Dissoi Logoi, Disruptive Deconstruction, and Booyah Achieved

One of the few coherent thoughts I seemed to be able to muster for last week’s blog related to Aristotle’s Topics, and my question of whether or not his version of how to argue was necessarily a good thing as it seemed to assume it was okay to bend the rules as long as you win. Considering on page 210 Aristotle’s willingness to offer the idea that...

If the written law tells against our case, clearly we must appeal to the universal law, and insist on its greater equity and justice.

... I was a bit thrown off. In many ways, I’m reminded of the antics of Joel McHale’s character from Community, Jeff Winger, a lawyer forced to earn his degree from a community college when his law firm discovers his degree was actually fake. In the pilot episode, Jeff tries to get an acquaintance of his at the school to provide him with answers to his Spanish test to avoid studying since Jeff was able to, in his former life as a lawyer, have Professor Duncan cleared of a DUI charge. The exchange I found interesting I’ve highlighted in the image I put together below:

Click the image to enlarge

What Professor Duncan calls here “moral relativism” is a thread that felt consistent throughout my reading of Aristotle’s work; if one version of the law isn’t on your side, just appeal to the other one and make sure you say it’s more important than the one that gets in your way! In this sense, reading "Dissoi Logoi" provided an interesting lens to examine Aristotle through. Based on my reading of Aristotle, it seemed Aristotle was content to let the audience decide what was right and wrong without too much concern for the orator's approach to the argument, and this position seems echoed by the stance taken by the anonymous author of "Dissoi Logoi."

Take the section On Just and Unjust in "Dissoi Logoi" from page 51:

Some say that what is just and what is unjust are two different things, other that the same thing is just and unjust. For my part, I shall attempt to bolster the latter view. [...] If a man were captured by the enemy and undertook on oath to betray his city if they set him free, would this man be acting justly if he kept his oath?

It doesn’t feel entirely dissimilar from any number of Jeff Winger speeches….

… and I can almost hear each section of "Dissoi Logoi" followed by: in either case, booyah!

This complication of what is right and wrong plays back to both Aristotle and Quintilian. Aristotle comes out in the ways I’ve already discussed briefly, in the sense that bending the law to one’s own will does not seem especially problematic for Aristotle, whereas Quintilian would argue/wonder if rhetoric can/should be used by anyone not considered “well.” The attempts by the author of “Dissoi Logoi” to break apart these simple binaries casts both in a new light: is it ever wrong or right to use the law in a particular way, as per Aristotle? Similarly, it casts into doubt Quintilian’s hope to keep rhetoric removed from those who may abuse it; if “just” and “unjust” are so easily disrupted, why not right and wrong? Good and bad? What if all oration is both? Then, it is simply a matter of attempting to use these binaries to the orator’s advantage.

In this case as well as others in the readings this week, I also noticed a decided thread of deconstructionism that ties back into Barthes. Much like the author of "Dissoi Logoi" and Barthes, Perelman seems to get in on the action on page 1376, stating that:

We do not believe in definitive, unalterable revelations, whatever their nature or origins

And…

All language is the language of a community (1378).

Both of these struck me as decidedly deconstructive stances in terms of language, origin, and authors, much like the consistent running themes in Barthes. Both of these disrupt the idea that there are truths and origins, and in this way, it seems to complement some of the sentiments in Barthes’ work as well as the spirit of “Dissoi Logoi.” I’m not sure that “Dissoi Logoi” was intended to serve as such a disruptive force for the readings so far, but I felt its impact far more on our readings for the course so far than I did last week when we mixed Barthes into our reading cocktail. In many ways, the author of “Dissoi Logoi” seemed determined to pull a “Classic Winger” and create a general disruption of the arguments being made here. If rhetoric, its use, and orators are all at once just and unjust, good and bad, then… what to make of it all?

In the spirit I imagine the author of “Dissoi Logoi” had in mind, I’ll answer the question and conclude thusly:

In either case, booyah!