David Javidzad

GSI: Jerilyn Sambrooke

Rhetoric 103A

26 November 2016

Figurative Reading of Encomium of Helen, by Gorgias

         In his Encomium of Helen, Gorgias makes an argument for exonerating the infamous, ancient Homeric character, Helen. The argument proceeds by the logically valid argument form, constructive dilemma. He infers a conclusion from several conditional statements, which all have a common consequent, namely that Helen is innocent (or that we should absolve the character of Helen from her bad reputation), and adds a set of sufficient conditions to validly imply this consequent. The argument’s first premise states that if Paris abducted Helen by force, then she had no intent to cause mischief, and so her departure to Troy is innocent. Another conditional proposition holds that if Helen had fallen in love with Paris, then she was guided passionately by a divine force, so she cannot be blamed for her departure because she was subject to the lure of divine love, and therefore, her departure to Troy is not worthy of condemnation. After elaborating on these main conditional statements, and introducing more premises for support, along with concessions and qualifications, Gorgias adds the final premise to validate his conclusion: “[Helen was] either passionately in love or persuaded by discourse or abducted by force or constrained by divine constraints…” (Section 20). This disjunctive statement eliminates alternate reasoning and says that any of these conditions are true then the consequent must be too; it justifies the necessary condition of all the conditional statements, leading to Gorgias’s main conclusion: Helen is innocent and must be absolved of blame. Logical validity, the strength of the relationship between premises and conclusion, and good structure, however,  are not the only aspects that make Gorgias’s argument so persuasive, compelling, and eloquent. He employs figurative language by way of allegory, analogy, and symbolism, rendering the argument interesting and worthy of attention and acclaim.

         Defending the art of persuasion throughout the text, Gorgias constructs an analogy between drugs, or pharmacopoeia, and rhetoric. As opposed to using metaphor or simile here, which less transparently mask the underlying referent, he declares an analogy, explicitly mentioning the relationship of each part to each other: “The power of discourse stands in the same relation to the soul's organization as the pharmacopoeia does to the physiology of bodies” (14). He goes on to elaborate the ways in which different medicines can heal different ailments or be appropriate or inappropriate depending on different situations. This has strong argumentative effects as it establishes the relativity of rhetoric’s just usage. Rather than being an art that universally falls into either a just or unjust category, he argues, rhetoric can be used properly, misused, and abused. This establishes a distance from those who unjustly use it, and adds moral value to Gorgias’s apparent usage of persuasive techniques, rendering him one of the “just” rhetoricians, accomplishing the task of removing negative bearings on an innocent person’s reputation.

Helen herself is the main figure of the text. Literally, Gorgias is using Helen, who at that point in time exists only as a mythical or historical figure, to accomplish a great rhetorical challenge. In the context of ancient Greece, the perception of Helen as a historical figure was conventionally one that received condemnation and accusation. Similarly, due in part to Socrates and other Greek thinkers who dismissed ‘sophistry,’ Greeks did not perceive favorably the art of persuasive speaking. Throughout the text, there is a subtext in which Gorgias, a proponent of rhetoric and one of Socrates’s challengers, argues that rhetoric and eloquence in speech is worthy of celebration (encomium), and the defamation it has attained (through Socrates or otherwise) is unwarranted. Gorgias will purport to exonerate Helen and rhetoric simultaneously, establishing an interchangeability between Helen and persuasion as logical inferences from his reasoning.

Using the figure of Helen allegorically, Gorgias implicitly and explicitly celebrates rhetoric’s power— explicitly by mentioning, demonstrating, and boasting that he is able to accomplish such a great feat (namely, absolving Helen, a seemingly impossible task) using only words and eloquence; and implicitly by veiling the argument about rhetoric itself behind the figure of Helen. At the end of the argument, for example, after having stated his conclusion, he proceeds to call her his “plaything,” and, as if to say ‘Voila!’ he asserts, “I have removed infamy from a woman” (21). These final remarks reveal Gorgias’s manipulation of the figure of Helen and expose the intersection between Helen and the implicit argument about rhetoric.

Gorgias introduces the argument by stating, “It being required of the same man both to speak straight and to refute crooked speech, one should refute those blaming Helen” (2). This is where “well-speaking” and Helen are first paralleled. He uses the requirement of man to speak well as a justification for his taking on this task, and then claims to “put an end to ignorance” (2) this way. Then, establishing a parallel between Helen’s beauty and Gorgias’s experience with attracting crowds with his orations, Gorgias mentions, “She produced the greatest erotic desires in most men. For one body many bodies of men came together” (4). Here, the effects of Helen’s notorious beauty represent the persuasive, potent appeal of words and eloquence.

            In regards to the possibility that Helen could have been deceived by persuasive discourse, Gorgias contends that discourse is powerful and she was victimized by its use (or misuse) rather than an offender herself. This figures in the argument is several ways: On the surface, it is another reason for exonerating Helen, pitying her rather than condemning her, and this adds value to Gorgias’s accomplishment, which, in turn, bolsters his implicit argument about rhetoric. He is also explicitly mentioning, however, the immense power of persuasive speaking, and goes on to celebrate its various abilities. In this case, he presents it as an agent of deception, and he goes on to condemn rhetoric’s abusers, who, deliberately are not Helen. This figures in the argument as a concession to critics of persuasion, but does not result in weakening the argument, for he will continue to successfully absolve Helen, who represents rhetoric, of ill repute.       

By referring to the appeal of beauty in Helen, her vulnerability to the persuasion of others, and by exhibiting his own rhetorical prowess, Gorgias simultaneously defends rhetoric in the context of Socratic denigration of it and accomplishes a self-promoting triumph in exonerating Helen.