Re: The humility topos

["Robert J. MacG. Dawson" <rdawson@cs.smu.ca>]

On 6/30/2010 11:07 PM, Chris Mortensen wrote:
> Dear Categories/Robert Dawson,
> What was called the humility topos (below) was called Socratic Irony for a
> couple of millennia. Postmodernism has made an industry of re-badging old ideas
> and representing them as new discoveries.

 	My superficial (and this is an admission not an example) research
suggests that they are not quite the same thing.  In particular,
Socratic irony is transparent;  "humility topos" was used (for instance)
to describe the practice in mediaeval theological writings of assuming
an attitude of humility that was, if not always genuine, at least
intended to appear so (though the phrase can be used in other ways as
well).  "Perhaps I'm being very stupid, but isn't that term meant to be
negative?" is probably Socratic irony; when the Pope styles himself
"servant of the servants of God" or a Victorian gentleman signed a
letter begging to remain "your humble and obedient servant", that is
humility topos. (Or, for a more subtle modern example, when a conference
speaker cites others' papers by name and his own under an initial.)

 	Traditional rhetorical terms tend to have (unnecessarily?) subtle
distinctions - perhaps in the Aristotelian tradition. One could get by
very nicely using the same word for "simile" and "metaphor" provided
everybody else understood this.

 	Robert


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