Which Are You: Mantic, Sophic, or Sophistic?

In an article I recently read, "Three Shrines: Mantic, Sophic, and Sophistic" in The Ancient State, Hugh Nibley describes three different attitudes or ways of thinking, that characterize civilizations and individuals: the mantic, the sophic, and the sophistic. Understanding these terms and applying them to the thinking, i.e. the language, we hear and read all around us is a useful way to guage how influential we ought to let that thinking be.

According to Nibley, the mantic is a Greek word that simply means "prophetic or inspired, oracular, coming from the other world and not from the resources of the human mind." It means having an expectation of "infinite possibilities," infinite possibilities that are actualities, that is, certainties. Just what those possibilities are is sort of irrelevant; what matters is that they exist and the mantic thinker has the expectation of them. Nibley says that that mantic quality is what makes ancient religions, especially that of the Greeks and the Arabs, the Egyptians and the Jews still so fascinating, still so moving: they "seem to be expecting something," they have a "constant awareness . . . of something beyond this world." He cites Socrates as an example of a mantic:

Socrates ended his life with a speech that emphasized two points: 1) that he had not found in this life what he was looking for, and knew of no one else who had; and 2) that failure had not in the least abated his conviction that what he was looking for was to be found.

In essence Socrates had joined what we now call the Great Debate, the continuous dialogue of mankind in trying to answer the questions Where did I come from? Why am I here? and Where am I going when I die? He expected the answers to come from a source outside himself, a source of inspiration, and did not give up hope even when he felt the answers had not come. Socrates was a mantic. Those of us who believe in modern revelation or inspiration, in a spiritual quality of life, are likewise Mantics.

Sophic, on the other hand, "is the tradition which boasted its cool, critical, objective, naturalistic, and scientific attitude." It is the attitude which says that "no one need look any farther than science for the answers to everything," that by experimenting, one could "discover the secrets of nature and life."

According to Nibley, one can either be mantic or sophic: "the two are totally incompatible," and "[w]hoever accepts the Sophic attitude must abandon the Mantic, and vice versa." He describes what he calls the sophic revolution, a turning from the mantic way of ordering society with the passing of the priest kings to "some other principle of authority for the ordering of society." Nibley argues that certain world upheavals in the early second and first millennia B.C. and culminating in the 6th century B.C. (think of Lehi leaving Jerusalem about that time and fleeing to the Promised Land) left the old sacred order in a shambles and called for a new order of society. This led to the rise of the "heroes of the mind," exemplified by the so-called Seven Sages, who "after giving wise laws and examples to their own cities, wandered free of earthly passions and attachments through the universe, selfless and aloof, . . . seeking only knowledge and carrying with them the healing blessing of true wisdom, . . . having an aura of divinity about them," but being, after all, purely human. Says Nibley, "they were an attempt at compromise between the Mantic and Sophic on the principle that a very high order of human wisdom has something divine about it," but that they represented a "true renunciation of the Mantic." In other words, their wisdom, their "complete humanity" was their glory; they believed that they did not need some sort of supernatural inspiration; that in the end, "a man's only comfort and guide is his own common sense"; that they must "bravely [renounce] the wonders of the Mantic [the prophetic, the inspirational, the supernatural, the revelatory] because they are just too good to be true." Those of us who desire to do good and be wise and rely on reason and intellect alone to do so are Sophic.

Nibley values the Mantic. He argues that the Mantic, not the Sophic, holds the "key for the real order of things, that by "turning from Mantic to Sophic we have tidied up our calculations, but at the price of putting ourselves in a box," and that the Sophics are never "completely reconciled" to their doctrine because though they claim to be done with God, they are "always talking about him; they are seeking the same objective as religion - to explain everything," but with even less a chance of succeeding than the Mantics because they are limited to reason and physical experience alone.

Just a word about the Sophistic. The Sophists took the Sophic to extremes; they were the "popularizers of science and common sense." They "attacked every illusion and every tradition in the name of truth, clarity, objectivity, consistency, and neatness in thinking and speech." They were easy to understand, "flattering to the intellect," and "liberating to the conscience." According to Schmid, as quoted by Nibley, "[i]mplicit in all the Sophist teaching . . . was a basic atheism. . . . Smart people were expected to dismantle and debunk all old beliefs in the name of a fresh, modern, emancipated morality. . . ."

Sounds like the intellectuals, liberals and atheists we hear from today. In my own mind the difference between the Sophics and Sophistics is the level of authenticity and rhetoric of each. Sophic thinkers have their hearts in the right place, I think; they seek to live an authentic life and accomplish all they can by means of reason and common sense but with no real belief in any kind of inspiration from an outside source. They are high on authenticity, low on rhetoric. Our modern day sophists, on the other hand, use rhetoric to make the bad sound good and the wrong seem right, mostly for the sake of expediency and the padding of their pocket books. They are high on rhetoric, low on authenticity. I'm thinking of a recent Newsweek article called "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage" by Lisa Miller. She, I believe, is sophistic - using fancy words and twisted logic to make the wrong seem right. (Note to all: I am not homophobic - I just think sexual relations should remain between man and woman.)

My purpose here is two-fold: first, which I've already covered, to give you some basics about the notions of mantic, sophic, and sophistic, for future discussions and food for thought, that you might consider which of these attitudes you lean toward, and second, to explore whether Nibley is right in saying that Mantic and Sophic, that is the religious and the rational, are necessarily exclusive of each other. By definition, in his view, they are. But in my view, they are not.

In fact, I believe that Reason (note the capital -R-) allows for the mantic, that there is a Reasoning Being that uses the mantic to accomplish certain purposes and that man's reason (note the small -r-) is subordinate to that great Reason. Man's reason, his "cool, critical, objective, naturalistic, and scientific" reason is limited. Truths exist outside man's understanding, outside of his reason. To illustrate, let's consider the law of gravity. Did the law of gravity exist before young Isaac Newton "discovered," that is, recognized it, before he described it? Of course. Was matter made up of atoms and molecules before these elementals were recognized and described? Of course. Is it then possible that certain other laws and phenomenon exist outside the current realm of man's reason? It stands to reason that they do. :)

So it is that revelation is not outside the bounds of Reason; it's just that man's reason in general (as far as it goes right now) does not comprehend the rationality of revelation, of inspiration. . . . unless you are a man, or woman, or girl, or boy, who has experienced inspiration, personal revelation. Then you know of the existence of the mantic, because you will have experienced it, a very sophic idea indeed.

To further illustrate the possible connection between the Mantic and the Sophic (according to my definition rather than Nibley's) consider the writing of C.S. Lewis. A classmate of mine said of Lewis that "he has a mantic heart, but a sophic pen." If you've ever read anything of Lewis's, I think you will agree. He acknowledges the power and necessity of the mantic by using a sophic method. And his sophic writing is powerful because it appeals to the mantic desires in us. I think it shows that the sophic can serve the mantic and vice versa.

Consider also this passage from a very mantic source, The Book of Mormon, found in Alma 32. It is Alma's discourse on faith. He calls upon his reader to exercise his sophic thinking, urging him to "arouse his faculties," and "experiment" on his words, to move beyond faith into knowledge through the experiment (a process very similar to a scientist proving out a theory, yes?). In short, man's reason is limited. I trust to the mantic in me to tap into that great Reason where the possibilities are endless.

Thanks for reading. I welcome your comments and thoughts.

Victoriosa Loquacitas

My mentor at GWC is an intense and enthusiastic fellow named Shane Schulthies (rhymes with "pies"). He has a PhD in Exercise Science from BYU where he also taught for 13 years. He has degrees in Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine as well. (No, he hasn't met Yoko.) He's been influential in the home school movement in Utah and active in government and business. He and his wife have 10 kids, so the man has some experience. He left a tenured position at BYU and a prosperous business to pursue his interest in mentoring and teaching at George Wythe University. He has a way of asking penetrating questions.

At the beginning of a discussion of Hugh Nibley's work The Ancient State, a collection of essays on the influence of ancient life on us moderns, Shane asked, "What can we learn from the ancients?" Seems like a simple question. Keep it in mind.

Just to give you an idea, Nibley's essays carry titles like "The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State" - about how the marked arrow (e.g. marked with the hunter's personal symbol or colors) shows the hunter's possession of his prey and therefore became the basis for establishing empires (my arrow makes possible my conquest and marks my territory); "The Hierocentric State" (I know . . . look it up) - about the "dangerous heritage" of Western civilization, that is, the tendency to see itself as the center of a world empire, a global community; "The Unsolved Loyalty Problem" - about the causes of the fall of Rome in 410 A.D. and maybe of the West in 20-- A.D.

One of my favorites, about the fall of Greece and later Rome, was "Victoriosa Loquacitas" (I know - it sounds like some kind of Harry Potter counter curse; as I understand it, it means "the victory of empty talk"). The full title of Nibley's essay is "Victoriosa Loquacitas: The Rise of Rhetoric and the Decline of Everything Else." Let that sink in a minute.

What is rhetoric? Nibley says that "by far the most common ancient definition of rhetoric" is simply "the power or faculty or skill of persuading," that the "business of rhetoric is to move people, to make an impression," that the orator must know how to "make words ring with conviction" but also use words that will "convince."

In the beginning, the orator's rhetoric, his "learned dialectic," "cunning oratory," and "moving eloquence," combined with his virtuous life, was meant to lift and inspire his audience, but in short order these tools took a "philosophic" turn and became sophistry, that is, rhetoric turned from being a tool used in "the honest search for truth to the business of cultivating appearances"; the successful orator, the sophist, then, was one who "cultivated a new and wonderful art of finding success the easy way. He worked out a technique which enabled him to speak off-hand on any and all subjects, and to prove or disprove any point," to make "the worse appear the better reason," and to earn a great living in the process. In time, the ancient schools of philosophy were taken over by the sophists, and having "gained control of public education," they "completely captivated the public by substituting sweet sounds for ideas; issues gave way to personalities, the most popular speaker being the best entertainer." This turn "made a hash of all values, including . . . the moral order of society - itself."

Ask yourself if any of this sounds familiar. . . .

According to Nibley, the key to this "technique of persuasion is probability." The sophist can "turn any proposition into a probability, which he could in turn build into a certainty by high-powered emotional appeal . . . . the main thing was to establish the probability. The first Sophists showed the way to do this by breaking down the thing that made the Greeks uniquely great, the high moral wall between seeming and being" (remember a certain former U.S. president who said, in regards to a question about whether a certain statement was (is) true, "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is . . . ." In case you hadn't noticed, that moral wall has been breaking down in the U.S. for a long time now). The "'less truth there is in an orator's cause,'" says Cicero (a famous Roman statesman), "'the better the job he must do from the probability angle.'" Clinton was big on probability.

Another key to the success of the sophist is a captive audience "eager to recognize even the feebliest signs of talent with "$50,000 grants for $100 ideas"(or a presidency) because they are bored (e.g. they want a change) and he saves them from boredom. The rhetor satisfies "the insatiable hunger of the people for entertainment." More importantly, the successful rhetor is able to find out what the people want and give it to them, whether it's good or right, or not (financial "rescue" programs, mortgage payments, auto industry bailouts, and a little redistribution of the wealth): "Everything must be accommodated to the common judgement and popular intelligence"; the rhetor must "pick out just those things that appeal to most listeners, and not only delight them, but entertain without ever tiring them." The audience is a mob who can "always count on finding orators that [will] never contradict them, society reserving its richest rewards for those who [can] justify, condone, and confirm its vices."

In ancient Greece and Rome, such rhetoricians included politicians who "'systematically debauched' the people for their votes." The people were supposed to be a check on the excesses of government then, as now, but after an "intensive campaign" from all sides, "debunking established values, confounding commonsense conclusions, and turning on a vast amount of charm, wit, and synthetic sincerety," the rhetoricians have "succeeded in breaking down the general sales resistance" and we have been brought to our current degraded state of society, the erosion of our freedoms, and even the potential loss of Western civilization as we know it (see future blog about The Clash of Civilizations).

What can we learn from the ancients? According to Nibley, rhetoric, or sophistry, was responsible for the fall of Greece and the fall of Rome, each the greatest civilization of its time.
But rhetoric only succeeds if the auditors aren't listening, if we accept that "learning the hard way" is just too hard, that War Craft is just way easier and much more fun than War and Peace, that others are better at doing the thinking, that "correct speech is more important than correct thought"; if we can't get over our insatiable appetite for entertainment and turn our time and industrious attention to enlightenment, to the pursuit of personal knowledge and understanding of the roots of our American order (see Russell Kirk's book The Roots of American Order) then we will get what the Greeks and Romans got - a place in history. And little Muslim children the world over will read in their whitewashed textbooks of the rise and fall of the decadent West.

Wytheian

You might know that for some years I have been an ardent fan of a small liberal arts college in Cedar City called George Wythe College (now George Wythe University, www.gw.edu), named after Thomas Jefferson's friend and mentor in law, a very shrewd and wise old fellow who also taught the likes of Henry Clay, James Monroe, and John Marshall, and was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson considered George Wythe to be his "second father"; together they read law and everything else, from English literary works, to political philosophy, to the ancient classics - George Wythe had a lot to do with the learned and able man that became Thomas Jefferson. And I hope we all know the contributions he made to our relative freedom and prosperity!

When I say ardent fan, I mean the obsessive type that returns again and again to a website to ogle its contents and ponder continually on its principle message, its mission: "To build men and women of virtue, wisdom, diplomacy and courage who inspire greatness in others and move the cause of liberty." If ever there were a time when the cause of liberty needed fresh and fervent adherents, it's now.

I first became acquainted with GWC at a home school conference in 1997 when I was casting about for alternatives to public school for my then 9 year old son Logan. I sat down to hear the keynote speaker, Oliver DeMille, president of GWC, expound on the "Five Pillars of a Classical Education": Classics, Mentors, Field Experience, Simulations, and God. Simply put, he urged a method of teaching and inspiring ourselves and our children that struck a chord of truth in me: a teacher really ought to be a mentor who inspires and guides others to teach themselves and shows them how to do it by reading and studying the great classics (be they written or otherwise) and discussing and applying truths contained therein.

Instead of getting a text book interpretation of Darwin's Origin of Species, read it yourself. Instead of Cliff's notes on War and Peace, read it yourself. You want to know how to be a good businessman? Start a business, study business classics such as The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, find a business mentor. The method applies to any discipline. Art? Study the works of Rembrandt, Picasso, Michelangelo, and others, find yourself a mentor and start painting. Science? Mathematics? Study Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, Aristotle, Archimedes, Thales, Euclid, Copernicus, Babbage, Newton, Descartes, Einstein, Hawking. Political science? Plato, Aristotle, Aurelius, Locke, Montesquieu, Blackstone, Jefferson and company. Music? Find a mentor and study the classics. Be a mentor. Study, do, and teach. Learn as you go. Pay the price in time and effort. Instead of just dreaming about all these famous people, pick up their works and know them, argue with them, understand their contribution to your way of life. Then go out and make your own difference in your sphere of influence. Apply yourself. Don't know where to start? Visit the George Wythe website and check out the book lists. Pick one . . . and start. I did.

This fall I joined a group of about 20 like-minded individuals who came together to study and discuss great influences on modern social and political thought: the Greeks, Romans, Christians, Objectivists, Subjectivists (Existentialists), people like Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Jefferson and other early American political writers, C.S. Lewis, Hugh Nibley, Ayn Rand, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Soren Kierkagaard, Jean Paul Sartre, and Samuel P. Huntington. I'll try to share some of what I learned and thought as I dove into my studies, to satisfy your curiosity about what I'm doing. Hopefully you have a lot of curiosity. Feel free to share the blog or comment on it. Ask questions. Disagree. Poke fun. I'm excited to share what I've been learning and thinking with you.

And if you've read this far, I congratulate you, and thank you.