Jiří Klouda
SUMMARY
Anaxagorean Prose, Rhetorical Hippocratic Writings and the Question of Preplatonic Rhetorical Theory
The study begins with the arguments used by Th. Cole and L. Schiappa for
their well-known position regarding Plato’s influence upon the genesis of
theory of rhetoric in ancient Greece. According to Cole and Schiappa, theory of
rhetoric as a special discipline was made possible by the birth of metaphysical
philosophy and its outlining a basic theoretical frame in which theoretical
rhetoric could be placed as a formal discipline pertaining to the extra-informative
dimension of logos-as-style aside
from the true, informative knowledge of things reflected in logos-as-philosophy. Subsequently the
article discusses four treatises preserved in the Hippocratic collection: these
are the De carnibus, De flatibus, De arte and De vetere
medicina (mostly written in the form of a speech, and thus classified as
rhetorical Hippocratic writings). We focus our attention on the reflexive
procedures and terminology which the authors use to refer to the construction
of the text itself. This reflexive feature, embracing both the form and the content
of a text, is captured by the term hupothesis
and the verb hupotithesthai.
Surprisingly, the same term hupothesis
denotes the all-knowing and all-pervading materialized cosmic mind. This
cosmos-structuring principle, known from the late Ionic cosmology of Anaxagoras
of Clazomenae, Archelaus of Athens and Diogenes of Apollonia, thus also
functions as a text-structuring principle. This compositional function can be
observed in the parallel texture of the treatises De carnibus and De flatibus,
where the cosmological principle certifies its validity insofar as it is able
to embody in a cosmological narrative all the partial topics characteristical
for the broad encyclopaedic scope of Greek pre-metaphysical thought. On the
other hand, only speech makes obvious the causal and other connections between
partial things and structures. This method of making invisible things visible
and observable by means of speech became an important part of the self-understanding
of early Greek rhetoric. Similarly, the all-governing power of the cosmic mind
served as a model for the universal power of speech, lauded by Gorgias. Thus,
the late “Anaxagorean” phase of Greek cosmology was a clearly discursive
practice, a reflected way of constructing a “physical” prose. Plato’s later
attempt to reformulate rhetoric as a special formal discipline and to
subordinate it to the new metaphysical philosophy largely neglects this
discursive feature of late cosmology.