From: gvcarter-AT-purdue.edu Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 10:25:49 -0500 Subject: RE: Gorgias and the fragility of reality Eric/Glen, As may well be well known, Eric's axioms share a great deal with the sophist, Gorgias, from the latter half of the fifth century B.C. He says, I. Nothing exists II. If anything exists, it is incomprehensible. III. If it is comprehensible, it is incommunicable. On the subject of language, Gorgias says, "Further, that which we communicate is speech, and speech is not the same thing as the things that exist, the perceptibles; so that we communicate not the things which exist, but only speech; just as that which is seen cannot become that which is heard, so our speech cannot be equated with that which exists, since it is outside us. Further, speech is composed from percepts which we receive from without, that is, from perceptibles; so it is not speech which communication perceptibles, but perceptibles which create speech. Further, speech can never exactly represent perceptibles, since it is different from them, and perceptibles are apprehended each by the one kind of organ, speech from another. Hence, since the objects of sight cannot be presented to any other organ but sight, and the different sense-organs cannot give their information to one another, similarly speech cannot give any information about perceptibles. Therefore, if anything exists and is comprehended, it is incommunicable." (From Kathleen Freeman's translation of the Ancilla to the Pre-Socratice Philosophers.) I send this along as a point of comparision with Eric's "such a reality" and to point out--as if one needs to do so--that the stakes of this argument are far reaching. Rhetorical studies vis-a-vis postmodernism have taken up Gorgias as (strangely) paradigmatic. Curious what everyone thinks about Gorgias and the pre-socratics. Best, Geof Quoting Glen Fuller <g.fuller-AT-uws.edu.au>: > Eric, > 1. Such a reality does not exist. > 2. Such a reality exists, but cannot be known. > 3. Such a reality exists and can be known, but cannot be described > in language. > > Sorry to go all pomo (it seems almost as bad as being liberalist (god > forbid!) on this list), what about, "4. 'Reality' exists as a product of > language."? And language in the sense of communication, including > extra-linguistic. If you are thinking I am reducing it 'all' to a > textuality, maybe I am but only in a radical sense. > > Glen. > > PS Check out: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2838.htm > FWDed. >
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