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.