Sophisticated Skepticism

henry Njiru
Eng 8170
Sophisticated Skepticism
28th August 2023

The readings explore the key proponents, tenets, and practices of sophisticated skepticism that the world needs every day. They further raise critical questions that challenge how we view and engage with the concepts and their diverse realities. Thus, the readings also reveal the serious contributions of the Greek philosophers, orators, artists, and leaders to the contemporary world.
First, Parmenides and Thucydides represent the precursor rhetoricians. The former examined the nature of existence, origin of life and of the earth because there is some permanent truth (Aletheia) that opposes the relativism, contextual, ephemeral, and local aspects of the contemporary sophisticated rhetoric. Parmenides argued that the implied author epitomized tyranny that muzzled negotiated or discursive ways of thinking. The need for human reason allows practical rhetoric as exemplified by Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War which has speeches that mourned the war victims after the democrats overthrew the Athenian oligarchs. This mode can be applied in addressing the causes and effects of modern warfare and ecocides exacerbated by climate change and unsustainable human consumption and desires for economic development. How genuinely do we mourn and help the victims of natural calamities, and wars given their local, regional, national, continental, and globalized aspects?
We see more sophisticated and practical rhetoric in the works of Protagoras, Gorgias, and Antiphon. Unlike the mythical and religious explanations of creation, Protagoras championed the human creation of the world through contextualism, logic, perspectivism (dialectical arguments in issues), agnosticism, and Kairos (the significances of the right moments of debates). His arguments do not elucidate the natural and supernatural phenomena which are not human creations. Similarly, Gorgias who started extemporaneous speech tradition argued that words are not things; hence, to view words as being disconnected from reality allows transcendence over religion, ideology, philosophy, and other ways of creating perspectivism. To him, speech helps to make relationships between words and things. He also believed that if anything existed, we couldn’t know and communicate it. In many ways, this is a problematic argument because the existence of human and nonhuman phenomena does not depend on our human whims and limited knowledge. For instance, planets, mountains, rivers, stars, oceans, and other natural phenomena exist without human help. Gorgias’s “Encomium of Helen” allowed the prosaic or mundane expression of ideas. This turn relates to Antiphon’s efforts (as in The First Tetralogy or four set speeches) to extend rhetoric from the practical realms to law courts, public assemblies (ekklesias), schools, and other practical spheres.
These opposing facets in arguments find more explanation in Dissoi Logoi which espouses twofold arguments through good/bad, seemly/shameful, just/unjust, just/ unjust, and other binaries. The argument that the good and bad are the same thing is false in some scenarios. For instance, how can rape, murder, slavery, slave trade, genocides, wildfires, and other natural disasters be good given the declaration of the universal human rights and sanctity of human life? Can the abortions that kill the unborn children and some of the mothers be good? Do alcoholism and drug addictions override their killer effects? What good exists when suicide bombers and mass killers die in the process of executing their revenge acts? The seemly/shameful binary is very practical because it delineates the boundaries between humans and animals (which have no shame in copulating, defecating, and devouring in the public). It also enforces professional and general ethics and morality that forbids sexual affairs and other forbidden acts with siblings, clients, students, corporate customers, prisoners, and patients. The just/unjust raises many complex issues of who defines and executes justice and injustices. For example, can people be arrested and prosecuted for stealing from thieves? Are there justified lies that are admissible in the law courts, schools, government circles, families, friendships, and religious institutions? Whether wisdom and moral excellence can be taught ignites debates on the relationships and differences among knowledge, wisdom, learning, technologies, contexts, and other resources. Are the most formally educated people the wisest and most moral? Do poverty and lack of formal education render people unwise and immoral? How does education help us to seek the common good that overrides the parochial and inane interests and acts?
The above binaries relate to indirection which entails double speak as practiced by magicians, flatterers, and politicians (who use the diatribes and other campaign tools to dehumanize and deconstruct their competitors). For instance, politicians who use religion to pontificate and brand their opponents as evildoers disguise their own flaws and dangerous agenda. The loaded questions like “Do you still take drugs,” “Have they become men yet?” and “Has he stopped stealing from his parents and granny?” constitute fallacies and indirection which unsettle many people for they yes/no answers implicate the respondents in the mentioned wrongs. Another form of indirection is allegory that uses many human and animal tales with literal and symbolic meanings within larger narratives to teach, satirize, and ignite serious debates on human morals, destiny and relationships with nature, technologies, and other phenomena. There are political, ideational, historical, and related allegories as demonstrated in Orwell’s Animal Farm, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Melville’s Moby Dick, and many postcolonial and postmodern allegorical writings.
Even with such indirection, the sophists used their education, ingenuity, memories, and other rhetorical tools to fight oligarchy (the brutal rule of the wealthy class) which appropriated mythology and claims of heroism in great events to oppress people. The sophists teach how democracy allows equal opportunities for success. Thus, their efforts threaten the social hierarchy by empowering citizens in many ways. Even with such flowery and grandiose promises of democracy, contradictions arise in the greatest democratic states in which racism, tribalism, sexism, and crimes against nature continue. Is the democratic model working in African countries where electoral fraud, corruption, thievery, civil strife, police brutality, and massive unemployment persist even when the citizens participate in democratic elections? Has democracy resolved most US, Canadian and European problems? Are all the wealthy people oppressive given the sustainable philanthropy and other virtues exhibited by of some of the richest investors? Can the wealthy be good leaders and stewards of the environment?
The readings conclude by examining the key tenets and practices of sophisticated skepticism which rejects absolutism, grand narratives (essentialist foundations), and nihilism. It embraces different interpretations and realities through Kairos, and recognition of the complex contexts in which phenomena exist and are experienced and interpreted. By rejecting the essential foundations/metanarratives, it aligns itself with postmodernism and its many contradictions. For instance, we have human universal rights and natural facts (because there is only one human species) which should not be curtailed by racism, tribalism, sexism, cronyism, classicism, and other myopic interests. How do sophisticated skeptics handle the flaws and dangers of cultural imperialism, neocolonialism, and the complex domination of the poor countries by the Global North and their allies in these victim areas? How do they help to dispel the conspiracies on climate change given that denying its effects will not help humanity and the environment? The ten practices of sophisticated skeptics apply in pedagogy, business, politics, and everyday life by emphasizing humility, avoidance of biases and assumptions, acceptance of diverse opinions and experiences, and critical questioning which allow people accept uncertainty, and alternatives.
All in all, the readings explore critical issues that propel our every lives, morality, aesthetics and engagement with nature, technologies and other planetary phenomena. Of great concern is how sophisticated skepticism identifies and handles its own internal contradictions and challenges.