The Eagle and the Sparrow

Hugh Nibley once said, and I am quoting from memory: "Twenty sparrows do not make an eagle." He followed that up by noting that if you consult twenty people, each of whom knows a little about Latin or mathematics, it is not the same as consulting one person who knows a great deal about those subjects.I was thinking about this the other day after someone dismissed an argument simply because Nibley had made it.

(1) In the first place, the dismissal was simply a classic case of what is commonly--but wrongly--called an ad hominem argument. You dismiss an argument because of who made it rather than any intrinsic part of the argument itself. The irony was that the individual who thus dismissed an argument made by Nibley affects to decry ad hominem arguments. When people do this, their intellectual hypocrisy makes it difficult to take them seriously.

(2) But more than that, the dismissal was simply unjust.

I knew Nibley pretty well, for someone who was my grandfather's age. I took six classes from him. I spent years not only reading just about everything he wrote, but actually looking up thousands of his footnotes. I edited two volumes in his collected works, and source checked on all but three of those volumes. I also had many personal encounters with him over a twenty year time period. I learned many of the same languages he did. I have seen first hand his strengths and weakness both as a person and as a scholar.

Nibley was a genius. He had a first-rate mind, excellent training, was also a brilliant writer, and had a tremendous amount of integrity. His intellectual abilities and capacities far exceeded and still exceed those of most of his detractors present and past. Nibley sometimes made mistakes that his detractors would never make because one would have to be a genius to make them. There are arguments that Nibley made that make me cringe, but those are the exception, not the rule. In most cases Nibley asked the right questions and answered them to the best of anyone's ability at the time. In most cases when Nibley's work is out of date it is because new information has come forth that Nibley, and in most case everyone else, was unaware of. The questions that he asked, however, were almost always still the pertinent ones. I respect that. I expect that the same cannot be said of Nibley's detractors. In most cases I have not found their work to be anywhere near as accurate, as intelligent, as insightful, and as well-written as Nibley's was. Their critiques sound a lot like the chirping of sparrows at an eagle.

(3) Last week I also stumbled across some notes about a controversy in psychology research a few years ago. Some scholars were arguing that people who were incompetent could not recognize how incompetent they were. The find was hotly debated at the time, and I have not followed up more recently. The authors of the original study noted that both they and their critics were adamant about the incorrectness of each others' arguments and could not understand how the other side could not realize that they were wrong but ironically, only one group's theory could account for the fact.

Some of Nibley's critics strike me as much more incompetent than Nibley. Perhaps I am just not competent to tell.

For me, if Nibley made an argument that is reason to consider it seriously and judge it on its merits. For people to dismiss an argument on the grounds that Nibley made it could arguably be a reason not to take them seriously.

Nibley on Korihor

This passage from Nibley created something of a stir for a short time when Nibley first uttered it but has since been largely forgotten:

Korihor, a contemporary of Alma, rallied the people of property to free themselves from the oppressive restraints of sacral government, "foolish performances," he said, by which "this people bind themselves . . . that they might not lift up their heads" (Alma 30:23). Thanks to the government, said he, people "durst not enjoy their rights and privileges." in particular, "they durst not make use of that which was their own lest they should offend their priests" (Alma 30:27-28); his appeal was for freedom from restraints "laid down by ancient priests" (Alma 30:23), freedom to follow the natural order in which "every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime" (Alma 30:17). The bottom line was the common-sense creed, "when a man was dead, that was the end thereof," all accounts settled, all charges dropped, all moral objections canceled. This was good news to beautiful people," causing them to lift up their heads in wickedness," enjoying unlimited criminal and sexual license, "leading away . . . women, and also men, to commit whoredoms" (Alma 30:18)--a plain but discreet way of hinting at rampant homosexuality. (CWHN 8:509-10.)

A Little More Nibley

The main BYU University Conference starts today. It is time, on this serious occasion, to remember this quote from Hugh Nibley:

In an apocryphal but very ancient account, Peter, in the course of a debate with Simon Magus, points out that people either take themselves or the gospel very seriously--nobody ever takes both seriously. At our Utah universities we take ourselves very seriously, but the suppression of free and open discussion of things academic, while it provides needed security to those who have reason to shun honest scrutiny, can only contribute in the long run to mounting jealousy, suspicion, and tension. There is a point beyond which reticence ceases to be prudence and makes only for misunderstanding." (Hugh Nibley, "Nobody to Blame," CWHN 17:126.)

A Little Nibley

As BYU's University Conference starts today (for some), let us pause to remember something Hugh Nibley wrote on the subject over half a century ago, which is unsurprisingly still relevant:

I have discussed the supplanting of the gospel by the teaching of the schools (in ancient times, that is) in a number of studies, but to show what I mean, one example close to home will suffice. On 23 March 1955, I engaged in a public discussion in Salt Lake with my friend Sterling McMurrin. I closed my rather feeble address with the words, "At this point (i.e., after we have discovered the depths of our own ignorance) we can begin the study of the gospel; there is no further need for waiting around until 'history' can make up its mind." Immediately Sterling (for it was his turn to speak) arose and introduced his own discourse by saying, "now we will hear the real gospel." This brought a round of applause from the university crowd--did they realize what it meant? It was a frank declaration that the celebrations of the learned men and not the utterances of the prophets comprise the gospel. This has been the credo of the Christian schoolmen since the days of Clement of Alexandria: the university--Christian, Moslem, Jewish, or pagan--has its own religion, and the basic tenet of that religion is the denial of revelation." (Hugh Nibley, "Nobody to Blame," CWHN 17: 128-29.)

Nibley on Public Relations

In reviewing what Nibley wrote about rhetoric, it is interesting to note that he considers the modern equivalent of rhetoric to be public relations:

In its vagueness and all-pervasiveness the term rhetoric came very close to our own "business," or better, "public relations." (CWHN 10: 255.)

Anciently, societies used rhetoric "to justify, condone, and confirm its vices." (CWHN 10:260.) They had nothing but praise for "a cynical admiration for the clever ruse, the lie that was not a lie." (CWHN 10:257.) After all, "a rhetor will not hesitate to speak the truth when it serves his purpose" (CWHN 10: 252). Above all ancient public relations people demonstrated a "refusal to accept responsibility" (CWHN 10:257), all the while "they confounded issues and destroyed philosophy." (CWHN 10:265.). It was filled with people of low character and morals: "the worst people took to rhetoric like ducks to water" (CWHN 10:253). These low people played "a hard and sordid game of exploitation and survival played without scruples and without loyalties." (CWHN 10:250.) They had turned "from the honest search for truth to the business of cultivating appearances. (CWHN 10:245-46).

This is a pretty harsh critique and was published in 1956, reflecting Nibley's views earlier in his career. Did time mellow his views at all?

A quarter of a century later, in 1981, Nibley began the penultimate book he wrote with the following observation:

To discredit Joseph Smith, or anyone else, in the eyes of an uninformed public is only too easy, requiring but the observance of a few established routines in the art of public relations. That gets us nowhere honestly. (CWHN 14:1.)

Nibley here equates public relations with dishonesty and notes that it is used to discredit the prophets.

The next year, Nibley was using the same image of dishonest public relations:

John, like the early Hebrew prophets, liked the particular emphasis on the fact that Babylon has built up great power by deception. The word that Brigham Young likes to use is decoy: These things “decoy … [our] minds” away from the real values of things. They are irresistible. The merchants do research: they know what we'll take and what we'll not. They know what will sell, and they know the line that nobody can resist. This is the very real thing we are being tempted by. By these deceptions—through public relations, the skill of advertising, and people who devote their lives to nothing else than trying to entice—the devil tries to entice and tempt us, “by sorceries and witchcraft that deceive the nations” (cf. Revelation 18:23). (CWHN 9:330-331.)

For Nibley, public relations was in league with the devil.

Almost a decade later, in 1989, Nibley used the same trope:

The theme of Shakespeare's tragedy [Macbeth] is fraud and deception as a means of obtaining power and control; in the closing lines Macbeth admits that he has been taken in: “I … begin to doubt the equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth,” i.e., the double-talk of the promoter that put him on top, the rhetoric of Madison Avenue: “And be these juggling fiends no more believed that palter with us in a double sense; that keep the word of promise to our ear, and break it to our hope!” The worst thing about the “filthy air” is that it turns out to be a smoke-screen; Macbeth is led on and put off from day to day until he is done in. It is a smooth, white-collar scam such as Macbeth half suspected from the beginning: “But 'tis strange; And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray 's In deepest consequence.” What kind of honest trifles? Such pleasant bits as those pacifying public relations assurances, “We are not monsters or ogres, we are people just like you. We love our families just like you, we go to church too!” Or to quote the scriptures, “I am no devil” (2 Nephi 28:22). (CWHN 13:61-62)

In 1991 when Nibley addressed the Church Communications Department, he did not water down his opinion:

Ancient rhetoric . . . destroyed ancient society. Defined as “the art of pleasing the many,” it followed public taste and therefore always pushed downhill—rhetoric cannot lose: It is the ever victoriosa loquacitas, but the civilization that accommodates and adapts itself like a chameleon cannot win. Rhetoric is not to be cured of its vices by any technical or electronic refinements, for those vices are its very nature—the healthy cancer cells are the ones that kill, and rhetoric is a cancer. An example of this skillfully adaptive parasite is the manner in which commercials follow styles. Many of the big ones now have strong religious undertones. Recent commentators have noted the strong leaning toward spirits, ghosts, revenants, postdeath experiences, and the like in popular movies. In advertising the trend has been to sensitivity—a lengthy illustrating of heroic and climatic moments in the life of Winston Churchill culminating in celebrating those same sterling qualities of character animating the Southern Bell Telephone Company. We are now told that life simply cannot get better than following up some minor achievement, such as making a sale or winning a game or contemplating the future of one's children as successful doctors with a visit to McDonalds. And the point is that they really think that is the best that life has to offer. Babies are exploited shamelessly, with a crooning, husky, cracked, affectionate, slightly choked-up voice of an elderly gent to sell the product, which can be a truck, or a tire, or a power mower—somehow the baby shames you into buying it. The key word is message. What all these pitch-men have for the world is a message. It necessarily works by the principle of perverted values, Aristotle's doctrine of the mountain reflected in the lake; the less necessary an object is, the more it must be praised to sell it so that those who watch thousands of ads end up with a complete reversion of values, the most important things in life being deodorants, manageable hair, a sexy car, things to eat and drink, and, above all, the achievement of an absolutely perfect body without which the individual can never cease to be a reliable customer. This is what the Book of Mormon calls being carnally minded, the mainstay of all public relations. If you are perfect, then carefree is the operative word. To be youthful, beautiful, and at the beach where nobody does anything and nobody wears anything has become the common denominator. It is also the perfect Freudian escape to be free from the anxiety of age and death. What we want is a Paradise, and that is what Madison Avenue is out to give us. (CWHN 13:391-92)

So here public relations is a cancer that leads to being carnally minded.

He had used stronger words in 1976:

Let us recall that “making things appear what they really are not” is Plato's definition of Rhetoric: making false appear true and true appear false by the skillful use of words. With the recognition of the profession of Rhetoric of Public Relations as a legitimate activity, any civilization proclaims its moral bankruptcy. (CWHN 13:360-61.)

So for Nibley, adopting public relations was a proclamation of moral bankruptcy. The gospel did not need public relations.

So for Nibley's whole career, he warned against public relations. He did not think they were necessary and depicted them as evil. The organization that adopted them was inviting a cancer into the body and proclaiming its moral bankruptcy. This was even more apparent in transcripts of his classes.

Such were Nibley's considered opinions based on conscientious observations of over half a century and reading thousands of pages of ancient documents.

Nibley, however, was an academic and an outsider to the profession. There are other ways of looking at the profession.

[To be continued]

Nibley on Rhetoric XVIII

Nibley on modern rhetoricians:

In its vagueness and all-pervasiveness the term rhetoric came very close to our own "business," or better, "public relations." No one could say exactly what it was, yet no one had the slightest doubt about its real nature or its absolutely predominant place in the world. The rhetorician was a general promoter, ingratiating himself with powerful individuals or groups to run off with a handsome cut of the profits from clever deals engineered by himself, handling other people's affairs in the law courts, guiding public opinion, generally flattering and running errands for the great---the god Mercury, the winged messenger and factotum with the money bags. Hermes the thief, with the ready tongue and winning manners shows how established the type really is. The rhetor is "a pushing, driving, money-chasing operator," says Lucian, "who leaves any sense of decency, propriety, moderation, and shame at home when he goes to work." "I do not make money," Dio protests, "I am not interested in crooked deals. . . . I do not promote things in the market place---for I am not a rhetor!" . . .  On the lower level, the cities swarmed with fast-talking operators who could always get it for you wholesale and whose skill at making something super-colossal out of nothing was excelled only by their know-how in the art of smearing. (Hugh Nibley, "Vicotriosa Loquacitas," CWHN 10:255-56.)

Nibley on Rhetoric XVII

Nibley on the independence of rhetors:

Rhetoric, according to Augustine, is the art which, animated by necessity rather than "purity," scatters to the populace from its overflowing bosom (the Roman equivalent of pockets) an abundance of delights, thus leading them to comply with his interests. You can get what you want our of people if only you give them what they want---without question and without hesitation. The rhetor, say Philo, is the slave of a thousand masters, the public is a whore, and he is her minion and her lap-dog. (Hugh Nibley, "Vicotriosa Loquacitas," CWHN 10:259.

Someone Agrees with Nibley

Over half a century ago, Hugh Nibley wrote:

What, then, should you and I do? Return, I say, to the program of the School of the Prophets and the University of Nauvoo, which was the acquisition of basic knowledge (especially languages) for the avowed purpose of aiding the spreading of the gospel. (CWHN 17:138).

That was Nibley's recommendation for a university education. Fast forward half a century to Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at Stanford, reviewing the recent report on the state of humanities at Harvard:

It is also necessary to study other civilizations, but to do this seriously would require universities, instead of scuttling requirements, to institute substantial foreign language requirements. Nothing is so revealing of multiculturalism’s status as a political program rather than a research paradigm than the indifference of its proponents to language study. The humanities should proudly tout the benefits​—​in commercial life, diplomacy, and national security​—​that come from mastering foreign languages.

I am not certain that Nibley and Berkowitz would agree on much if anything politically, but they both agree on this point.

Nibley on Rhetoric XVI

Nibley on why we should pay attention to rhetoric:

Pointing out the dangers and defects of rhetoric does not change the habits of rhetoricians. The young Hippocrates, in the beginning of the Protagoras, blushes when he admits to Socrates that he is taking up rhetoric --- but that does not change his plans. Like the passions and appetites it feeds on, rhetoric is one of the great constants in human history. Because it is a constant, nothing can tell us better the direction in which a civilization is moving or how far it is along the way. Like the residue of certain radioactive substances, rhetoric, leaving an unmistakable mark on all that it touches, may yet prove to be the surest guide to the history of our own times. (Hugh Nibley, "Victoriosa Loquacitas," CWHN 10:274.)

What does it say about us that one of the top entertainment shows is about rhetors?

Nibley on Rhetoric XV

Nibley on rhetoric and the fate of the Roman Empire:

The effect of this sort of thing [rhetoric] on serious thought and learning can be imagined, but it does not need to be: the whole history of the Empire is there to illustrate it and to confirm in every detail all the charges that Plato had with unerring insight brought against rhetoric in the beginning. Hippias, Gorgias, Polus, Prodicus, and the other great Sophists "achieved wonderful reputations," Dio Chrysostom recalls, "and acquired great wealth in public activities from cities, dynasts, kings, and private individuals. . . . They spoke a great deal, but were sadly lacking in intelligence," and they confounded issues and destroyed philosophy. It was in their interest to do so, for they confessed that public ignorance was their greatest ally. (Hugh Nibley, "Victoriosa Loquacitas," CWHN 10:265.)

Nibley on Rhetoric XIV

Nibley on why rhetoric is bad for society:

The landslide of vulgarization once started could not be stopped. Good men were intimidated and banished from the cities by mobs who could always count on finding orators that would never contradict them, society reserving its richest rewards for those who could justify, condone, and confirm its vices. (Hugh Nibley, "Vicotoriosa Loquacitas," CWHN 10:260.)

Nibley on Rhetoric XIII

Nibley on rhetoric and corruption:

It was always remembered that there was a bad as well as a good side to rhetoric; but what was not recognized was a fatal Gresham's Law by which bad rhetoric, art, and education, like bad money, will always force the better product out of circulation. There can be no truce between the two, since each is a standing rebuke to the other. (Hugh Nibley, "Victoriosa Loquacitas," CWHN 10:257-58.)

Nibley on Rhetoric XII

Nibley notes that rhetors refuse to accept responsibility:

This refusal to accept responsibility, which reaches its perfection in the great Christian orators of the fourth century, went hand in hand with a cynical admiration for the clever ruse, the lie that was not a lie. (Hugh Nibley, "Victoriosa Loquacitas," CWHN 10:257.)

Nibley on Rhetoric XI

Nibley discusses why rhetors tend from mediocre to terrible:

The orator must stoop to conquer, and a quick and frightening rebuke awaits him is he does not stoop low enough. For all his toadying, Dio was banished for being unsociable, Libanius had to clear himself of the same terrible charge, and Apuleius was investigated time and again because he was suspected of being an introvert. Go easy on philosophy, Cicero advises, don't talk over people's heads---they don't like orators who make them feel stupid; best to keep your books at home for private leisure. He might have cited the case of Hermodorus, who was banished from the illustrious city of Ephesus because he was guilty of excelling in something: "If he must excel," they said, "let him go and excel over somebody else!"

Nibley on Rhetoric X

Nibley on the paradox of rhetoric:

Rhetoric is the art of perfection itself; if it is not perfect, it is nothing, for nothing is sadder than a great attempt that falls short. There is no excuse for stupidity here, let alone immorality; rhetoric should be left strictly alone by those not properly endowed for it. But who is properly endowed? To that question the experts threw up their hands in despair and declared in a single voice that the perfect orator simply does not exist. The choice was between perfection and a fiasco --- and perfection was out of the question. (Hugh Nibley, "Victoriosa Loquacitas," CWHN 10:252-53.)

Nibley on Rhetoric IX

More of Nibley's comments on rhetoric:

The final plea of the orators in defense of their art was the protest that unscrupulous and unqualified men had misrepresented it inside the profession and out. Rhetoric is a terrible instrument in the hands of the wrong man, we are assured; it is often necessary to defend things like murder which, though bad in themselves, are under certain circumstances innocent and praiseworthy --- the orator can make them seem good or bad at will, and so the most important qualification for every orator to have is honest intent, without which "nothing is more pernicious in public or private affairs than eloquence." So we get the constant refrain that the orator must be a paragon of virtues; his is the most difficult and demanding of all arts requiring qualities of character and brain that are virtually non-existent in this imperfect world. (Hugh Nibley, "Victoriosa Loquacitas," CWHN 10:252.)

Nibley on Rhetoric VIII

Nibley discussing Cicero's complaint about philosophers:

"It [philosophical style] is chaste and upright," he [Cicero] concludes, "an uncorrupted virgin, so to speak." And what was his rhetoric by contrast? (Hugh Nibley, "Victoriosa Loquacitas," CWHN 10:252.)

Nibley on Rhetoric VII

Cicero's very proper assurance that a rhetor will not hesitate to speak the truth when it serves his purpose is more damaging than any long catalogue of charges brought against rhetoric by its enemies. (Hugh Nibley, "Victoriosa Loquacitas," CWHN 10: 252.)

Ouch.

Nibley on Rhetoric VI

If nothing is rarer than a good orator, nothing is commoner than bad ones. The rewards of rhetoric are tremendous; are such rewards to be left lying about unclaimed until the perfect orator comes along? As might be expected, the worst people took to rhetoric like ducks to water. For rhetoric preached the gospel of success. (Hugh Nibley, "Victoriosa Loquacitas," CWHN 10:253).

Nibley on Rhetoric V

Nibley on the honesty of rhetoric:

"We must allow the rhetor to make false, daring, and somewhat misleading and captious statements," Gellius smugly observes. . . .

Such statements as that, meant to be a defense of the profession but actually a rather damaging indictment of rhetoric, proclaim the uneasiness that is never far from the surface of ancient treatises on oratory, the awareness that there is something basically wrong about the thing. No one denied, of course, that rhetoric could be abused --- "cannot any good thing be misused?" asks Anthony, but the question was whether it was bad as such, by nature. That was a disturbing question which could hardly be asked of an honest trade, and the rhetoricians hurt their case by protesting too much, constantly calling attention to the billowing smoke by insisting that the fire was not a serious one. (Hugh Nibley, "Victoriosa Loquacitas," CWHN 10:250-51.)