Toward a neosophistic writing pedagogy

Abstract

In her examination of Erasmus's The Praise of Folly, Patricia Bizzell announces her wish to find a solution to the problem of finding a compelling version of from which to speak on behalf of oppressed groups in spite of the climate of post-modern skepticism which attempts to render all value assertions nugatory (7-8).1 Bizzell understands the ultimate result of deconstruction-the tool that she and others in favor of a left-oriented political agenda have long used for the purpose of criticizing received wisdom and destabilizing traditional foundations of belief, teaching us to regard all foundationalist assumptions with suspicion (14)-to be Pyrrhonian skepticism, a nihilistic abyss of skepticism that refuses to regard even temporary truths. Pyrrhonian skepticism has forced Deconstruction to turn on the very scholars who have employed it to undermine foundationalist beliefs by always already undermining the left-oriented actions those scholars now wish to take. In the past, Bizzell has effectively critiqued foundationalist assumptions (e.g., Foundationalism and Anti-Foundationalism in Composition Studies), but now she says she is ready even to play the fool if she must to pursue ways to engage in processes whereby we use our common capacities to make reasonable judgments about experience in light of egalitarian values so that we may move more decisively toward democratic political (16). Since Bizzell is willing to play the fool for her pursuit, she might make an appeal to an older group of thinkers who have been misrepresented as fools more than once: the early Greek sophists, whom I believe offer a theoretical base to Bizzell and all of us who are interested in professing left-oriented values in our writing classrooms. To explicate that sophistic theoretical base, I will briefly review recent work on the sophists in composition and rhetoric, illustrate how a sophistic understanding of the progress of knowledge can enable us to avoid the trap of Pyrrhonian skepticism, and examine three neosophistic essays that organize the principles of neosophism. In the final section, I will use sample assignments I've designed for my own composition course to demonstrate how a neosophistic pedagogy authorizes sociopolitical action in the composition classroom. Bizzell, to her credit, connects her search for rhetorical authority to the work of the sophists. Playing the fool, she says, allows one to innocently transgress social boundaries, an action that in turn, she hopes, allows teachers