Looking at Josef Pieper’s Book (1974) “Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power” (Part 5 of 8)
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 discourse3b and properly packaged understanding1b sustain sophisticated values2b. Sophisticated values2b virtual situate the content-level actuality2a where the citizen imagines that what I think [should correspond to] what I say2a.
A clever student may have noticed that the presence underlying the spoken word associates to both the intellect3a and the will1a. 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 propositions1b.
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 university3c purchasing?
It3c is not purchasing the argument2a, that is already published. Nor is it3c 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 fixed1b.
Instead, the university3c sees an opportunity1c for the ownership2c of the handwritten papers that document Einstein’s theoretical breakthrough2a. These papers2a represent Einstein’s victorious will1a. These papers2a are the content that is situated by Einstein’s monumental reframing of physics1b. To purchase2c these papers2a is to acquire the reputation2bafforded to Einstein3a,1a, but at a much lower price2b. The ancient Greeks have a word for this type of transaction. English does not. English translators translate the Greek word into “flattery1c“.
See 1 Thessalonians 2.5.
0806 Here is how flattery enters into the picture.