Since the nature of speech is in fact to direct the soul, whoever intends to be a rhetorician must know the many kinds of soul there are. Discuss.

Authors Avatar

Sana Merchant

Part A

  1. Since the nature of speech is in fact to direct the soul, whoever intends to be a rhetorician must know the many kinds of soul there are.

This quote is by Plato’s Phaedrus. Here, he characterizes the soul through rhetoric and poetry. He states that rhetoric and poetry shape the soul, and therefore, whoever claims to be a poet or rhetorician, must understand the different natures of the soul. To Plato, the soul is comprised of three different parts: rational, irrational appetite, and the spirited parts of the soul. This tripartite is analogous to the charioteer, the good horse and the bad horse, in The Republic. He breaks the soul down in this manner to prescribe a just city, in a broader sense of the work. Socrates further says that to be a good rhetorician, one must understand the subject matter, which includes knowledge of the soul as it is “the agent being acted upon (271a). Socrates claims that to know the subject matter, on must fully understand his/her audience, which includes understanding the different kinds of souls there are. Finally, the rhetorician must be able to discern the character of the audience he is addressing. This includes fully grasping the audience’s quality of soul to make influential arguments. By addressing the different souls, the reader can see that Plato believes that what we see in the world is not really what is there; He believes in a transcendental world. Appealing to the soul, allows Plato to construct an ideal of the rational individual and appeal to the psyche throughout the Phaedrus.

Join now!

Part B

  1. I therefore must have stronger arguments, ere I am convinced that compassion and mirth in the same subject destroy each other and in the meantime cannot but conclude, to the honor of our nation, that we have invented, increased and perfected a more pleasant way of writing for the sage, than was ever known to the ancients or moderns of any nation, which is tragicomedy.

This quote is from John Dryden’s An Essay of Dramatic Poesy. Throughout the essay, Dryden advocates that drama must be unified and use proper speech, that violence should not be ...

This is a preview of the whole essay