they never thought of cs• tablishing universities where young minds could be cultivated and strengthened
Does Vico mean "university" on a large scale? Because there was clearly "conditioning of the mind" happening, in localized schools and by educators who conditioned minds on a smaller scale (go, sophists). Was that not happening in a large-scale, communal location (see def. of university, tagged)?
Sophistry
Poor sophistry...always getting the bad rap.
the nomadic subjects
Muckelbauer has a whole riff on nomads, traveling, and sophists in Future of Invention that resonates here and also above when Braidotti was talking about affirmation, negativity, and binaries.
For Muckelbauer, traveling and repetition are central to discovery (even if the travel is over the same ground). I particularly like when he says, "we cannot know what a sophist is before setting out" (86)--and that lack of knowing makes the search more difficult because how will one know the sophist when one encounters him or her? Repetition is even more important as one must continue searching even after one has found a sophist, if for nothing else to make sure it was really a sophist.
ince the demise of the Sophists
Connections back to deep rhetorical tradition.
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The sophists are always been used as a limit case. They are the "this is your brain on drugs" for rhetoric.
Those who know all the loci, i.e., the lines of argument to he used, arc able (by an operation not unlike reading the printed characters on a page) to grasp extemporaneously lhe elements or persuasion in-herent in any question or case.
This feels very sophistic (and, by extension, would be criticized by Isocrates -- just because you teach the letters of the alphabet doesn't mean students know what to do with them...or something like that...).
Words of ambiguous meaning are chiefly useful to enable the sophist to mislead his hearers.
Interesting connection, sophist use ambiguous language for false persuasion.
What makes a man a "sophist" is not his faculty, but his moral purpose. In rhetoric, however, the term "rhetorician" may describe either the speaker's knowledge of the art, or his moral purpose. In dialectic it is different: a man is a "sophist" because he has a certain kind of moral purpose, a "dialectician" in respect, not of his moral purpose, but of his faculty.
A dis on the the sophists?
Moreover, you will find that these men are able to carry on a profitable business in alone; if they were to sail to any other place they would starve to death; while my resources, which this fellow has exaggerated, have all come to me from abroad.
A bit of bragging. A good jab at the "other" Sophists.
Why, if they were to sell any other commodity for so trifling a fraction of its worth they would not deny their folly
It is interesting that Isocrates considers the Sophists as salesmen of what he believes to be a worthless commodity. It is ironic because Isocrates, himself being a Sophist, does not mention much about his own pedagogical methods. He does not offer much in the way of advice and suggestions for improvement; only criticism.
More than that, they do not attribute any of this power either to the practical experience or to the native ability of the student, but undertake to transmit the science of discourse as simply as they would teach the letters of the alphabet, not having taken trouble to examine into the nature of each kind of knowledge, but thinking that because of the extravagance of their promises they themselves will command admiration and the teaching of discourse will be held in higher esteem--oblivious of the fact that the arts are made great, not by those who are without scruple in boasting about them, but by those who are able to discover all of the resources which each art affords.
Is this saying that the teachers lack ethos, or credibility, to teach discourses more complicated than the alphabet?
although they say that they do not want money and speak contemptuously of wealth as filthy lucre, they hold their hands out for a trifling gain and promise to make their disciples all but immortal!
Claim of hypocrisy against sophists
But opinion, being slippery and unsteady, surrounds those who rely on it with slippery and unsteady successes.
No wonder the Sophist prioritized and valued memory.
(And)
This entire section arguing for the relativism of good and bad (and most of the entire article) reminds me of sophist philosophies.