Not understanding Gorgias on Encomium of Helen?

What was his purpose?What idea about language is he exploiting?Is the idea of language as representation of reality? or:What was his purpose?What idea

What was his purpose?
What idea about language is he exploiting?
Is the idea of language as representation of reality?

or:What was his purpose?What idea about language is he exploiting?Is the idea of language as representation of reality?

or:Gorgias\u2019s Helen is one of the earliest and most enigmatic Greek philosophical texts. An epideoxis, or set-piece speech, it\u2019s a pioneering argument about moral responsibility and a fascinating Sophist argument for the power of language [logos]. In it, Gorgias attempts to show that the beautiful Helen of Troy, whose adultery and flight with Paris was the proximate cause of the Trojan War, should suffer no unjust blame for the war nonetheless. If either fate, the gods, logos, or eros (love) compelled her, she is blameless. Though rigorously argued, it is also playful and self-undermining (it can be either a narrow argument that Helen\u2019s act was irrational and self-destructive, or a claim that no one is ever responsible for anything). This paper attempts to do justice to all these different dimensions.www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199928903.001.0001/acprof-9780199928903-chapter-1This is a typical example of philosophy: lots of multi-syllabic words of murky definitions that are not used in any other field. If you actually look up the definitions you eventually find that the thesis is either meaningless or self contradictory, as the reviewer above points out. Philosophers mostly memorize their special words so they can rattle them off in perfect grammar even when they don't know what they are saying. They get quite ugly if you question them so closely as to expose their academic fraud.Bottom line: just learn the material and act as if the meaning is obvious. Always be courteous to people who correct yoour understanding. Your fellow philosophers will think you are a genius.

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