ψυχή
psuchê
Audience analysis originated with Plato’s notion of the speaker’s recognition of the types of souls comprising an audience. A contemporary rhetorical scholar does not think of an audience as souls to be led; minds to be persuaded, perhaps. In modern English, the soul is “the spiritual part of man in contrast to the purely physical” [1]. We may refer to it as the psyche, the spirit, the self, the intellect or the subconscious. That without which we would be mere bodies.
In Plato’s “Gorgias,” Socrates and Gorgias discuss the difference between soul and body [2]. In Greek the word translated by Helmbold as “soul” is ψυχή, or psuchê, which translates literally to English as “breath" [3]. In “Phaedrus,” Socrates speaks elaborately of the nature and hierarchy of souls, and again, the Greek word is psuchê, breath [4]. Our modern notion of the soul is expressed by the OED as “the principle of thought and action in man, commonly regarded as an entity distinct from the body" [5]. It is evident through context that Plato agrees with this definition of what the soul is; his Socrates in “Gorgias” speaks of calling the “body” something and the “soul” something else [6] and of the soul as master of the body [7]. The philosopher asserts in “Phaedrus” that “there neither is nor ever will be anything of more real importance in heaven or earth than the soul” [8]. So why, if Plato is definitely speaking of “the immaterial ‘I’ that possesses conscious experience, controls passion, desire and action, and maintains a perfect identity from birth (or before) to death (or after),” [9] is the Greek word in the text psuchê? I suppose a better question might be why does psuchê translate literally as “breath” if it is used in all these instances in reference to a person’s soul? According to the Perseus database, it appears over a thousand times in Plato’s texts. It appears to be a case of synonym in the language, where the Greeks thought it unnecessary to differentiate.
The idea of a person being infused with a life force that makes them more than just a body, having a soul, is sometimes referred to as the breath of life, that which makes a person alive, and which leaves their body upon death. The ancient Greek language makes no distinction between the inhalation of oxygen, giver of life, and the internal life force we call the soul.
[1] Oxford English Dictionary Online.
[2] Helmbold, W.C. and W.G. Rabinowitz. (1956). "Plato: Phaedrus." MacMillan Publishing Company. 270-271.
[3] Perseus
[4] Phaedrus, 244-257.
[5] Oxford English Dictionary Online.
[6] Helmbold, W.C. (1997). "Plato: Gorgias." Prentice Hall Inc. 464.
[7] Gorgias, 465.
[8] Phaedrus, 241.
[9] Blackburn, Simon. (2005).“Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy.” Oxford University Press. 346.
2 comments:
Dani,
I find you analysis extremely interesting in light of the word I excavated. Speech (logos) had divine connotations for the Greeks. What is interesting is that speech requires breath (soul). I wonder how they saw this correlation. Was speech a quality of divinity because it requires breath (soul) or did breath become associated with the divine because of speaking? It is an interesting question!
Interesting, this excavation seems to lead us down a possible path of embodied rhetoric. The soul as breath would seem to unite the body/soul (body/mind) division.
"I think that one of the unspoken discomforts surrounding the way a discourse of race and gender, class and sexual practice has disrupted the academy is precisely the challenge to that mind/body split. Once we start talking in the classroom about the body and about how we live in our bodies, we're automatically challenging the way power has orchestrated itself in that particular institutionalized space" bell hooks writes in Teaching to Transgress in 1994 on page 136-137. Paying attention to the teacher as a body, not simply a mind we see how standing and lecturing, or sitting behind a desk embodies ideas of fixed immobilized knowledge. Denying the body helps us believe that we are sharing objective facts that can be universally accepted by all students. As part of her task for a critical liberatory pedagogy she says that we as educators must move around the classroom. Embodiment requires us to acknowledge each other as particular subjects within history. To value the body is a way to deconstruct the way power privileges certain (white male rich) bodies and denies others access to power.
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