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Just relations between and among opponents are also difficult to establish when the argumentative goal is consensus, when everyone begins with the knowledge that the positions taken by some or all must be eroded or forgotten if deliberation is to succeed. Indeed, the achievement of consensus can simply mean that the most powerful interests managed to silence all other parties Sharon Crowley, Toward a Civil Discourse 22 Pankration, from the Greek words pan (all) and krates (powerful), was the earliest no- holds-barred combat sport…Victory was determined when a contestant either held up an

index finger or was unable to continue. Fatalities were common. Grandmaster Jim Arvanitis, the First Mixed Martial Art 62 I. The Necessarily Coercive Foundation of Contestation

At the beginning of the exchange with Socrates, Euthydemus establishes the boundaries for their refutation. First, Euthydemus explicitly asks whether those

assembled believe in the Principle of Non-Contradiction”—that something cannot both be and not be—and the group responds resoundingly in the affirmative, as rejecting such a principle is understood to be ludicrous. Second, Euthydemus requires Cleinias to only answer when he is asked questions and the Sophists will answer in kind, as we can see when they are questioned by Socrates. These two rules illustrate the foundational necessity of rules for any contest to be productive, but they also illustrate that there are different ways of inhabiting the space created by these rules, and that these inhabitations have different affordances, ones that complement and contradict one another.

When the Sophists ask Cleinias “who are the ones that learn, the wise or the ignorant?” the fluidity of language and multiplicity of meaning allows learners to be both those who know and those who do not, both the wise and the ignorant. This seemingly obvious contradiction, as Socrates explains, is actually the result of two different senses of the word “learn.”That “learn” can mean both the acquisition of knowledge and the

possession of knowledge has two contradictory consequences. The view of Socrates (and Plato) is that these two senses of “learn” are two different concepts that unfortunately have the same name (homonyms).

Alternatively, in what seems to be the view of the Sophists, “learn” does not have a singular essence, but multiple and even contradictory ones, meaning that the principle upon which the Principle of Non-Contradiction rests is itself instable. However, even though this principle is not strictly adhered to throughout the course of the dialogue, since the Sophists reject the Platonic perspective, all parties still use the Principle of Non- Contradiction as the metric of victory and defeat. That is, even though this principle is troubled almost immediately after it has been assented to, it is still the means by which the refutation continues, develops, and concludes with the sophists ultimately defeating Socrates. Even if the sophists don’t “play by the rules,” it is still based on these rules that they achieve victory, or rather cause another’s defeat.

Second, like the Principle of Non-Contradiction, the question-answer rule only allows certain discourses. Indeed, as we see from Socrates in the beginning of the dialogue and the Sophists near the end, not responding directly, qualifying the response, or asking for clarification is considered outside acceptable bounds, as the Sophists and the Socratics argue in their respective turns as questioners. Furthermore, the question-

answer form is used by both the Sophists in their refutation of Cleinias and by Socrates in his elenchus with the boy, but like the Principle of Non-Contradiction, they do not inhabit the rules in the same way. The sophists ask questions they know the likely answers to, while Socrates asks questions without any easy answers. However, the traditional ethical distinction between what the Sophists and Socrates both do to Cleinias is not so simple; the Sophists ask balanced questions, offering choices, while Socrates asks weighted questions in a series that pushes Cleinias to certain answers, the answers that seem to support the perspective of Socrates (and Plato). That is, both sides provide Cleinias the illusion of choice, but because of the skills of the Sophists and the subtle phrasing of Socrates, the boy ends up in both instances exactly where they want him: silenced by refutation or seeking after wisdom.

Even if these rules aren’t followed faithfully over the course of the dialogue, they still determine the conditions for the argumentative victory, or more properly, the manner of defeat: if I cannot answer a question or my answer contradicts another answer or itself, then I am defeated, and whoever defeated me is the victor, regardless of whether the rules were strictly adhered to throughout the course of the contest. Socrates is still defeated by being struck into silence, by being knocked out, and Ctesippus is still defeated by giving up, tapping out, admitting his own defeat. The truth and logic of the arguments are irrelevant here, because what matters for the sophists is the force and effect. As I argue in the previous chapter, the sophists don’t claim to offer any truth or foundational

understanding, but simply a better set of fighting skills. Fighting skills, however, are purely instrumental; the punch or throw can be performed in self-defense or assault, and the ability to be successful at fighting, to be a good fighter is not reducible to the ethical

justifications for the fighting. Those whose motives and goals we find abhorrent don’t necessarily suffer from our low judgment of them, and if they are well-versed in the arts of argument, our low judgment, our inability, or unwillingness to take such villains seriously, will lead us, like Socrates, to defeat.

But in light of the efficacy of the Sophistic wrangling over the Sophistic elenchus, the question about “right use” becomes much more complicated. On the one hand, “right use” can be understood as “righteous use,” following particular ideological goals or working within particular moral bounds. Using rhetoric to persuade the people to follow a policy that would serve the common good, even if they bristle at such persuasion, might be called “right use” by Aristotle. Since the Sophists have ideological goals that differ from, or even oppose, those of Aristotle and his Platonically-inflected argumentative frame, they cannot be using rhetoric rightly since self-enrichment and victory are, by themselves, not true good and real wisdom.

On the other hand, “right use” might be understood as a more technical “correct use,” or using rhetoric to achieve our ends in the most efficient and effective way. Such tactics like using ambiguous words, empty signifiers, or enthymemes with polyvalent minor premises that allow people to be persuaded without recognizing the full extent of the argument, allow the rhetor using this ignorance to achieve argumentative victory or even public office. But what happens when the norms of argumentative discourse, the rules for virtuous use (logical rigor, empirical verification, openness and uncertainty) are drastically ineffective when faced with those who reject such norms, employing a whole host of ad hominem, tu quoque, red herring, and other fallacy to dazzle, distract, and ultimately destroy any other argument in the eyes of a captive audience.

In a similar situation, Aristotle sets out to defeat eristic, and in order to do so, he must first define it. In Sophistical Refutations, he outlines thirteen types of fallacious arguments. While there are many different types, in the final chapter “Aristotle describes all the preceding false arguments, whether deceptions or errors, as paralogism” with

ignoratio elenchi, ignorance of refutation, as “the way of accommodating all the other

twelve” (Tindale Reason’s Dark Champions 48, 49). The primordial fallacy is the refusal to accept the rules of argumentation that Aristotle outlines, meaning that rhetors either accept and enact the proper rules of argument or are not actually arguing at all.lvi In each

of these cases, arguments are evaluated through a metric of necessity. An argument is only acceptable if the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises, and fallacious if it does not. Everything that is different from a necessary argument is the same in being wrong, and it is necessarily wrong because it doesn’t follow the rules of necessity. By having such an exclusionary structure, Aristotle’s own rules are eristic in their own right. By establishing a strict division between logic and illogic, they completely shut out any opposing view. If we don’t follow the rules of a contest, then we are not participating in that contest.

However, as we can see in Euthydemus, the rules of necessity are not themselves necessary for refutation. That the Sophists can argue and win without using a logic of necessity means that the Aristotelian logic of necessity is not itself necessary in Aristotle’s sense. Put differently, the rules of argumentation are not necessary for argument, but nor are they arbitrary, per se, but rather they are arbitrated. That is, the rules of necessity laid out by Aristotle are not inherent and obvious, natural and divinely ordained, but the result of human work, human constraints, and human enforcement. The

sophists and Socrates respect the rules for the force they provide, the direction and limitation that allows the force to work, but also work around them when necessary, and only change tactics when such working is called out.lvii

While there’s no necessity at work in an ad hominem argument, it can still effect persuasion, and quite effectively too. Absent formalized constraints, without a referee or judge to dictate and enforce boundaries, using the ad hominem, as all the interlocutors in the dialogue do, whether directly or indirectly, has no value beyond what it accomplishes and no risk beyond what it cannot accomplish. Once we move beyond the rules of logic, we turn to a logic of practical force: it doesn’t matter that ad hominem is illogical, what matters is what it can do. In this case, we might be doing students a disservice in rejecting fallacious argument or demonizing it in moral terms. Instead, we might teach students how these rules work, why they might be useful, and how to respond when someone doesn’t use these rules, when the institutions that establish, espouse, and enforce these rules cannot be relied upon. Put differently, we must account for the Spartan Critique of Elean Pankration.

II. The Spartan Critique and the Rules of Agonistic Logic

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the warlike Spartans were fierce competitors in the Pan- Hellenic Games. The combination of civic pride, even a zealous sense of superiority, and a harsh training regimen beginning in infancy made those who survived to adulthood some of the most effective warriors of theirs or any period, as famously described by Herodotus in the battle of Thermopylae. Their investment in physical fitness and ruthless aggression made Spartan athletes extremely successful, especially in the “heavy events,”

which they rightly understood as training for war, as martial arts training in a strict sense. It is said that Spartans even eschewed safety gear when boxing, which “was seen as a method to harden their faces in order to effectively ward off blows” (Arvanitis, The First Mixed Martial Art 90). However, they did not participate in pankration, the closest contest to actual combat, and they declined to do so for two reasons.

Explicitly, the Spartans did not compete in pankration because the rules against biting and eye gouging made the contest too far removed from actual combat. Following rules that are not reflective of reality makes the contest of pankration a poor training model for warriors and even trains them at a disadvantage. Because warfare has no rules, any training for it should also lack such rules, except obeying the trainer, paidotribes,

who backs up etiquette with the harsh strike of a staff. However, other writers and

scholars posit that the Spartans avoided pankration lest a Spartan be defeated in a combat sport by another, “lesser” Greek, and touted their concern for authenticity to obscure this insecurity. If a Spartan lost in an open contest with free and equal rules in the view of their fellow Greeks, then all of Sparta would lose face; their claim to Herculean lineage and the accompanying divine superiority would be tarnished. There’s no reason why these are mutually exclusive, and however much they overlap is as unknown as it is irrelevant. However, the Spartan Critique does provide a powerful opposition to the traditional understanding of and orientation toward rules of engagement.

In war and self-defense on the street, gouging the eyes, biting, attacking the groin or other vulnerable areas is explicitly part of the repertoire people should use because they are extremely effective. Even the largest fighter will still be vulnerable in their soft, squishy bits, and absent other advantages, attacking these weaknesses might mean the

difference between survival and death. While in argumentative terms, we cannot kill with words directly—the judge’s verdict of guilt in capital offenses does not itself kill the defendant, someone else does the deed—we can still cause great psychological and emotional harm to others by likewise violating the integrity of their argumentative bodies, by attacking them as people, rather than their positions as interlocutors. That is, the ad hominem fallacy is not simply outlawed because the person delivering the

argument doesn’t necessarily have any bearing on the truth and logic of it, but because it violates the boundary between the argument and the person delivering it. It goes beyond the bounds of the contest, even though it is immensely effective and perhaps because it is so.

It might not be effective at generating some common ground or creating good will, but goading someone into a misstep, coloring them as villainous and their positions likewise, and making them look bad before a lay audience can certainly be more effective than a logically-informed, mathematically-precise proposition with each specific nuance laid out in detail, which might lead a lay audience to become bored or confused, lacking the necessary experience and knowledge to attend to the fight closely. Certainly, we might see such tactics as dishonest and ill-suited to the ethoi we hope to generate in students, but unless everyone participating in a particular contest knows and believes in the rules of proper argument, and those rules are explicitly and vocally defended, then they don’t matter. Therefore, training students to act only within these rules puts them at risk in future arguments, unpracticed at and vulnerable to tactics that might lead them to defeat.

Even still, this mutual respect and adherence to the coercive foundation is what allows for agonistic logic to function, for victory to bring value and legitimacy.lviii _For

example, in a foot-race, a literal competition and the simplest form of agōn, the distance, course, and start time are the same for everyone, so that what would lead to victory might be the same for all participants.lix Put simply, the fastest person wins the race, and the

best runner wins the most races. These superlative labels are the result of the contest, the value of the particular capacity the rules are designed to measure and establish: the best runner is simply the one who wins the most races, and the fastest person is the one who covers the most distance in the shortest time. Anything that muddles this measurement, any extraneous factors that might disrupt the fastest runner from winning the race, troubles the entire agonistic assemblage and must be excluded; rules against false starts, leaving the course, or harassing fellow competitors, all ensure that only speed achieves success. Without these limitations, whoever gets to the finish first, by whatever means, is the victor, although they might not have been the fastest runner. In such situations, we might then cry foul and claim that the victor didn’t “really win” and they aren’t “really” the fastest, but absent the strict establishment, enforcement, and acceptance of those rules such cries would simply be those of a sore loser. However, agonistic rhetoric is not based on the competition but the fight.

As in the foot race, rules in fighting are established to make sure that the one who wins is the “best fighter,” that “fighting skill” is the measurement of victory. However, “fighting skill” is a far more complicated and nebulous quality than “speed,” and therefore that much more complicated to measure and establish through contest, which makes the rules defining victory, and mutual adherence to them, that much more

important. In argumentative terms, Patricia Roberts-Miller suggests this as a “minimalist notion of rationality,” one in which “a line of argument is rational if the person using it applies it consistently, that is, if it is not rejected in other places in the argument and if s/he considers it a valid line of argument when used by an opposition” (Deliberate Conflict 214). A fighter would only use moves the same way throughout the fight, and only if they would accept such moves being used against them. In such cases, when mutually-agreed boundaries are established and respected, the best argument will be successful and the best fighter will win. But like in the foot race, the winner of the fight might not be the “best fighter” in terms of the outlined rules, but simply the one who wins by whatever means, and this risk is exacerbated by the manifold complexities that make up “fighting skill.” Furthermore, because a “real fight” has no rules beyond survival, as the Spartans note, part of “fighting skill” includes winning when the rules of contestation are not present, respected, or relied upon. This contingency and complexity means that in any given fight, not only is the evaluation of “fighting skill” at stake, but the terms of engagement in the contest are as well. That is, whenever we fight, we don’t just fight about something, even if just deciding whose “fighting skill” is more or better, but we also always fight about fighting.

In argumentative terms, whenever we engage in an argument outside of a formalized debate attended (to) by people knowledgeable about and experienced in the