The Conflict of Platonic and Ciceronian Ethoi in the Seduction of Eve in Paradise Lost
I. Introduction
In Satan’s seduction of Eve, Milton augments the rhetorical situation of the original Genesis account, as seen in Gen.3:1-7. There, the serpent’s rhetorical end of speaking to the woman is unclear, and his rhetorical means simply involve refuting once the woman’s original statement that death would come to her if she ate of the fruit forbidden by God. Very little deliberation on the woman’s part takes place, which makes problematic the woman’s culpability in her fall. In augmenting this basic rhetorical situation, Milton introduces an ethical dynamic which Genesis perhaps takes as given.
By Book 9, wherein the Fall of Man takes place, the reader already knows that the serpent is Satan and the woman is Eve, and their convergence in the garden is a result of contingencies which heretofore were separate: Satan and his angelic cohorts, having failed in their revolt in heaven, desire revenge upon their enemy, God the Father and the Son. God has already created the universe, including human beings, whom He has forbidden to eat of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Satan overhears this interdict in Adam and Eve’s conversation in Book 4, and thus his end of revenge solidifies: He will tempt the human beings, preferably Eve alone, in order to lead them to their destruction. This will serve as his revenge while also gaining him glory in Hell and power over Earth. With immoral ends, Satan approaches Eve, who is ignorant of what Satan knows: that there is a difference between being good and appearing good. In other words, Satan’s seduction of Eve becomes a conflict between different concepts of ethos. Satan’s duplicitous ethos, which is Ciceronian (or, perhaps, a sophistic abuse of the Ciceronian), takes advantage of Eve’s simplistic and trusting ethos, which is Platonic, and thereby Satan’s ethos contaminates Eve’s ethos such that she convinces herself of Satan’s trustworthiness. Thus, Eve, as much as Satan, becomes culpable in her fall. But before delving into the complex dynamic of Satan’s seduction of Eve, let us briefly go over the two kinds of ethoi as demonstrated by Eve and Satan: Platonic and (by way of Aristotle) and Ciceronian.
II. The Platonic Concept of Ethos
In his article, “Ethos,” James Baumlin gives a good definition of the Platonic ethos:
[I]n Platonic fashion, ethos defines the space where language and truth meet and are made incarnate with the individual. A Platonic definition of ethos, then, is premised on the moral and, ultimately, theological inseparability of the speaker – agent from the speech act. ….[T]ruth must be incarnate within the individual, and a person’s language must express (or, first, discover) this truth. ….Thus rhetoric becomes a psychogogein or leading of the soul to truth. (264)
Baumlin, of course, is commenting upon Socrates’ statement in Gorgias: “For someone to be a genuine rhetorician, he does in fact have to be a moral person and to understand morality” (508c). In other words, the Platonic ethos is the rhetor’s essence. The division between essence and appearance should not (and, in an ideal world, does not) exist such that, for example, a rhetor persuading an audience to do a just act must, by definition, also be just. In his article, “Trust, Ethos, Transference: Plato and the Problem of Rhetorical Method,” Robert Brooke posits this Platonic identity of essence and appearance as the basis of logocentrism, which is “a system of thought that believes that language can and should be a transparent medium through which we can, with care, glimpse the mind of God, the Ultimate Truth” (160). As William Riggs points out,
Eve’s disposition to perceive similarities in the objects of her attention seems an altogether natural response to the question for what a newly awakened intelligence might do… a mind drawn to organizations based on similarity, reluctant to dwell on difference, eager to see the world as one. This impulse… extends in Eve to an ignored distinction between perceiver and perceived, subject and object. (369-70)
Simply put, in her unfallen state, Eve’s belief is radically logocentric – there is no room for duplicity or equivocation because seeming is being.
III. The Ciceronian Concept of Ethos, by Way of Aristotle
In contrast, Aristotle introduces the split between seeming and being in ethos in his On Rhetoric:
There are three reasons why speakers themselves are persuasive; for there are three things we trust other than logical demonstrations. These are practical wisdom [phronesis] and virtue [arete] and good will [eunoia]…. Therefore, a person seeming to have all these qualities is necessarily persuasive to the hearers.
(2.1.1378a.5-6)
Aristotle does not say “a person having” but “a person seeming to have”. The word “seeming” creates – or perhaps describes – the essence / appearance split in the Aristotelian ethical appeal. Thus, Aristotelian rhetors must be aware of maintaining this appearance of wisdom, virtue, and good will in their speeches. As Edward Corbett and Robert Connors put it, “The whole discourse must maintain the ‘image’ that the speaker or writer seeks to establish. The ethical appeal…must be pervasive throughout the discourse” (73). Baumlin further stresses the disconnection between essence and appearance: “[W]e must remember that Aristotle is here describing the effects of ethos as an artistic proof and, thus, as an effect arising from within the speech itself, separate from any considerations of the speaker’s prior reputation or true moral character” (266). This latter concern, that ethos must arise only from the speech itself and not from the speaker’s prior reputation, becomes the subtle difference between Aristotelian and Ciceronian ethoi.
While Aristotelian ethos limits the ethical appeal within the speech and not in the speaker’s prior deeds, Ciceronian ethos includes the speaker’s prior reputation as a means in the ethical appeal. In Cicero’s On the Ideal Orator, Antonius, one of the interlocutors, states the importance of prior reputation in the creation of the Ciceronian ethos:
[T]he character, the customs, the deeds, and the life, both of those who do the pleading and of those whose behalf they plead, make a very important contribution to winning a case. ….Now people’s minds are won over by a man’s prestige, his accomplishments, and the reputation he has acquired by his way of life. (2.182)
In fact, as Richard Enos and Karen Rossi Schnakenberg point out, “On occasion… the manifestation of character comes not only from what is argued but from the age and experience of the individual [i.e., the rhetor]” (199). Thus, the actual – or the seemingly actual – experiences and deeds of the rhetor, which also include his appearance, are important parts of the ethical appeal, as Cicero’s interlocutor Crassus states in section 1.131.
But Ciceronian ethos adopts and, as Enos and Schnakenberg puts it, “Latinizes” Aristotelian ethos. After all, states James May, “Cicero himself asserts that he has written De Oratore ‘in Aristotelian fashion’” (3). The split between essence and appearance remains intact such that, says Cicero’s Crassus,
If… there should ever appear someone who can, in the manner of Aristotle, speak on both sides of an issue about all subjects… in every case unfold two opposing speeches, or who argues… against every proposition that is put forward… then he shall be the true, the perfect, the one and only orator. (3.80)
This “true, perfect, one and only orator” of Ciceronian ethos who can argue both sides of the issue is antithetical to the “genuine rhetorician” of Platonic ethos. Even though Crassus states that “if we put the full resources of speech at the disposal of those who lack the virtues, we will certainly not make orators of them, but will put weapons into the hands of madmen” (3.55), nothing in the definition of the perfect Ciceronian orator ensures that such an orator will be necessarily a moral one, which is reminiscent of Plato’s criticism of Gorgian rhetoric. But whereas Plato, in positing his ideal Platonic ethos, can recognize duplicity in non-Platonic ethoi, Eve does not have this knowledge nor his experience; and it is this ignorance which Satan will exploit, for, as Cicero’s Scaevola points out to Crassus, “you appear to intelligent listeners to speak skillfully, to ignorant ones truthfully” (1.44). Scaevola’s comment can also apply to Satan as well; for, as Ronald Cooley states succinctly, “[D]uplicity [is] characteristic of Satan’s discourse” (232).
III. Satan’s Seduction of Eve
Technically, Satan’s seduction of Eve employs a non-verbal appeal, that is, his appearance, and the three Aristotelian verbal appeals of pathos, ethos, and logos. But, as Corbett and Connors stated earlier, ethos, if used, must be maintained throughout the discourse. Therefore, Satan’s duplicitous ethos colors his seduction of Eve from beginning to end. For example, in his appearance, he is not a slithering hideous serpent (of course, how can anything be hideous in the eyes of unfallen humanity?), but a beautiful creature with a “[c]ircular base of rising folds…/…his Head / Crested aloft, and Carbuncle his Eyes; / With burnisht Neck of verdant Gold, erect /…/ Floated redundant: pleasing was his shape, / And lovely” (9.498-504). In other words, this serpent is upright, just like humans and angels, and this upright serpent bows before the feet of Eve and shows forth a “gentle dumb expression” (9.524-28), which is in sharp contrast to his extraordinarily beautiful shape. Satan’s appearance as a beautiful but gentle serpent begins his ethos as a virtuous, wise, and good-willing rhetor. Also, as Wolfgang Rudat declares, “[W]hen the Serpent appears before Eve ‘uncall’d,’ i.e., even without having been called, he is ironically represented as actually more duteous than the other animals referred to” (17), a representation which also strengthens his Ciceronian ethos.
As soon as Eve looks at him, Satan begins his verbal appeals, all colored with the stain of Ciceronian ethos. He introduces himself with an appeal to pathos, i.e., Eve’s feeling of vanity. He comments on her mild look and on her celestial beauty such that she is too beautiful to be seen by only beasts and Adam. It is this speech that Satan first equates Eve with the Gods, calling her “A Goddess” (9.547), and the narrator gives evidence of the power of this pathos by stating that “[i]nto the Heart of Eve his words made way” (9.550). But, as one sees in Eve’s response to Satan, it is not pathos that has effected her but the very fact that a serpent is speaking at all (9.551-65). For Eve, human speech means wisdom, “human sense exprest” (9.554), which also contributes to Satan’s ethos, because Eve’s Platonic concept of ethos prevents her from seeing a talking serpent as an abomination. Instead, Satan is a “miracle” (9.562), i.e., a wise bridge between beast and man, and she trusts him. As Robert Brooke states, “we [the audience] endow people we trust with the projected status of Subject Supposed to Know [i.e., the wise one] whether they merit it or not” (165). This unmerited trust is Eve’s opinion, which Satan knows as an opinion but Eve only knows as truth because, as Riggs states, she sees “the world as mirror or extension of herself” (383). As Kenneth Burke notes in A Rhetoric of Motives, “[T]he rhetorician may have to change an audience’s opinion in one respect, but he can succeed only insofar as he yields to that audience’s opinions in other respects” (56). Satan yields to Eve’s opinion that he is who he says he is, that is, a friend to humanity, thus increasing his chances of seducing Eve to partake of the deadly fruit.
Ethos continues to color even Satan’s use of logos. Although Satan employs various topoi in his logos such that his logos, which runs from lines 571 to 728, seems to be the “meat,” so to speak, of his seduction, the only topos which moves Eve is his personal testimony: “look on mee / Mee who have touch’d and tasted, yet both live / And life more perfet have attain’d than Fate / Meant mee, by vent’ring higher than my Lot” (9.687-90) and “That ye should be as Gods, since I as Man, / Internal Man, is but proportion meet, / I of brute human, yee of human Gods” (9.710-12). This personal testimony greatly contributes to his overall dependence on Ciceronian ethos. In fact, in the midst of his logos, the narrative voice makes obvious the Ciceronian ethos that Satan is creating: “now more bold / The Tempter, but with show of Zeal and Love / To Man, and indignation at his wrong, / New parts puts on, and as to passion mov’d, /…./ As… some Orator renown’d / … / …to some great cause addrest” (9.664-72). The simile stresses that Satan pretends to be a friend to humanity, that his ethos is only in appearance, not essence. But Eve cannot detect the falsity because of her inexperience with deception; her Platonic, unfallen sense of ethos believes that Satan’s ethos must also be Platonic. Thus, his rhetorical conduct of ethos that assuages any sense of wrong in Eve’s character convinces her to eat: “in her ears the sound / Yet rung of his persuasive words, impregn’d / With Reason, to her seeming, and with Truth” (9.736-38). But Eve is not Gorgias’ Helen; and Milton will not release Eve from responsibility for her actions, as seen in Eve’s deliberative speech to herself after Satan leaves but before she decides to act.
IV. Eve’s Seduction of Eve
In augmenting the original Genesis account, Milton gives Eve a deliberative monologue after Satan leaves but before she acts upon Satan’s persuasion. In seeing Eve in this deliberative space, in seeing Eve deliberate, one is reminded that, yes, she has free will. In an insightful comment regarding the deliberative choice of the audience of persuasion, Kenneth Burke declares,
Persuasion involves choice, will; it is directed to a man only insofar as he is free. ….Only insofar as men are potentially free, must the spellbinder seek to persuade them. Insofar as they must do something, rhetoric is unnecessary, its work being done by the nature of things…. (50)
Eve has not been passive in her seduction because she has free will. Ciceronian ethos would not work if she did not have a will to move, to persuade, to deliberate, to choose. State Enos and Schnakenberg, “This [Ciceronian ethos’] entechnic feature requires the audience’s interaction, for it is with the audience that the rhetor both cocreates and shares the meaning and recognition of such acts, which in turn provide ‘proof’ of the rhetor’s character” (204). Since Eve is the cocreator of Satan’s Ciceronian ethos, she is partly responsible for being swayed by his words. Satan’s Ciceronian ethos has indeed contaminated Eve’s ethos, partly because she has contributed to the existence and the validity of Satan’s ethos. As James Baumlin puts it, “[W]hile it is the speaker’s task to display such qualities [of ethos], any judgment as to their effectiveness belongs solely with the audience” (266). Eve has judged Satan’s ethos as effective; after all, she convinces herself of his trustworthiness in her monologue such that she actually trusts Satan’s ethos more than her faith in God: “Author unsuspect, / Friendly to man, far from deceit or guile. What fear I then, rather what to know to fear / Under this ignorance of Good and Evil, / Of God or Death, of Law or Penalty?” (9.771-75). Eve, as much as Satan, has lost her trust in God and thus she, as much as Satan, becomes culpable in her fall.
V. Conclusion
Thus, Milton augments the rhetorical situation of the original Genesis account of the Fall of Man in order to make clear an ethical dynamic which the Genesis account perhaps takes as given: Satan’s seduction of Eve is a conflict between different concepts of ethos. Satan’s duplicitous ethos, which is a sophistic application of Ciceronian ethos, takes advantage of Eve’s simplistic and trusting Platonic ethos. But, paradoxically, fallen Satan’s Ciceronian ethos is ultimately trustworthy because unfallen Eve judges it trustworthy. The main effect of this interrelation of rhetor and audience is Satan’s ethos contaminating Eve’s ethos such that she convinces herself of Satan’s trustworthiness. Consequently, Eve, as well as Satan, is responsible for her decision to break God’s interdict. In re-imagining the seduction of Eve as the conflict of Platonic and Ciceronian ethoi, Milton is able to portray Satan the Arch-Sophist at work while preserving Eve’s – and thus humanity’s – essential free will.
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© 3 December 2001 Rufel F. Ramos