So far this semester, I have learned that rhetoric has more than one definition. It can be persuasive or deceptive and based on some of those that we have learned about, not many of them liked rhetoric. When studying for the exam, I thoroughly enjoyed the review. I found it to be quite helpful and would recommend people that did not attend to take the time to go in the future. However, I felt like it was the time frame was too short. Maybe the review could be done over the span of two days. The review at 8pm would be fine, but maybe we could have another one at 11:15 during the day. Also, I was definitely surprised that we had the opportunity to revise our midterm exam. It gives extra time for the student to add to their response and give the answer that the teacher is looking for outside of the exam time frame.   Another thing I found to be helpful was the date the paper was initially given out. It gave ample amount of time to complete the paper and go in for a personal meeting to see how I could change my paper. I also found those personal meetings to be very helpful, the feedback was great and I think it helped me to expand on my paper a lot more than what I originally had when I first began to write it. I think our class discussions have been very effective. They allow the class to generate their own ideas and opinions about what we read for homework and allow us to find a common ground on what it was exactly that we read. So far, I have enjoyed the class and like how things have been run so far.

Rhetorical Traditions Paper-2dqykfw

Montana White                                                                Help Received: Plato on Philosophy and Rhetoric

October 1, 2017                                                                      Montana C. White

It is not surprising that Plato does not reconcile himself with Rhetoric because his work is viewed as a, rejection of rhetoric, sophistic curriculum, and the Athenian society (pg 113). His work was quite difficult to understand and interpret, especially since it could be taken many different ways. With that being said Plato’s work cannot be labeled as rhetorical,etc.  Plato’s philosophy was based off of rationalism, which relies on reason rather than senses to understand the world and dealing with complex abstracts like truth, justice, virtue and knowledge (pg 108). He cannot understand that people are controlled by emotion (pg 113). Emotion plays a key part in rhetoric by persuading others and he felt that was not a strong enough reason to be able to persuade in comparison to reason and logic. Reason and logic provide strong facts, whereas emotion provides no evidence whatsoever. This is surprising because his central concern in Protagoras, Gorgias, and Phaedrus were rhetoric and the sophisits (pg 111). Although his dialogues were constructed to defend old traditions which led Cole to believe that he was using a “persuasive force” (pg 113), Plato rejects rhetoric and the sophist way, even though his work would say otherwise.