I promised myself that this blog would never be about war, impending or otherwise. I promised myself that it would never be about politics at all, ever. (Sort of a silly promise for a feminist who’s into queer theory, but never you mind that.) Then I got into both of those things with that post on Winesburg. And now that I’m reading about the Sophistic notion of opinion vs. knowledge, I’m about to go there again, sort of. Kindly bear with me. It’s also a little about social constructionism, if that helps any.

Thus far we have seen that knowledge for the Sophists is invented individually and constructed socially, which makes it subjective and social. We have also seen that knowledge depends on perspective, interests, and language, which makes it relative. But if knowledge of any one thing depends on so many factors, there is no universal criterion of the truth. Consequently, knowledge is never stable or certain. P&P, 126

OK, that’s the social constructionist part. I’m new at this stuff, but I know that it must have bearing on what I’m up to here. My questions for you More Mature Minds out there are as follows: in a socially-constructed reality, is there no truth? Is all knowledge just opinion? Who wrote what about this that I should be reading?

On the strength of these observations, the Sophists gave truth up as unattainable, and declared that the world of human affairs is driven and ruled by opinions, not knowledge. … [They] do not set out to portray opinion as a superior alternative to the truth. On the contrary, they uphold truth as a preferable, even if an impossible option.

Because opinions are tentative and provisional, those who hold them are necessarily ambivalent – they have not made their minds up once and for all. As such they are open to persuasion and have not ruled out the possibility of debate. Unlike knowledge, opinions cannot be true or false; they can only be shown to be stronger or weaker, popular or unpopular, appealing or repulsive …P&P 126 - 127

So the Sophists would be out there protesting the impending war right now. They would say that the job of Rhetoric is to persuade, and that since no opinion is static persuasion is possible. I would really like to believe this. I would feel much better, and I would be much more inclined to actually protest. Unfortunately, the post-hippie part of me is pretty much convinced that this administration has made up its collective mind, and there is no possibility of persuasion left. Opinion has become perceived as knowledge and is being inflicted on the rest of us.

On the other hand, if we don’t protest and just blindly let Homeland Security-style maneuvers become normative, then we haven’t done our job as citizens. So once again, I must conclude that cynicism is impractical and counter-productive, as well as being most unattractive.

OK, all done with that now. And all done with this book, too. I’m not doing the section on Roman Rhetoric right now, because it doesn’t pertain to this project and I’ll be covering it next fall when I take Theory of Rhetoric. (I’ll probably be revisiting Plato’s theories about naming, though.) So next up is Small Pieces Loosely Joined, which is totally out of order, but I need to read it right quick for this other project that I might be doing. So I’m going to do that, and then pick back up with Greek Rhetoric Before Aristotle.