Causey, AC

10/16/18

HR: Notes and Textbook

Mid Term Review:

• Key Words:

• • Sophists: These are the experts of rhetoric. They are the people that the people deem worthy to teach the ways of rhetoric to the people. Some of these people wrote speeches, taught persuasions, and even some sold their speeches for people to use in defense. They say rhetoric as an important power/part of their society. They believed the people should be taught and know how to use rhetoric as it is a way to influence other people. Their focus was the far left of the spectrum of rhetoric as they did not focus on the truth, rather the art of persuasion. Plato did not agree with these people as they neglected the truth in their art.
  • Techne: Is a form of discipline, form of study, or an art. Plato argued that rhetoric is not valid as it does not have techne or a study of a true form/discipline. He believed there was nothing real to what they were studying. The Sophists believed that rhetoric itself was a true form of art. Techne always has a product to it, the study produces something.
• Identification:
  • Plato: Plato was a philosopher with a negative connotation towards rhetoric. He saw the power of rhetoric and the effects it had to persuade people without any form of facts or logic. In his dialogue Gorgias, he attacked the sophists and their appraisal of rhetoric. Plato was afraid of a world where people based their decisions and opinions of a form of persuasion and not facts. Feared a justice without true knowledge.
  • Callicles: Callicles had a very different approach than most philosophers. He was a hard advocate for “natural justice” meaning the strong will dominate the weak. He believed that justice should be based off a natural background, a food-chain-like system where the strong is on top and the weak is on the bottom. Defined morality as desire (hedone) rather than the more common term of virtue (arete).
• Short Essay Question
  • Define and explain this statement, “Rhetoric is an antistrophos to dialectic.”
    • This statement is saying that rhetoric and dialectic work/derive from common knowledge. They act as counterparts, both regard testing arguments. Rhetoric is about defending an argument while dialectic is about testing that argument. They are an extension of each other that work together for that common purpose.