English 622: Classical Rhetoric

With this response, I would like to venture into territory that seems uncertain to me. Specifically, the role of women in ancient Greek rhetoric is hard to discern, and I don’t want to fall into the usual sexism that grips classical studies. We witness that sexism in the editors’ introductions to the Menexenus and the Symposium. In the Menexenus, Socrates must be mocking Aspasia (right?) because he is recounting her speech. And in the Symposium, Diotima must be a construction (right?) because Socrates would never use a real woman to say such important things.

Personally, I resist these characterizations, and I find them a bit insulting. First, why would Plato waste so much time transcribing the speech of Aspasia if he was simply doing it to mock her? Clearly, Aspasia might have been a Hillary Clinton-type person who might have received her share of ribbing as a woman of influence. However, we see many important people throughout Plato’s dialogues that come in for much more mockery and criticism. Aspasia only gets the “And I know how Aspasia is” kind of aside from Menexenus. That’s light mockery, if at all, in Platonic dialogues.

Meanwhile, there is no mockery involved in the characterization of Diotima. Clearly, she is shown to be smarter than Socrates in the area of love. She is also portrayed to be a master of dialectic, Socrates’ own weapon. Moreover, she articulates an “in between” style of argument that is decidedly non-Socratic.

The editors of our book suggest that she is Plato’s mouthpiece for these reasons. Indeed, she may be espousing Plato’s views, but her views probably represent a position that a real person would have taken. I would question, though, whether she does espouse Plato’s views. Here, we see her taking positions that foreshadow Plato’s discussion of love in the Phaedrus, but I doubt Plato would have accepted the “in between” argument as his own.

Instead, what if Diotima was a real woman engaging in a feminine rhetoric/dialectic? We notice is that she is concerned with issues of love, beauty, and childbirth. Perhaps these are issues that men, namely Socrates, are assumed to know less about. Socrates comes off as boorish and blunt at the beginning of his discussion of love. Diotima is subtle and finessed. What does this mean? Socrates often uses dialectic as a scalpel, while Diotima uses dialectic as a coaxing tool. She is truly someone working with her partner in dialectic, rather than trying to score points or win.

I’m not a feminist scholar, so I hesitate to stake out an area for a feminine rhetoric in Ancient Greece. Certainly, though, I see room to develop such a rhetoric. Based on what we know of Aspasia and Diotima and what we know of the Greek goddesses, could we fashion the outlines of a rhetoric that is feminine in nature? This rhetoric may be outside the usual boundaries that Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle might accept, but let’s be creative here. If we change our definitions of rhetoric to see beyond persuasion, might we be able to develop a feminine rhetoric, and thereby a more comprehensive understanding of ancient rhetoric? I wonder.