything but name theone reasonwhy Helen sailed off toTroy,which is, simply put, the belief that she did (cf. injiorzl, 2)-whether thatbeliefis founded on a literary assumption, or that assumption is shown to be a literaryphantom. Either way, belief inHelen is founded not on truth or on falsehood,but on a desire, which Gorgias is both exploiting and laying shockingly barewith a degree of forcefulnessmatched only by Stesichorus's poem (more on this"desire" in the final section).38

Gorgias's paignion as awhole is the functional equivalent of Stesichorus'sphantom: both are conceived in the spiritof literaryandmythological negation.His arguments circle around theirhypothetical point of origin, each new "narrative" (or aitia) "constructing"Helen's story and her identityafresh, like somanypoetic narrations of a singlemyth. Itonly remains towonder whether the "myth"in question is a singular entity, or whether it is not in fact the sum total of itsversions and revisions. We will come back to this below, but for now it isimportant to see how in sheer narrative termsHelen embodies her own selfdifference: she is, so to speak, a not-one marked out by amany-a manifold ofpossible negations, each "version" establishing only a negative certainty about

her. If so, then Gorgias is asking us to reconceptualize who it is that he isdefending, and so too,what thisdefense amounts to.

In 4, where Helen's origins and genealogy are told, she is described as ?xToioUOyTv YEvovqT, "born of such origins," of sources that are no less disputedand uncertain than Gorgias makes them out to be. The Helen who emerges fromthis paragraph is a singular and unstable plurality, a synthesis of contraries,never quite "one" because she is always and irretrievably "many" (an analyticrather than organic "whole"; cf. fr. B 3 [74]: ov0eotg yaQg TOV xcO0' EV EToLTajnokka). A perspective like this instantly casts a cloud on the "univocality" of thetraditionalHelen-a univocality that (as we saw) Gorgias himself disputes,thoughwithout replacing itwith one of his own. But inshowingHelen forth inallof her complexity, Gorgias has also shifted theconceptual level of thedebate, by

38. Unless we includeHelen's misty professions about herself and her reality in the Iliad, bothof which are caught in a vacillation, or rather ambiguity, between being and not-being: "but thatnever happened" (aEka&a y' ovx iyivovxo), "if these [or just possibly r"'] ever were [was]" (EttroT'ErvYE), Il. 3.176, 180.


16/34


introducingas itwere three new protagonists: Being, Saying, andwhat convertsone into the other, Appearing. This putsHelen directly into contactwith the restofGorgias's corpus of writings.For comparison's sake, we might take a side glance atGorgias's other preserved display speech, hisDefense of Palamedes (the dates of both speeches areunknown, but, as has been noted, they are structurallysimilar, and they sharefeatures with his treatise On Not-Being; or, On Nature).39The latter speechconsists entirely in a verbal reconstruction of what the defendant, Palamedes(the inventor of games-draughts-and the letters of the alphabet, Pal. B 12[30]) claims to be a nonevent (T6 ATi yevo6evov, 5; cf. 11, yyeveta0 xatI xTa Yyevo6eva; 23, ay?vYzTa;f.MXG 979b26), something that never happened, butthatnonetheless furnishes the substance of a criminal accusation leveled againsthim by Odysseus. Palamedes is, in essence, a proof of not-being, as is theEncomium of Helen itself,which begins by "showing," througha series of negations, that an event never took place (Helen's voluntary assumption of a guilt),and which ends by showing, as I hope is becoming clear, thatHelen is herselfthat nonevent (a phantom). To recall the language of his famously disputedclaim fromOn Not-Being: "Nothing is" (fr.B 3 [65];MXG 979b12).Helen, evenmore thanPalamedes, occupies the place of this uncertain "is."40 nd like him,she embodies the limit of her own possible defense: her speech is likewise constructed around its own impossibility and implausibility.Perhaps Plato was notfaroff after all when he saidof rhetoricians that they "bewitch"(YOrqTEV?tV)heears of their audiences, by "exhibiting images of all things in a shadow-play ofdiscourse [lit., "spoken phantom images":6etxvuvxag E'oWkXaeyoreva JtEiavxtov], so as to make them believe that they are hearing the truth" (Sophist

234c; tr.Cornford).To return now to the joint status of language, being, and appearance inHelen, and to adapt an expression fromGorgias, Helen appears to be becauseshe is said to be. InGorgias's account of her, Helen becomes the motivation andprojection of the very ideologies that her behaviorwas saidor supposed to havethreatened (Helen giving rise, in 4, to ambitious designs; social achievement,honor, prowess, the exercise of knowledge are all implicated, and reminiscent ofthe values tallied up in 1: "Her one body was the cause of bringing together manybodies [Evii octOa jrokkXXdlara ovuviyayev]of men thinkinggreat thoughtsforgreat goals, ofwhom some had greatness ofwealth, some the glory of ancientnobility, some the vigor of personal agility, some command of acquired knowl

39. 'In both Gorgias employs disjunctive arguments that are strikingly reminiscent of ... thedilemmas of On What isNot": Lloyd (1979) 83 with n. 122. The dates of all threewritings areunknown. See the discussion inMacDowell (1982) 17.40. The claim ought to be ambivalent: nothing is, because being does not exist, or becausenothing (Not-Being) has existence. The atomists had already recognizedNot-Being as a componentof physis. The ambiguity is implied byGorgias's duplex title,which isgenuine. On Parmenides' ownduplex title, seeGuthrie (1971) 194; on Gorgias's title, seeKirk, Raven, and Schofield (1983) 392 n.


17/34


edge" (4), all properties that are notHelen's, but that she attracts toher person.Gorgias is of course reversing the habitual "one/many" cliche that attaches toHelen from Homer onwards (Od. 11.438, 14.69; Aesch. Ag. 62, 1456). Butagain, it pays to take heed of the peculiar abstract qualities of Gorgias's language, its immediate echoes in his own speech, and itspossible resonanceswithhis other writings.At one level,Helen has the exact statusof the iconic,painterly and "composite," imagedepicted in 18: daka iljvot yQacpeigLv ex xokkXov atWodrovcaoco(tdzoTV v 0(o0 LxaLi oXtr TEExeio jeQyadocwVTa, T6OjTovoi TITVOpLV("Whenever painters perfectly create a single body and shape frommany colorsand bodies, they delight the sight"). As above (in 4), we have an attractive"single body," one that, here, ismanifestly made up. Both "images" (Helen andthe painter's icon) furnishvisual delight; both can be seductive and pleasurable(but also painful [18]or painfully pleasurable [9]); both embody a kind of unrivaled and irresistible perfection; both resemble the illusions of rhetoric (cf.

Plato, Soph. 234c, Rep. 586b-c) but also those of literature (cf. Hel. 8-9; Aesch.Ag. 242). Iconic images (ex6ovag) engraved in themind are the explicit topicofthe fourth aitia (15-19), whose aim is to acquitHelen of any guilt entailed by anerotic, visual compulsion beyond her powers of control (Alexander's "body"overpowering her "eye," 18). But we have already heard aboutHelen's irresistiblepowers of attraction, and there isnoway todissociate thepainter's construction of a delightful body from the powers of Helen's own image,which is to say,her ownmultiply constructed,multiply imagined,worshipful body (she too is an&yackSa, an eixdv, or, if you like, an Eit6oov).41 If visual images produce desire(nJ6OovEveQydaeT)aland the desire of (or just for) desire (ngQouvaiv EQOTOoc)in themind of the beholder (19), the imageofHelen worked thisvery effect onwhoever beheld her (eLt0vtiacSg rwOTO;g EvepQycaato, 4).42A composite figure, literallya product of jtoiqolg and e`@ycaoia18),43Helenis, at another level, not what she is, but both more and less. Helen, we might say,iselusively bound upwith the logicof the one and themany. Like theHelen of

Odyssey Book 4,who is divided intomultiple identities,mouthing thewords andmiming the voices of every woman belonging to the men inside the Trojan horse,Helen, if she is anything at all, represents something for everyone. A figure ofdesire, Helen isalso a figureof projection, and perhaps she (orelse, the traditionthatembodies her) isnothingmore than the sumof her projected identifications.Helen as she appears in Gorgias's speech, Iwould suggest, is not a stable identity; she is viewed instead as a series of superimposed layeringsof a historical,poetic tradition, like the plaster thatEuripides'Helen would like, impossibly, to

41. Cf. Eur. Hel. 34, where Helen's eidolon is the resultof one such synthesis.42. The twopassages are in factmirror imagesof each other: nokka 6i toXkog jtoXXk E@ontxxai To60ov eveYVEa4TaL 3tQCYIatTOWvxaL oal(dtrwv (19); jtioXELta 6& JktEiOLTgJ0OU eiva EQwOTOeviQydoatxo (4).43. Cf. the parallels between 18 and 8-9: xoiToqtL/ao(qLyv;oOeItv/h60o; Xkvujtv/k6Jrqv;XQ@odtTlOV xaC ocodRToV / JQaYCLudxoTvXCELcoado0Yv.


18/34

PORTER:he Seductions of Gorgias 283have now removed from her comely face-which is the face of a phantom(iacLkeLp0io' cbg yak[t[a], 262). Helen is a phantom object, upon which havebeen inscribed traits that tell us more about their source than about her. In

Gorgias's speech, she assumes the formof a perspectival projection that vanishesbefore our eyes: her elusive appearance entails her not being. Such is the fugitivecoincidence thatHelen somehow (and always) "is."Helen's repeated exposures in the speech only intensifyher reduction to asimulacrum.We have already seen how divinity, power, rape, and speech are allstated or implied inHelen's pedigree-and so too, how her physis and genesisalready uncannily contain the "fate" that is said to sullyher blameless origins.Nolongermerely conceptually independent or even perspectivally coherent, thefour "causes" of her suffering cannot be distinguished or analyzed, while

Helen-if she is to be held responsible for her actions at all-is no more thantheir synthesis (ExTOLo6TCOVeYVO(aVvY).nGorgias's words, "she did what shedid," eJQracev& F?T:atCev6). Tautology appears to replace logic.But what didshe do? The differences between the four aitiai are as little definitive as are otherdemarcations drawn along the way: for example, between the "two" kinds(6tooal x TXcva) of sorcery and magic in 10, namely ipXSgij aTx|ctTa xaCti66go&aijatcricaTa, or (it follows) between the "evil" sort of persuasion and itspresumed opposite in 14. It is as likely that the very distinction between thesetwo pairs or four sorts is the illusory effect of any one of them, for how couldthey be told apart?44Finally, ifGorgias can claim in 10 to pass from one speechto another (nQog &akov can' &Ukkov jitaot k6oyov), but in the very same breathcan claim thatwhat makes states of the mind pass into their opposite is thebewitching capacity of persuasive language (i 66aVctLg .. [tEtEOTrlO?evCt/iv [sc.TYv jvhZIXv]YyorTeiq), one can only conclude (and Gorgias can only be advertising it as well) that his speech is no more than an imaginary itinerary, one drawn(and erased) in the mind of itsproducer and consumer: going through themotions of going somewhere, the speech literallygoes nowhere. Some of this freemotion may be explained as the sign of a literary representation that has been

made explicit, the effect of which is to empty out the representation of Helen.But of what is Helen the sign? And what are the implications of all of this forGorgias's claims about persuasion? There are a number of possible replies.

LOGOS AND NOT-BEINGOne answer to the puzzle concerning Gorgias's methods and their apparent

incongruence might be found in the view that logos has to be conceived of as

44. Commentators (e.g.,MacDowell ad loc.; Immischsought toemend the text) are troubledbythe transition between 8 and 9, where Gorgias writes, "I shall prove [my point]; and I shall prove it byopinion too,"

as if he weretalking

about two kinds of proof, when in fact there is only one kind, whichworks by way of logos and doxa at the same time (they are one). Such isGorgias's paradoxology. Onspeech and persuasion, another paradox of twins, see below on "Logos and Not-Being."


19/34


wholly autonomous and highly potent. Gorgias ismerely displaying the extraordinary powers of logoswithin its own realm: itspowers areplastic; it can create anddissolve realities at its user's will,45 in this case, we might say, by narrativizingthem.Because Helen does not explicitly offer such a theory, support for thisviewhas been found in other of Gorgias's pronunciamenti on language and reality,most typically the treatise On Not-Being; or, On Nature, especially in the claimthat language is self-contained and can convey only itself:we do not hear vision;we cannot communicate pragmata, sensible realities about which we boast ourlanguage to be and towhich it is infact irreducible;we are condemned to linguistictautologies, to a communication of and throughwords, hence (it is inferred,because the claim is not to be found inOn Not-Being), to deception and distortion. From this it seems to follow that languageexists in an autonomous domain;and the samewill hold for thepsychological reality that itgoverns,whichmust begranted an existence that rivals, even supersedes, sensible reality.Hence, Gorgias can be creditedwith the view that "persuasionwas sovereign because there

was no truth over and above what a man could be persuaded to believe."46This isby and large the going view ofGorgias. It can satisfyinglyaccount forHelen only ifwe make a number of accommodations. First, ithas tobe concededthatHelen itself cannot be taken as evidence for the kind of persuasiveness thatthis theorywould explain. By itself, the speech persuades a hearer of nothing.Atmost, we might say, Helen will be a speech about persuasion, but not one thateffectsor conveys persuasion. But then, is thepersuasion thatHelen isabout thesame persuasion as the theoryattributed toGorgias takeson board? I think not.Within the speech, persuasion is recognized to be only one of four possibleexplanations forHelen's waywardness; itdoes not displace the other three (fate,force, desire); neither do these, for all their overlaps and near-approximation,reduce neatly to verbal persuasion.47At most, all four accounts are reducible toeach other, or at least to each other's descriptions ifwe follow Gorgias's language as closely aswe should, which is to say that logos is not the irreduciblypowerful component it is so often claimed to be. If all four aitiai could besubsumed under logos, then of courseGorgias will have said the same thing fourtimes and in four ways: Helen was persuaded by Alexander, and this is the realreason for her abduction.But Gorgias doesn't let us off the hook so easily.Quitethecontrary:he leaves uswriggling inuncertainty and perplexity to thevery end,having managed somehow to say four different things in the sameway.

Arguments that turnon the independentpowers of persuasive logos are notsomuch wrong as they account for only one aspect of Gorgias's multifacetedproject; only, the facets do not add up to a coherent whole. It is difficult to seehow these kinds of argument can be made to square with the evidence of Helen,

45. Rosenmeyer (1955) 232: "Logos is a creator of its own reality";Dodds (1973) 95.46. Guthrie (1971) 211.47. A fact rarely acknowledged. But see Donadi (1985) 482-84, who focusesmainly on opsis,"cheparla un linguaggio anteriore al discorso, e non riducibile ad esso" (484).


20/34


which, being neither persuasive (judged by itsown criteria) nor uniquely aboutpersuasion, seems deliberately to elude the characterization that itsperformativedimension, the very act of haranguing,would most seem to invite. Persuasion'sonly claim to remarkability in Helen is the formal dissonance that it installswithin the argument, its remarkable impertinence.True, the exposition of thisaitia (8-14) takes up by far the greatest amount of space and detail, comparedwith the other three aitiai.But in itsoccupancy of this space it is something of adead weight: it statically fills up room in a speech that is otherwise conspicuously, even flagrantly, unpersuasive-at most, it is amere "diversion" and adigression. But then, the whole speechmerits no more than the same qualification. How seriously arewe to takeGorgias? A related question, which is rarelyasked, iswhether the "metadescriptive"account of persuasion contributes to ortakesaway from thepersuasiveness of thataccount and of the account ofwhich itis just a part; that is,whether arguments about persuasion, justby being aboutwhat they are, carry no conviction; or, again, whether the seductions of Gorgias's Helen are not, precisely, other than those of persuasion (forced conviction). If any of this is right, then his speech isdeceptive in away that has neverbeen trulyunderstood. Consequently, theproblem needs tobe reformulated.Aswill emerge below, Gorgias in this speech shines his spotlight so intensely onlogos inorder thatwe might all the better seewhat logos is not.Nor do Gorgias's descriptions of logos from elsewhere inhis corpus throwany other light on the problem. Appeals to the treatiseOn Not-Being, as it isreported in Sextus and in the anonymousMXG, fail to take into account thenature of his argument there, or its implications.Whatever the difficulties ofinterpreting these reports,48it clearly emerges from them that language is not

Gorgias's solitary preoccupation, nor is accounting for its capacities necessarilyhis primary object either. And whatever else they show, the remains of histheory of language fromOn Not-Being point unequivocally to the limitationsoflanguage, not to its powers. There, Gorgias repeatedly demonstrates how language is circumscribed by the spheres of sensation; not a word is said about itspowers within the domain that is left to language.The speech onHelen surprisingly confirms this thesis.49Logos, for example, is not only incommensurable

with what lies "outside"; it is powerless before the realm of the body and itsattendant sensations. As Gorgias says: "The things

we see don't have the naturethat we want for them, but only the nature that each thing actually has" (& ya&

O6@)Oecv,XELplVoivVXfyV tACLg0Xo[?Lv,aX' fjv ixaotov TwvXE,el. 15), andthis fact can be multiplied for each of the senses and the imprints they leave onthemind (17). Can logos effectively and durably annul these imprints?Gorgiasnowhere suggests that it can. Physical compulsions like drugs or opsis enjoy animmediacy of effect that no amount of speech can alter. The constant appeals in

48. See Lloyd (1966) 115-19, and now esp. Sedley (1992)25with n. 8.49. Pace Calogero (1977) 264.


21/34

286 CLASSICALNTIQUITY Volume 12/No. 2/October 1993Helen to an extralinguistic realm, in the form of analogies (logos is likea drug, orlike vision), do nothing to confirm the intrinsicpower of logos; theyonly advertise the fact that we lack the words to describe what it is that logos "does." Thequestion to ask, however, isnot what are the relevant analogies, but what doeslogos in fact do? The answer typically given is that"logospersuades," but then ofwhat? Helen may have been persuaded, "if she was," but she may have beenraped, erotically overpowered, or divinely compelled. From here we surely cannot get to the claim that the speech persuades us of the triumphsof persuasion,because the speech is implausible from the very start-and not justby the end,

where it closes with a reference to itself as a paignion. The speech does not actlike the drugs itnames.But theproblems surrounding logos rundeeper still. Insofar as logos is itselfa sensible object, that is, one of the "outer realities" (a cJAoxEilEVOV, fr. B 3[86])-and this too, like the stages of "proof" inHelen, can only be asserted as

part of a dialectical construction (e1 yaQ xai dr6xeLTaL 6 o6yog, ibid.)-it issubject to all the constraints of sensation: seen (which is not quite the same thingas read), logos is different from the same logos heard; what you hear will bedifferent from what I hear now, or from the same sounds either of us heardyesterday (MXG 980b14-17). It isnot even clear that logos and thought sharethe same reality identically: logos at leasthas a communicable, possibly sensible,dimension; thought, apparently, has neither (980b9, 19).5oIf logos is autonomous in its own realm, so are the realms of the objects to which it is opposed:why privilege thepowers of logos,when the very source of itspresumed authority is the source of its strictures and impotence?51But perhaps the real problem

with readings of Gorgias that accord him a theory of linguistic autonomy is thatthey sacrifice their own genuine rigor. For if language is truly autonomous, selfenclosed, and self-sufficient, itwill also be autonomous of itspsychic effects. It

will not do to argue, for example, that "these two, psyche and logos, lie bothwithin the realm of tangible experience and become for Gorgias the new reality,"of which logos may be said to be the "creator." Here we find smuggled back intothe picture of an autonomous logos the very condition (sensible experience,tangibility) whose radical otherness is required to argue that autonomy in thefirst place.52

50. Newiger (1973) valiantly attempts to systematize the evidence into a doctrine about theidentity of logos and thought or knowledge of truth (ibid. 173), but points instead toGorgias'sdilemmas.

51. This is an aspect of logos that is rightly but fleetinglymentioned by Segal ([1962] 110:"restricted to its proper area," "with full awareness of its limitations," "fallibility"; cf. Calogero[1977] 259: incapacitya"); but elsewhere all such awareness is dropped whenever logos is reapproximated tophysical reality and the requirementsof persuasion (e.g., Segal 106). See further,nextnote.

52. Segal (1962) 110,Rosenmeyer (1955) 232. This reimportationof thephysical isa "basic andnecessary assumption" if logos is to effectuate itself in theway Gorgias claims for it (Segal 106-7).The autonomy of logos is specifiedby Segal (110), followingRosenmeyer (231), as a freedom "from


22/34


It isusually concluded from this kind of argument that all language, justbyfunctioning autonomously and inventively,must be deceptive to the core. ButrestoreGorgias's conception in all its radical stringency, and not onlymust weimagine a logos that, properly speaking, knows no distortion but isonly knowable through and as distortion, deception, and doxa (in this respect, itmerelyresembles any faculty of sensation that opens itswindow only onto what existsfor itself);we have to imaginea logos that iswithout echo or resonance,withoutaccess to its audience, without persuasive effect, utterly lackinga corresponding

physiology or psychology, but that simply exists in the realm of its own literal"tautology":VXYEl XKyov, "the speaker speaks" (MXG 980b2-3; cf. fr. B 3[84]).The speaker speaks, perhaps-but then speaking takes place in isolationfrom any contents that can be specified, let alone "revealed." The speaker ismute; the communicant, deaf.53

Below we will want to return to the question of the speaker's "contents,"which ispartly captured by Calogero's observation that inGorgias "non sussistaquell' identificazione, o essenziale coincidenza, fra il contenuto verbale e ilcontenuto conoscitivo, altra essendo la concreta e immediata esperienza sensibile e altro il o6yog on cui si tenta di designarla e di esprimerla."54 he questionisessential, not only because it raises the issue of the speaker's control overwhatis spoken (&kk.a zcog 6 axovoWv To auOix6woIocL; "But how will the hearer haveinmind ["represent," "understand"] the same thing?"MXG 980b9; cf. Hel.11),55but because itputs into doubt the logical identityof logos.But first, let usconsider what evidence there is inHelen thatmight support the thesis about thereality and power of logos.A closer inspectionof the speech might at the sametime help shedmore lighton the connection, or ratherdistance, between logosand its effects.

The "bodily" impingement of logos on the soul, the topic of 8-14, is theobvious place to look, but it disappoints. Gorgias simply fails to spell out thephysiology by and throughwhich language ispresumed to operate psychologithe exigencies of mimetic adherence to physical reality." But another kind of exigency takes upresidence here: logos requires a correlative outside itself.Cf. Segal 106 on "reciprocity," and 107:"changing the condition of thepsyche [whichGorgias has "elevated to theplace of physical reality,"104] by the impingement of an outside force (peitho)" (emphasis added). Itmay turn out that"outside" and "physical" are justmetaphors; if so, the consequences are quite different fromwhatthey are usually argued to be (see below).53. Cf. Calogero (1977) 252-53: "II o6yos appare eterogeneo non solo alla sfera della realtyoggetto della vista ma anche a quella della realty oggetto dell'udito ... (e percepire non si pu6 senon in talmodo, nell'immediata esperienza sensibile)." Cf. Kerferd (1985) 605: "Unfortunately noaccount survives of how Gorgias supposed the transition occurs from sense-impression to relatedo6yos"-or, itmust be added, back again, from language to sensible or psychic impressions.Despitetheirbest intentions,Kerferd (1981b) 324 ("ofcourse it is not themeaning of the shouted word whichhas [its]effect, only its sound acting as a kind of trigger")andNewiger (1973) 176 ("findetder koyocaber eine Stiitze in derWahrehmung, so ist er nicht mehr ohnmachtig"; cf. 183) reveal just howproblematical accounting for thismechanism is.

54. Calogero (1977) 255; cf. also Cassin (1980) 551-52.55. Cf. MXG 980b19: "No one thinks [fvvoei] the same thing as anyone else."


23/34


cally.Couched, likesomuch ofOn Not-Being, in thehypotheticalmood ("If itwaslogos thatpersuadedHelen and deceived her inher soul ... "), theseparagraphsappear to offer, now through sheer assertion, a theory of persuasion based onsome kind of particle theoryofmatter and a theoryof impressions. In 8 we readthat logos somehow carries out itseffects either "bymeans of" or "in"the smallestandmost invisiblebody (otlxgoQoTrdTv4aTL). In9, poetry is said toencourage anidentification in the audience with the deeds represented: "Throughwords, thesoul experiences itsown suffering [i6L6vTtLrad60TI], inthe face of alien events andbodies [En' &aoxtiowv Te zjctaytac0v xcat ocota&xcv]."The "communing"(ovyyLveo0at) of the power of verbal incantation with opinion in the soul isdescribed in 10. In the lightof On Not-Being, are this "identification"and this"communing" really sounproblematical? In the latter case of communing, the realquestion isnotwhether or even how the fusion can occur, butwhether these twonatures, "linguistic power" and "opinion," can be distinguished.In 14 we are told that the effect of logos impinges directly on the TdCLg(arrangement, structure, condition) of the soul, by analogywith the effects ofdrugs (t6v aOTovvk ?yovEOXELo16yoV 6iUvaCtlg,TX.):somewords instillpain,others fear, still others give pleasure, and so on. Here, logos uncomfortably doesdouble duty, figuringonce in thedefiniendum (the logos inquestion) and once inthe definiens (the logos governing, analogically, the various terms).A theory ofvisual "impressions" in 15-17 gives by analogy an account of the imprintsofpersuasion on the psychic disposition of the hearer, as in 13: "Persuasion impresses [ivxncbooaTo]he mind [tvuxrv] as itwishes." But here in 15-17, thereference is to the visual stimuliof desire, not to those of verbal persuasion, eventhough the two accounts share the same language (rtnovTait, 15). The explicitanalogies threaten to collapse into one general analogy; only, why assume thatall the models stand in the service of persuasion and not in the service of somemore diffuse sort of pathology?56The mechanisms bywhich logos is translated into its effects are anythingbutself-evident, and they seem to advertise their fictional or metaphorical status.Their crossing-over into other domains is literally a categorymistake. IsGorgias's materialism a metaphor? If not, then his account has too many shortcomings to name. If it is, then this makes Gorgias's own account ametaphor-but ofwhat? Surely not of a literal account of persuasion: this only takes us back tosquare one. The very assertion of a scientific or other theory that could "account" for thepsychology and physiology of logos runsup againstGorgias's own

methodological skepticism as voiced within Helen itself.One need only think ofthe scathing indictment of astronomers, speechwriters, and philosophers inHelen 13. Similarly, thepremises of On Not-Being explicitly ruleout any declara56 Gorgias's theoryof the kairos appears tohave impliedvagueness and analogy, not precisionand certainty; see Suss (1910), 18-25 ("Erfassungder Imponderabilien,"21), 55. But Suss's position

isnot entirely consistent; cf. 59. See further Cole (1991) 148, 151,where the limits of the rhetor's"control" and "power" are well brought out.


24/34


tive, nonself-questioning approaches towhat "is" the case, or can be predicted tobe so, once empirical sensations are posited (for these cannot, strictly speaking,be described). A recent extrapolation of the autonomy thesis attempts to creditGorgias with a "behavioristic" theory of language.57Like the thesis itnaturallyculminates, it cannot be deduced from either treatise alone, but this time thechief inspiration is inversely taken to be the "physiological"passages of Helen.Nevertheless, themessage from On Not-Being is clear: even if there were anempirical basis for correlating verbal stimuli and affective responses, the theorywould never be verifiable, for example, by trackingdown causalities to their(putative) external source; there is no linguistic criterion available that couldgive us theirmeasure (not to say communicate them): language cannot exhibitwhat lies outside language (fr. B 3 [84-85]). A "science" of affect would be ascience of the unknown and the unknowable: xIv f ti, TofTo ayvCoor6v TExcLwvEtLv6OTT6OvorLvav0gtpnz (fr.B 3 [77];cf.MXG 980b17). But then, bywhatfaculty or "organ" (6Qyctvov) is logos "taken in"?For these reasons, it is improbable that the tantalizingbits that come down to us throughvarious sourceson Gorgias point, ultimately, to any positive theory of the physical world. Atbest they attest toGorgias's intense "interest" in such speculation,58just asOnNot-Being demonstrates, in itsway, an intense interest, but no positive one, inmetaphysical speculation. "Psychology," then, is asmuch an oxymoron forGorgias as "meteorology" is. "Conventionalism" (the view that beliefs are habitual)rather than "behaviorism"captures to some degree the spiritof Gorgias's analysis of human behavior (cf. Hel. 16).59 But not even this exhausts Gorgias'sanalysis, or his argumentative strategies.

By problematizing the relation of language and reality, Gorgias problematizes each of the two terms.60 The promised autonomy and power of afaculty (such as language) in its "proper"domain can bemeasured only againstits deficiencies relative to other powers in other domains, or to the heterogeneities it cannot control even in its own. We know what logos isn't; so what isit? Above we repeatedly saw how logos is not only not identifiable with "theoutside"; it is not identicalor reducible to itself.The logos thatGorgias isusingto construct his (or rather, our) aporia is in some sense utterly irreducible.Signsof this irreducibilityare to be found inHelen, where logos consistently appearsunder changing guises but never as itself, as in 2, where both persuasion andreason are explicitly said to be superadded to logos: "by introducing[imparting]some reasoning into my speech/the story [eyo 6e jovXko(iat kXoytoI6Ov xvct T4)

57. Mourelatos (1987); cf. esp. 135-36.58. Kerferd (1985), Segal (1962) 101.59. Cf. also Segal (1962) 103.60. Logos (communication) and reality, not tomention sensation and thought, are literallyreduced to the condition of an "aporia" (Japa TWviO roQYiOlq7VroQprltv, B 3 [87]; cf.MXG980b20, Z&oQiat).Considerations of space prevent me from treatingGorgias's problematizing ofsensation; on pragmata and pragmatics, see the next section; thoughtwas briefly discussed above.


25/34


ko6y) boug]," and in 13: "persuasion, when added to [or: "when it comes toward"] logos [AI E?Ld0)QooiLOoa (AX: goooboa, Blass) Tl X6oyp]";61ustas in9 poetry isdefined as "logos plus [having]meter," and as in8 logos isnot strictlyreducible to the ocoa[a(body) itactivates (either as its instrumentor its locus): itachieves its affects by means of or in smallest body (olxQoTxdTc oWaTL ...EQyaazoTXeie), without being identicalwith its instrumentor itsplace of activity. Gorgias appears to be going out of his way to distinguish logos from itseffects, its instruments, itscorrelates, itscontents, and itsmaterial expressions.This would cohere well with Calogero's observation quoted above, namely thatforGorgias there isno intrinsicor necessary correlation in logos between verbalcontent (bywhich Calogero appears tomean sound or articulation) and cognitivecontent, between "the concrete and immediate sensible experience" of languageand "the logoswith which referring and expression are attempted." Calogerofails to draw out the implicationsof Gorgias's position, which has not entirelybeen correctly stated by him (logos is, after all, the referringand the expression;it is also the expressed). The two aspects of logos, verbal and cognitive content,are not just joined by an arbitrary link; they point to a radicalgap between logosand its own contents. This is where the autonomy thesis and its implicationsfinallymeet: if logos (as defined according toGorgias's prescriptions) cannotcommunicate the contents of an outer reality, it is not just because the tworealities are incommensurable, as it is standardlyassumed, but because logos canonly fail to communicate the innerrealityof logos, itsveryown contents, since inthe final analysis logos has nomeasurable relationshipeither to itsownmaterialexpression (viz., its "distortion")or to its undistorted reflex (whatever thatmaybe). The logos that exists prior to its attributes (a so-called "objective" logos) isthe only logos that can be said to function autonomously. But its very idea is

manifestly incoherent.62Gorgias's analysiswould appear to invite this rigorousisolation of logos from its contents inorder to provoke theparadoxwe have justreached, and the incoherencies that ensue from it.But why, one may ask, shouldGorgias have conceived the paradox in this

way? A brief answermight be thatGorgias isconstructing a parodic counter toParmenideanmonism, which likewise calls for an absolute autonomy (of Being),but, Gorgias felt,with disastrous results.The moral of thatdemolition needs, inturn, to be applied toGorgias's own conception of language-the view of it thathe presents and the self-refutation it implies. Logos, so conceived and inGorgias's eyes, is the dramatization of thenot-being of Being. A "being" that cannotbe equivalent to its"phenomenalizations," itsapparitionsor instantiations (theseonly falsify its substance and identity), logos begins to take on the aspect of

61. This "confusion" causedGuthrie (1971) 50,more honest here thanmost, to postulate two"forces"acting onHelen, speech and persuasion, but their dilemma isGorgias's point.62. The term "objective logos" isCalogero's (1977: 258); the incoherencies entailed by thisnotion are acknowledged on p. 260. See Mansfeld (1985) 256, Mourelatos (1987) 138, 150, fordifferent views on the problem of "self-difference" raisedby Gorgias.


26/34

PORTER:he Seductions of Gorgias 291Parmenidean Being, however this is understood.63On theother hand, the logoswe have described isnot an analogue of Parmenidean Being, but itsnegation.64Such a logos has no identity, because it refusespositive identification:name whatit is not as long as you like, but you will never come to what it is.Of course, Gorgias felt the same to be true about Parmenidean Being. Incontrast toBeing, logos may enjoy a certain autonomy, but not sovereignty orlack of contingency; at the very least, itspseudo-identity is contingent upon itsdifference from sensible pragmata, but also from thought-and this goes rightagainst the heart of Parmenideanmetaphysics, which posits the identityof Beingand thought (cf. Parm. DK 28 B 8.34). The poignancy of this difference may betelling: it is tempting to see inGorgias's logos an implied commentary on theunpersuasiveness and inconceivability,not to say incommunicability,of Parmenidean Being, the consequences of which Parmenides either sought to evade orelse knew but failed, inGorgias's eyes, to expose sufficiently in all itspainfulaporia.65If so, thenGorgias is ina sensemerely closing the gap that Parmenideshad already opened by inviting speculation on the relation between truth andpersuasion (for the trueway of Being is that of Persuasion, IELOdt,ho "attendsupon"Truth; Parm. fr.B 2.4; cf. B 1.29-30), which in turnopens a provocativegap between conceptuality and conceivability.66Logos is situated somewhere intheirmidst, a troubling, nagging questionmark, likeHelen.

PERSUASION OR SEDUCTION?The "Helen" exculpated byGorgias is theHelen who was not, a phantom of

herself. This leaves Helen-the real Helen-in a precarious state indeed. Butthen, the thesis of persuasion remainsprecariously suspended too. A readingofHelen that ignores its literary implications clearlywon't do: lookingeven beyondits JTOLITLX'cqTpaocg (DK 82 A 29-32), the speech is formally too complex, tooartfullydesigned, and too full of poetic allusion (its own composition, byway of

63. Gorgias did not invent this kind of parasitical argument. Cf. Cherniss (1975) 22-27 onGorgias's non-Eleatic predecessors' "applied"Parmenideanism. For the view thatParmenides' monismmay not have been ontological but only logical (whatever "is" is internallyunified and logicallyself-identical), see Curd (1991). Gorgias's reply is thatnothing that is answers to either description(logical or ontological).64. Gorgias can, in other words, and perhaps should be associated with an "ultraParmenideanism" (Guthrie 1972: 196) gone purposely askew. Cf. Cassin (1980) 67-68, who, however, goes to an extreme in reductionism (98).65. On material supports to monism as "the ladderwhich must be thrown away," see Owen(1975) 57, 67;Cassin (1980) 60 (Parmenides' "true" road iscontingent upon thenegation of the falseroad); and Williams (1981) 220. For arguments in favor of Parmenides' poem as a form of selfinducedaporia, seeMackenzie (1982).66. This is another point of comparison between the two thinkers thatdeserves to be exploredfurther. In Parmenides, four aspects of Being are enumerated (compulsion, fate, justice, persuasion); the fact of their seductiveness (eros) is implied (cf.Mourelatos 1970: 160-63). These featuresare repeated in distorted form inGorgias.


27/34

292 CLASSICALNTIQUITY Volume 12/No. 2/October 1993itsplural narrations, constitutes one of these allusions). Nor will a straightforward reading of Gorgianic persuasion do either.Why assume thatGorgias isliterallyout to persuade us of the virtues of persuasion, when hemay in fact beout to play upon the conventions of persuasion that are already rife and wellestablished in the sophistic culture of his age? (Targets are not far to seek: onethinks in particular of the paid speech writers, the logographoi; cf. Hel. 13,especially X6yog...X. T yQapeig, ovx a&0reLae X0eig.)Why, indeed, assume that Gorgias belongs unequivocally to that culture (unless we have

misgauged the sophists, and theywere, likeGorgias, radically self-questioningminds)?67There is a self-canceling and "dissuasive"character to his speech thatneeds to be reckoned with. It emerges at certain moments of self-deflection,whenever Gorgias diverts us from the thesis at hand (this isperhaps his commonest mode of argument), or at certainmoments of self-inflection,whenever Gorgias openly jeopardizes his own credibilitywith a "surplus"of persuasiveness, asin2, concerning the excessively "unanimous" tradition on Helen, and in a passage like that from 11, 6oot 6e 6oovog reiL bocowvxal Exltoav xai ret0ovot 6E,evb6 X6yov JXkdoaavxeg, "How many have persuaded and do persuade how

many people about howmany thingsby fabricatinga false logos!" (or "Whoeverpersuaded anyone about anything. . ."), where Gorgias tells us "toomuch"about his profession-or in his four accounts of the nonevent of Helen, whichsimply give toomany reasonswhy Helen "didwhat she did."

Again, Gorgias's writings work both within and outside the discourses andgenres theymimic in order to defamiliarize. This is self-evidently true forOnNot-Being, in which Gorgias is said to have fashioned some arguments "likeZeno" and others "likeMelissus," in addition to supplying his own (MXG979a22-24). The same holds for Helen and Palamedes.68 Isocrates, who sawgenre confusion inHelen, is to be trusted in this case: "[Gorgias]claims to havewritten an encomium of [Helen], but he has actually given a defense of herconduct" (Isoc. Hel. 14). Gorgias knew how to exploit the difference when hewanted to (Pal. 32). He also knew how to flout convention. To reduce his textsto rhetoricaldisplays (with orwithout a "practical"purpose) is todiminish theirthrust, to render them harmless, and tame.69 Gorgias, I am suggesting, was anoutrageous figure. He was thoroughly drilled in critical rigor, and willing to

67. The role played by themetaphor of "magic" in his speech alone is the sign of a recalcitrance, and possibly a criticalone, toward the spiritof late fifth-centuryrationalism (onwhich, Lloyd1979passim). Dodds (1959) 6-7 musters arguments thatdo indeed showGorgias's distance from thecommon run of sophists. But if the distance were a self-criticalone, we might still count Gorgiasamong them.His clear-eyed recognition that rational, public beliefs are often formed around someirrational core does notmake him an irrationalist.

68. Gorgias's Epitaphios, which has perplexed interpreters too, shows similar signs of relativization from within a genre. In Loraux's words, it "crystallizes in itself the ambiguity of a wholegenre," in addition to introducing typically sophistic elements. See Loraux (1986) 225-29.69. It is often supposed that his argument is a schematic aide-memoire aimed at unrestrictedfuture applications; see Cole (1991) 76.


28/34


expose not only what todaywe might call philosophical and ideological assumptions in literature (and rhetoric), and literary,rhetorical,and ideological assumptions in philosophy, but also the pragmatic assumptions of his own rhetoricalsituation. Itmakes no sense to argue thatGorgias demystified the world of

pragmata just so as tobe able to remystify language.But itmight well be the casethat the possibility and the fallacyof such a remystification isone againstwhichGorgias's writings serve to warn us, inour trafficwith day-to-day constructionsof the real.Recall thatGorgias dismissed the identity logicof Parmenides (itselfapproachingmysticism), while endorsing a doctrine of the reality-which is notto say truth-of appearances, one thatdoes not look to some hiddenmetaphysical causation behind them (MXG 980a12-14; cf. fr.B 3 [81]).Or that he couldargue,with wry skepticism, that "no one thinks the selfsame thoughtsas anyoneelse"

Documents

Seduccion en Gorgias.pdf