How far was Plato's perception of rhetoric a consistent one?

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How far was Plato’s perception of rhetoric a consistent one?

        It is clear just how pervasive Rhetoric is in our world when we listen to the heads of our government being examined at Prime Minister’s question time, and the situation has changed little since the fifth century BC. Plato speaks of the people who ‘shout and clap their approval or disapproval of whatever is proposed or done, till the rocks and the whole place re-echo’ a description we would recognise instantly. When Wilfred Owen, writes of ‘the old lie’, he draws attention to the idea pushed by the politicians of the first world war, ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’. Some two millennia earlier, Pericles had claimed that ‘Fortunate indeed are they who draw for their lot a death so glorious’. The situations are the same separated only by time. The impact is just as great: we can be persuaded into war by nothing more than a suspect dossier, as was the case in the past. We have not grown any wiser as to the impact of rhetoric on our lives.

The words in Pericles’ funeral oration ‘we throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners.’ bring to mind the ‘American dream’. The Statue of Liberty claims to accept ‘Your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’ whilst immigrants can struggle to find anything other than menial employment. Athens was no different. For all Pericles’ words of welcome to foreigners, he introduced double descent laws, so that only Athenians had power in the city.

        It was not surprising that, with the arrival of democracy, rhetoric was considered an indispensable art in the education of the young men of Athens so that they could better themselves through their performance in the assembly. Athenian man became as interested in the art of public speaking as in sports and other leisure activities. For example, in Aristophanes Wasps, Procleon has blind faith in the court system, but even fashionable Anticleon knows the workings of rhetoric well enough to turn it into a game.

        Plato’s cynical views are still shared by many. He appears to view rhetoric as a sophistic device to gain one’s own ends. He does not find any rhetorical success a triumph as ‘it doesn’t involve expertise… the general term I use to refer to it is flattery’ .Plato was proud of his distrust of the sophists and rhetoric, describing it as a ‘kind of persuasion which is designed to produce conviction, but not to educate people, about matters of right and wrong’ .

        The lack of attention which rhetoric pays to truth seems be the main concern for Plato, as rhetoric was a deceit used by the sophists and gave rise to arguments such as that of Protagoras’ ‘man is the measure of all things’. This was abhorrent to Plato who feared the moral relativism which would result. For Plato, truth had to be something immutable and knowable. This was the catalyst to the formation of his metaphysical theory of forms. The truth, being a part of the form of the good, was constant and accessible only through the world of forms. This, in turn, is accessible only through the mind, in which the perfect idea of each object and concept can be found. Ultimately, the form of the good is the source of the philosopher’s understanding, and the goal of his endeavours. It ‘gives the object of knowledge their truth, and the knower’s mind the power of knowing’. The man who can access this world is he who, to use Plato’s simile, has escaped from the cave, representative of the shadow world, ignorance, and appearance, and has come out into the sun, where truth, knowledge and reality are seen for what they really are. Those who have seen by the light of the sun have a duty to return to the cave and enlighten their fellow prisoners of the world beyond. The prisoners are chained in such a way as to allow them to see only the back wall of the cave, to look at shadows created by a fire. The prisoners believe this to be reality, but is in fact only a shadow of real life. Since the prisoners have never experienced anything but the shadows, they assume their fellow, the Philosopher King, to be mad. However, it is only the philosopher king who has true knowledge.

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        The idea of a Philosopher having true knowledge would at first surprise his audience, as the philosophers of the time were the sophists. However, Plato takes it on himself to redefine the Philosopher, making him one who has a ‘passion for wisdom’. The philosopher is one who sees reality, whilst the rhetorician, who aims only to affect beliefs, deals only in illusions.

The importance of the Philosopher kings becomes clear in that Plato recognises that ‘While in company with the body, the soul cannot have pure knowledge’. The world of forms being metaphysical, it cannot truly be accessed. The training ...

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