Throughout the course of the semester, we have seen many different definitions of rhetoric and how it has impacted our daily lives for over 2500 years. The most important takeaway I have about rhetoric is that it has become less truthful over time as it is used in more social-political settings. Rhetoric has the ability to persuade anyone if used correctly. This can be both a positive and negative impact of rhetoric as it can lead people to either a more clear understanding of the truth or to a false claim. Furthermore, I believe that rhetoric has become less and less truthful in social-political settings because people see the power it has to influence others.
Plato had warned us long ago that rhetoric would lead people to believe false claims and that it is only beneficial if it is used to bring us to a 100% truth. We can see early examples of rhetoric being used to influence anyone in Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen, in which her transforms the public opinion of Helen from a villain to a victim. In this case, Gorgias was proving a point that he was able to influence anyone with the ‘magic’ of rhetoric. This example, and others alike, could have shown people that they too can use rhetoric to persuade others.
Rhetoric began to become less truthful as it is used in more social-political settings, such as the ancient Athenian Democracy. In this setting we see rhetoric used, by members of the government, to persuade others to believe a certain claim regardless of if it is true or proven. We can see how rhetoric becomes less truthful during this time period because of how Aristotle defines how rhetoric should be used. Aristotle, in his On Rhetoric, says that the use of rhetoric should be based off of a certain knowledge of a subject. Furthermore, he states that there is no such thing as a complete truth and that we can only come so close to the truth. This led people to think that their opinion was truthful in nature because there was no such thing as a complete truth and that they were truthful if their opinion or idea was close to the truth. This would eventually pave the way for the use of rhetoric to intentionally lead others to false claims.
Today we see rhetoric almost everywhere as we are all connected through social media. Much of the rhetoric used today in social media is neither 100% truthful nor based off of a strong foundation of knowledge in a certain field. For example, there are many fake and biased news sources on websites like Facebook that create posts to persuade people to believe in what they do. Furthermore, many users that have personal accounts publish their own thoughts in order to persuade their friends to believe in what they do. Many of these users that post things on their personal accounts do not have a great foundation of knowledge in these subjects, and they are simply stating their opinion as a fact. If you were to log on to your Facebook page during election season, you would see many of your friends or acquaintances posting their opinion, but stating it as if it were a fact! Crazy enough, many people believe them because of either how much attention the post has gotten or because the post was stated as a fact. As a society, we are not skeptical enough and need to question the things that are states (practice disoi logoi).
On the other hand, however, there are many people that use social media to spread their knowledge and teach people. Since almost everyone in our Western civilization is connected through more than one means of social media, it is a great way for people to share what they know. People can use this to actually bring a lot of attention to huge issues that the mainstream media is not reporting. Overall, I believe that rhetoric is less truthful than it should be and that we should listen to what Aristotle tells us. We should only use rhetoric to persuade when we have a substantial amount of knowledge on a certain issue.
A concern that I have now about rhetoric is whether or not it will become even less truthful than it is now. Over the past 2500 years we have seen the element of truth decline in rhetoric. Although rhetoric in social media can be used beneficially, there have been more and more instances of it being used maliciously. Unless we, as a culture, become more skeptical and question the rhetoric that we see every day the rhetoric of the future does not look very good for bringing out the truth.