On Wed, 9 Jul 2003, Rowin Cross wrote:
Like so many on this list, this is a wonderful debate, which I've really enjoyed following. I hope nobody minds me adding a couple of kind-of relevant (I hope) thoughts.
ed wrote:
establishment of writing (away from oral). "It [writing] will cause us to forget" (roughly) . . .
and in a way, it did. In the oral age, "literate" Greeks had encyclopedic memories. Within 250 years after Plato, teachers of rhetoric had to teach memory systems.
rowin notes:
It's my understanding that oral histories are highly selective. They're not 'encyclopedic' in the sense that they retain facts as independent entities, but instead reflect that which it is expedient to remember.
Rowin causes me to amend/clarify a bit. My post was a little looser than I meant it to be. Rowin and others have made excellent points about these matters. Clearly, I did not intend that one should read Plato directly as historic comment about all that was memory in the ancient world. I wish to extend my comments a bit. Like all ancient "authors," Plato can be read many different ways. I teach oral rhetoric, so read the PHEADRUS (and other Platonic works) for their commentary about speech making. It is, for many rhetoricians, a foundational text proposing an "ideal" rhetoric (or presenting a rhetoric so idealized that none can aspire to it, thereby following Plato's normal habit of denigrating the art/practice).