{"id":135,"date":"2004-03-05T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2004-03-05T22:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=135"},"modified":"2021-09-25T17:45:38","modified_gmt":"2021-09-25T23:45:38","slug":"135","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=135","title":{"rendered":"Dissoi Logoi and Flying Ointments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researching the motif of the “flying ointment” in the early modern period for my paper for the Sophia Centre conference on consciousness<\/a>, I had to turn to the Malleus Maleficarum<\/em><\/a>, that lovely book on witch-hunting (and on the general female predisposition to evil) written by two fifteenth-century Dominican monks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Studying the section on “Why Superstition is chiefly found in Women,” I suddenly realized that my recent attention to Classical Rhetoric was paying off. What I might earlier have dismissed as mere wordiness was actually the use of one of those good old techniques of developing argument from the use language itself, such as dissoi logoi<\/em> <\/a>or Aristotle’s “common topic of degree<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Knowing what the monks (trained, no doubt, on Aristotle<\/a> and Quintillian<\/a>) were doing, I found myself more willing to sit back and enjoy their verbal display–honed over hours of preaching out loud, no doubt–despite my disgust with their larger world view.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researching the motif of the “flying ointment” in the early modern period for my paper for the Sophia Centre conference on consciousness, I had to turn to the Malleus Maleficarum, that lovely book on witch-hunting (and on the general female predisposition to evil) written by two fifteenth-century Dominican monks. Studying the section on “Why Superstition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-135","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":953,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=953","url_meta":{"origin":135,"position":0},"title":"His Noodly Appendage","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 16, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"About to leave my hotel room for the off-program Pagan Studies session, I check the AP wire to learn that the most noteworthy session at this year's American Academy of Religion meeting is the one devoted to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.Indeed, the tale of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":870,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=870","url_meta":{"origin":135,"position":1},"title":"Postcards from the Future that Never Was","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"From a German chocolate maker in 1900, postcards showing life in 2000.Thank the gods we never got to the personal flying machines, when you consider how some people drive in just two dimensions.The source is Paleo-Future, a blog that looks into \"the future that never was.\" (Via Making Light.)","rel":"","context":"In \"future\"","block_context":{"text":"future","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=future"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":394,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=394","url_meta":{"origin":135,"position":2},"title":"An anniversaryOne month ago today\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 26, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"An anniversaryOne month ago today I officially contracted Type A Influenza with Executive Option Package. And I still haven't completely overcome it, due partly to my own foolishness. I should have just crawled into bed for the first week of March, but, no, I had to be the hero professor.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":448,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=448","url_meta":{"origin":135,"position":3},"title":"RevisionIt is hard to think\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 3, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"RevisionIt is hard to think about blogging right now. I am halfway through a book re-revision, the outcome of this unfortunate episode. And I am backed up on reading papers for The Pomegranate, but at least that backlog means that papers are coming in. My goal is to finish the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1150,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1150","url_meta":{"origin":135,"position":4},"title":"Back from the Florida Pagan Gathering","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 6, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I have not tried to sleep over all-night drumming since I was a little kid, when my district-ranger father would let the Indians from the Pine Ridge Reservation put up a temporary dance arbor each year on Forest Service land by our house, across from the Indian Health Service hospital\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1165,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1165","url_meta":{"origin":135,"position":5},"title":"Blogging CESNUR, 2","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday's CESNUR plenary session focused on Western esotericism, which is getting more respect as a \"player\" in history.Gordon Melton passed out a fancy diagram of the Western esoteric tradition, including everyone from Swedenborgians to flying saucer religions to Wiccans.Wicca was placed under ritual magic, although at some distance. Fair enough:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12460,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions\/12460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}