(Originally written January 9, 2007 in Book 12)
Plato's view of the Soul
- immortal
- difficult (if not impossible) to articulate
- three parts of the soul
[mind] 1) is disciplined
[passions] 2) is unruly and passionate
[will] 3) Controls both mind and passions
Types of Souls:
1) Philosopher King - musical/loving nature
2) Lawful king or warlike ruler
3) Politician, businessman, financier
4) Hard-working gymnast or physician
5) Prophet or mystic or religious man
6) Poet or imitative artist
7) Craftsmen
8) Sophist
9) Tyrant
Good Rhetoric
- Makes a systematic division of words
- Discourse constructed like a living creature, parts in proper order
- there is a good rhetoric
- good knowledge on the subject
- influencing the mind (soul) by means of words
Bad Rhetoric
- Makes probability than truth
- Unorganized
- There is bad rhetoric
- Study belief of masses in order to persuade them to do evil
- "make everything out to believe everything else"
- Critique someone else
Good Rhetorician
- Good rhetoricians have innate qualities
- Knowledge of the audience, how the mind works and what they are likely to believe
- more scientific describe, types of discourse, kinds of speech to create belief in souls and why
-has experience
- contending with words
-purpose: influence men's souls and implant convictions and virtues
Bad Rhetorician
- uses the precursors of rhetoric and posits them as rhetoric
-only knows the formulas but has no experience
Process
- isolating definition
-discerning nature of soul
- discovering appropriate speech for each nature
- arranging the discourse
- find the truth
- use of dialectic
- style - propriety and impropriety
Order of Speech (format)
1) Preamble
2) Exposition
A. Direct Evidence
B. Indirect Evidence
C. Probabilities
D. Proof
E. Supplementary proof
3) Recapitulation
Rhetoric vs. Dialectic
Acquiring Knowledge
- Dialectic - forming questions and responses
- Question asking and getting answers
- Experience
- Mental processing
- compare with previous knowledge
- translate meaning/ summarize
- agree or disagree
- expound upon ideas
Face-to-face dialogues advantages
- Interact
- Clarify
- Stimulates mind
- Flexible and different directions
- Memory
- See understanding
- audience choice
- Instant response to criticism
- Anticipates criticism
- Use multiple means of integers to discern truth
Text advantages
- Longevity
- Mass audience
- Discern falsity
- Uniform, not changing over years
- Allows for commentaries
- Review work before publication
- Communication between language barriers
- Allows for greater amount of text
- Sources
How much content knowledge does one need to speak on?
Plato - a very strong (probably too strong) amount of content.
Gorgias (480-375 BC)
- Ambassador from Leontini (Sicily)
- Arrived in Athens in 427 BC
- Studied under Tisias and Empedocles
- Attracted huge crowds
- He was honored for his original contributions to rhetoric in his lifetime
-His style was criticized as bombastic post-death
-Known for metaphor, paradox and schemata
-Gorgias' Helen is an epideictic speech that he delivered to attract students
- His philosophy of rhetoric - "persuasion is a powerful force that can bewitch and deceive the unwary"
Helen
Structure:
1) Prooeminion
2) Narration
3) Proposition
4) Proof
5) Epilogue
Things should be praised if praiseworthy; things unworthy ought to be blamed.
The function of a speaker is twofold:
1) Prove the needful rightly
2) Disprove the wrongly spoken
He claims Helen is not guilty because either
1) Fate's will
2) Gods' wishes
3) Necessity's decrees
4) was forced
5) Was seduced
6) was induced by love
to do what she did.
If the gods are responsible for Helen's actions it is because the weaker is ruled and driven by the stronger. God is stronger than men in force and in wisdom and in other ways.
If she was forced it is Paris who should be hated. Helen should be pitied.
If she was seduced by words it isn't her fault because words possess godlike powers.
"Divine sweetness transmitted through words is inductive of pleasure, reductive of pain" (35).
If she was seduced by words then, "the persuader, as user of force, did wrong; the persuaded, forced by speech is unreasonably blamed" (35).
If she was persuaded to leave by Paris then she was most unfortunate, but did no wrong.
"We see not what we wish but what each of us has experienced" (36).
Love is a god that prevails over the divine power of the gods or love is human disease, an ignorance of the soul. If Helen left out of love she is blameless.
Isocrates (436-338 BC)
- Influenced by his teachers: Prodicus and Gorgias
-Acquaintance of Socrates
- Suffered from extreme shyness and never delivered any of his speeches in public
- Worked as a logographer
-Believed that oratory should build patriotism
-Opened a school of rhetoric in Athens around 393 BC.
-The school was an immediate success. Famous students include Plato's nephew Speusippos, the general Timotheus, historians Theopompos and Ephors, Attic orators Lycurgus, Isaeus and Hypereides
- Taught oratory, composition, history, citizenship, culture and morality
Against the Sophists
Education of oratory or any other intelligence sharpening of natural, innate qualities.
Education " cannot fully fashion men who are without natural aptitude into good debaters or writers" (45).
Justice cannot be taught and lived out by depraved natures.
Antidosis
The nature of man is twofold
1) Physical
2) Mental (more valuable)
Physical training is to fit the body and philosophy is to train the mind.
Philosophy and physical training are parallel and complementary.
Philosophers and gymnasts can be taught and instructed to be great of mind or great of body so long as they possess a natural aptitude.
If one is to succeed in anything they must:
1) Possess a natural aptitude for what they have elected to do
2) Submit to training
3) Master the knowledge of their field
4) Must become versed and practiced in the use and application of their art.
Isocrates maintains that natural ability is the most important part of teaching or learning an art.
Speeches should (in defense) either
1) change the views of the accusers
2) prove their slanderers false
The Sophist have been accused of
1) Sham, no kind of education can improve the ability to speak or capacity for handling affairs (these are natural abilities)
2) They become corrupted when they gain power, "they scheme to get other people's property" (49)
Isocrates denies truth in either accusations
"All knowledge yields itself up to us only after great effort on our part, and we are by no means all equally capable of working out in practice what we learn" (49).
Isocrates disproves sophists that we have all seen men trained by sophists to become competent champions and able teachers.
Isocrates makes a distinction between educators of young men and those who merely pretend to educate.
The "sophist reaps his finest and his largest reword when his pupils prove to be honorable and intelligent and highly esteemed by their fellow-citizens"
It is in the best interest of the Sophists not to become corrupted by their power.
Isocrates asks what objects make people do evil. He answers that people do what they do for three desires of men: pleasure, gain and honor
Isocrates urges men to treat the art of discourse as all other arts, fairly.
Rhetoric conflates the bad and extols the good. It educates the ignorant and appraises the wise. "The power to speak well is taken as the surest index of a sound understanding" (56).
Persuasion rests on the character of the speaker, thus it is unwise for the Sophist to be poor of character. "The Stronger a man's desire to persuade his hearers, the more zealously will he strive to be honorable and to have esteem of his fellow citizens" (56).
It does not help a sophist to corrupt his pupils, in fact it is detrimental to their desires.
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