0802 Once again, here is the interscope for the Sophist tradition.

0803 The purposes of spoken words are two fold.  The first is to convey the reality of rhetorical discourse.  The second is to package understanding.  Rhetorical discourse_3b and properly packaged understanding_1b sustain sophisticated values_2b.  Sophisticated values_2b virtual situate the content-level actuality_2a where the citizen imagines that what I think [should correspond to] what I say_2a.

A clever student may have noticed that the presence underlying the spoken word associates to both the intellect_3a and the will_1a.  So, what does it imply that an education in rhetoric involves intellectual exercises?  Lots of intellectual exercises!  Why else would someone take a course from Prodicus?  Everyone in Athens knows that the five-drachma lecture is a teaser for the fifty-drachma lecture. And, the fifty-drachma lecture delivers the intellectual goods on how to frame propositions_1b.

0804 Oh, the power of intellectual success!

Pieper tells a story about Albert Einstein, who is both perplexed and amused when an American university offers him a million dollars in order to buy the twelve original handwritten pages of his theory of relativity.

0805 What is that university_3c purchasing?

It_3c is not purchasing the argument_2a, that is already published.  Nor is it_3c purchasing the way that Einstein reframed the propositions of physics, from the point of view where all things are in motion, consequently no location is fixed_1b.

Instead, the university_3c sees an opportunity_1c for the ownership_2c of the handwritten papers that document Einstein’s theoretical breakthrough_2a.  These papers_2a represent Einstein’s victorious will_1a.  These papers_2a are the content that is situated by Einstein’s monumental reframing of physics_1b.  To purchase_2c these papers_2a is to acquire the reputation_2bafforded to Einstein_3a,1a, but at a much lower price_2b.  The ancient Greeks have a word for this type of transaction.  English does not. English translators translate the Greek word into “flattery_1c“.

See 1 Thessalonians 2.5.

0806  Here is how flattery enters into the picture.