Hawhee, Debra

Bodily Pedagogies: Rhetoric, Athletics, and the Sophists’ Three Rs

College English, Vol 65, No 2 (Nov 2002) pp 142-162
Accessed 26/03/2009
Three Rs: rhythm, repetition, response

142
Focusing on the connection between rhetorical training and athletic training
142-3
Many authors indicate that “Greek culture is highly agonistic…”
143
Hawhee cites Plato’s Lysis taking place as people move from one gymnasium to
another
Also, the private palaestra
Hawhee describes palestras “where young boys were sent to learn
wrestling and other sporting activities. But more than that, as this
passage (in Plato) indicates, such schools were also the site of
philosophical discussion the likes of those described by Hippothales…
Such discussions were understood as a kind of informal training, as they
fostered the production and demonstration of skills important for public
discourse, and the working through of particular cultural and philosophical
topics, like friendship…” (Hawhee Bodily 143).
144
Hawhee asserts “Evidence of sophistic activity in gymnasia and palaestae is
scattered through the remains of Greek writings,” and then provides multiple
examples (Bodily 143). Not only were these sites for the sophists, but also private
houses as well as shops, the agora, and more formal academies.
In Hawhee’s discussion of Susan Jarratt’s reading of Sophists as Athenian “public
intellectuals,” the public spaces these intellectuals attended to were often public
gymnasia “since the sites were already an integral part of the daily practices of
most free Athenian men. But perhaps more importantly, these locations were
frequented by youths seeking to cultivate a citzen ethos” (Hawhee 144).

“As locations of physical training—young boys learned and practiced

running, jumping, wrestling, and boxing, for starters—the gymnasia were
already important sites for the production of citizen subjects, and
moreover, the production took place in a decidedly corporeal style. From
this spatial intermingling of practices there emerged a curious syncretism
between athletics and rhetoric, a particular crossover in pedagogical
practices and learning styles, a crossover that contributed to the
development of rhetoric as a bodily art: an art learned, practiced, and
performed by and with the body as well as the mind” (Hawhee Bodily 144)
These are critical quotes, and the heart of the point of root links between the
physical and the rhetorical, the holistic training—the training and production of
citizens, not just speakers or athletes, but with a larger concern.

145

Hawhee claims that Isocrates “was the one to articulate most explicitly this fusion of
teaching styles” (Bodily 145).
“Since athletic training and competition were already deeply politicized in Athenian
culture (Kyle; Kurke), what better art to link to, strategically and methodologically,
than the practices in the gymnasium, the place where the political, ethical body
emerges?” (Bodily 145). She supports her point with Antidosis lines 180-83 (trans.
Adapted) “not separating sharply the two kinds of education [body and mind—my
note], but using similar methods of instruction, exercise, and other forms of
discipline” (Bodily 145).

“Athletic and rhetorical training were thus bound together, as Isocrates

points out, in at least two ways: (1) together, training in athletics and
oratory provide a program for shaping an entire self, and (2) the two arts
draw from similar pedagogical strategies wherein the respective
instructors impart to students bodily and discursive forms of expression:
then, according to Isocrates, they “set them at exercises, habituate them
to work, and require them to combine in practice the particular things
which they have learned” (Antidosis 184). Furthermore, this passage
describes a style of pedagogy based upon what I’m calling the three Rs of
sophistic pedagogy: rhythm, repetition, and response” (Hawhee Bodily 145).

145-46
use of rhythms and pipes during athletic training

147
Music in education

148
Citation of Warry’s discussion of the Greek word rhythm which is derived from the
verb meaning “to flow” and “invokes the movement of the rivers.” Then citation of
Warry “…the Greek idea of rhythm is one of current combined with alternation, of
continuity with vicissitude” (Warry 115).
This fits in with Lanham’s idea of poles, oscillation and movement

149
Wrestling practiced with an opponent

“The three Rs of athletic training—rhythm, repetition, response—lie at the

very heart of Isocrates’s conception of training. “The word Isocrates uses
for both athletic and rhetorical training—epimeleias—is worth
consideration here. The word itself encapsulates several dimensions of an
intense engagement: “diligent attention,” “care,” “and even, in plural
form, “pains“ (Liddell and Scott 645). Its root, melete, means “practice,”
“exercise,” and, when used in terms of rhetorical training, often means
declamation (LS 1097). (italics hers, not mine)
How do I cite this stuff?
This is a critical idea, linking, and word.
It connects to Lanham; it connects the training; it connects rhetoric. Lots of
stuff.

150
Empedocles exhortation of Pausanias
Hard work involved in thinking
Pushing out busy thoughts and focusing on the teacher
The teaching will cause things to happen/grow as to their nature

Education as character sculpting

Significant passage about the struggle of learning/ scholar warrior;; bodily

production of knowledge
Discipline of contemplation

150
In response to a passage by Aristotle about habit, nature, and melete, Hawhee
states that “This passage is noteworthy because it suggests that practice produces
the very habit of self-contrl necessary to make oneself capable of training. In other
words, education is enabled through one’s habit of melete, of a belief in the
transformative work of practice (Hawhee Bodily 150). Italics hers

151
“Training or epimeleias thus occurs through repeated, sustained
engagement—a shared trait of athletic and rhetorical training as
elaborated by Isocrates in Antidosis… In other words, these “twin arts”
are, for Isocrates, the two fundamental arts for citizen training, because
this particular training juncture, Isocrates contends, enables teachers to
“advance their pupils to a point where they are better men and where
they are strong in their thinking or in the use of their bodies” (185). This
mode of teaching thus, in Isocrates’s logic, better equips young Athenians
to become effective citizens” (Hawhee bodily 151).

152
“As Isocrates contends, no system of knowledge can teach kairotic
response; rather such response emerges out of repeated encounters with
difference: different opponents, different subject matter, different times
and places” (Hawhee Bodliy 152).

152
Imitation

153
Observation and being associated with

“What Isocrates articulates here is a pedagogy of association—a cultivation of habit

and practices by placing oneself in close relation to those who practice the arts one
is pursuing…” (153 Hawhee Bodily).

154
Imitation has a place—review this; could be interesting

155
An important aspect of Isocrates’s pedagogy is that of imitation—
association with and working in the same place as the instructor. Among
other things, this provides the student an opportunity to model from the
instructor and for the instructor to correct their student. The end result of
this, according to Hawhee is that “In other words, the “end result” of such
pedagogy is not a finished product, but a dispositional capacity for
iteration—the ability to continually repeat, transform, and respond”
(Hawhee Bodily 154-155)
Like Lanham, the result is a skill set and being able to adopt and adapt and
perform on ones own.
This implies that a significant part of success with the Isocratean model is
linked to modeling or apprenticing under master teachers or instructors. Is this
even possible through distance education.
How does Lanham deal with this?

This could also link to the 152 page quote about Kairos. If we are able to
observe others properly \handling and developing their Kairotic skills, that provides
the students with opportunities to learn from an expert. Similarly, if the students
are able to perform and fail, having the expert right there to correct them enables
them to maximize their learning from their mistakes instead of making the same
errors over and over again.

156-157
Disposition, posture, hold the body

157
Quote of quintillian discussing oratory’s indebtedness to gymnastics

160
“Since ancient rhetorical performance and its concomitant training
practices both took place at the level of the body, the focus lies on an
attention to manner—to the way in which one acquires artistic expertise—
over matter, here meaning subject matter, as in the modern notion of the
three Rs. That is, rather than focusing on material learned—the sophists
didn’t have a curriculum in the modern sense of a “subject matter” to be
“covered”—sophistic pedagogy emphasized the materiality of learning,
the corporeal acquisition of rhetorical movements through rhythm,
repetition, and response. This manner of learning-doing entails “getting a
feel for” the work—following and producing a rhythm” (Hawhee Bodily
160). Italics hers, not mine

Fluff over stuff; being and practice over learning specific content
This final passage is very important and it links into the overall piece.