In Plato’s Gorgias, Gorgias delimits rhetoric to law courts, political meetings and speeches, but Socrates, as Kauffman points out, “extends the art . . . to the entire domain of influential discourse” (103). Kauffman’s point is that Plato saw a certain kind of rhetoric as useful to the state for the way it could influence “the masses” to behave, even think, in a certain way. But Socrates’ (Plato’s) point in the Gorgias seems to be to dilute rhetoric so thoroughly that it becomes meaningless. But does he succeed?
Of course Gorgias has to go along with what Socrates says, because Plato is pulling the strings. But when Socrates points out that all teachers, no matter what their subject, engage in rhetoric to persuade their students, wouldn’t Gorgias use that as a point for rhetoric? Yes, teachers of math and medicine persuade, but wouldn’t their teaching be that much better if they were trained rhetors? If rhetoric is concerned with discourse, as Gorgias says, can’t anyone who’s business involves discourse be improved by it? Socrates, it seems, is trying to prove that Gorgias’ trade is too broadly defined to be useful, and that, because it can claim no skill that it doesn’t share with another discipline, it cannot really be a discipline at all. I think Socrates merely succeeds in showing that rhetoric is applicable to many other skills, and this, to me, is proof of its value.
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I find it impossible to read the Gorgias as if it actually were Socrates et al having a conversation. I get what Plato was trying to do--make a statement about his own ideas by turning his characters into puppets as you mention. As a consequence, Gorgias' responses don't seem logical to me.
At times I wonder if I will ever get a clear picture of the development of rhetoric (or of logic), or if I'm just going to be stuck with these quibbling men!
I have to agree with Dan. To me, seeing that rhetoric is applicable to many fields does not lessen its value, but increases it, but this could be a result of modern thinking. In the age of the Internet value is often associated with the ease in which something can be connected to something else. Objects or concepts that cannot adapt or integrate in today�s world are quickly abandoned. I suppose that I can see Socrates' (Plato's) point however when looking at the thinking of the time. As I understand it, the scholars of the time were extremely concerned with the definition and distillation of knowledge into nuggets of truth. The very point of the Gorgais was to attempt to pin down the exact nature of rhetoric. Therefore, stating that rhetoric was not an independent field confined to one purpose was similar to stating that rhetoric could not be distilled to a single definition. A big problem for many Greek scholars. People still wrestle with the exact definition of rhetoric, but regardless of its definition�or the lack thereof�rhetoric has been proven useful despite Socrates� (Plato�s) criticism.
As I began reading Gorgias, I wished that I could see the dialogue acted out on stage. I would like to see the body language, for body language can often reveal more information than the words themselves - for example, the speaker's conflicted or true feelings about what he is saying. Is one speaker simply baiting another with his statement? Is he merely playing with words? Or is he passionate about what he is saying?
Unfortunately, I'm not sure anyone would truly know how to produce this dialogue as a drama because there are no stage directions for the characters. And, as we have mentioned in class, there may be nuances lost in the translation, especially since ancient Greek is no longer spoken. Further, each producer would have his/her own interpretation of the work.
I’ll pick up with the question about Plato pushing rhetoric to meaninglessness in the Gorgias. And I’ll start with what I think is a relevant connection between one of Kauffman’s points and a similar one made by Socrates. Kauffman argues that Plato thought of “two broad types of knowledge: doxa, or opinion resulting from sense data, and episteme, knowledge of the permanent and the real, knowledge of the forms” (104).
Socrates, I think, speaks to these types, to doxa and episteme when he asks in the Gorgias, “shall we then assume two sorts of persuasion,—one which is the source of belief without knowledge, as the other is of knowledge?” (10).
For this argument, I’ll call doxa belief and episteme knowledge. Both of which can lead to conviction within the listener, and hopefully for the rhetorician, persuasion of the audience. I do not think that Plato is pushing rhetoric toward meaninglessness. Rather, I think that he makes the point here that the rhetor depends upon his audience showing up with a certain amount of conviction. In this conviction lay the seeds of persuasion.
What is meaningless is not the art of rhetoric, but what is meaningless is how the audience arrives at a persuasive level of conviction. And arriving here can depend either on belief based on opinion from sense data. And I read “sense data” as anything heard or seen firsthand, which respectively, can be derived from rumors or personal experience, or arriving by Plato’s other knowledge of the real, what I think of as empirical evidence.
Rather than rhetoric having no meaning, I think what I’m trying to say is that how the audience comes to knowledge—and whether this knowledge is true or not—about anything is irrelevant to the rhetor, so long as they have a belief, by doxa or episteme. If persuasion happens, then rhetoric is meaningful, regardless of the type or validity of knowledge in the listener.
In response to the comments about Plato in general, and specifically to Gerard's comment, "What is meaningless is not the art of rhetoric, but what is meaningless is how the audience arrives at a persuasive level of conviction"...Plato's dialogues, though they assume the outward form of dialectic, we must remember are actually pure rhetoric. A dialogue composed by Plato to persuade an audience is categorically no different than a speech composed and delivered by Gorgias to persuade an audience. I would venture so far as to say that it even qualifies as being a form of the "flattery" that Plato has Socrates despise in the Gorgias, manipulating the audience by playing to a kind of self-congratulative appreciation for the wittiness of Plato's Socrates. A Platonic dialogue differs from a Sophistic oration to the degree of its insidious subtlety: whereas the Sophists were forthright about their intentions to use tekhne to persuade, Plato pretends as if he is above such, then employs nothing but art to make his point. (Note that when he makes his most significant points is when he resorts to mythos and allegories).
Gerard's points about doxa and episteme are key here, though: Plato feels justified in his manipulative methods because he is epistemically empowered as an initiate.
At risk of severely misreading the post by Dan (as well as the *Gorgias* itself), I would like to try and clarify a point.
To me, it seems that Socrates critiques Gorgias' view of rhetoric due to its groundlessness-it has no means to explain itself as an art. This criticism can be seen in the dialogue concerning those who are carpenters, musicians, doctors, etc. who have learned to practice and pass on knowledge of an art (*techne*) to others according to a certain methodology (460b). Rhetoric--as Gorgias tries to explain it in 450b lacks such an occupational context and limit in that it is concerned with speeches. Socrates detests this dearth of a boundary due to the equivocal nature of both speech and belief (hence, Kauffman's recognition of a sort of police state in the _Republic_ where communication of all types is profoundly constrained and conditioned). To me, Socrates/Plato would only accept a certain mode of dialogue applicable to an acknowledged trade or profession. Its usefulness for the worker's labor would determine its value. A freer speech would lack definition and context, and would be prohibited.
One of the lines that jumped out at me in the Gorgias was: "When the rhetorician is more persuasive than the physician, the ignorant is more persuasive with the ignorant than he who has knowledge?"
The idea of rhetoric not being a techne in and of itself is an understandable argument. Rhetoric needs to be grounded in something. If it isn't, what exactly will the rhetor be persuading people to? In the initial post on this string, Dcryer says, "Yes, teachers of math and medicine persuade, but wouldn’t their teaching be that much better if they were trained rhetors?"
If, conversely, the rhetor is not trained in the subject he/she is trying to persuade the audience into agreeing to, he/she will not be able to convince someone who is well versed on the subject. As the initial quote I wrote indicates, only those ignorant of the context can be persuaded by one who is also ignorant of the context. For example, if I am a rhetor, persuasive and well spoken, trying to persuade a person to take a math class, however I have no understanding of mathematics itself, what will my argument be based in? When I am trying to convince someone who does understand math, they will be able to ask questions about the subject itself that I will not be able to answer, and therefore see no point in attending the class I am promoting. If I am persuading someone who does not know the subject matter, they will not be able to ask a question about the subject matter, therefore my responses would not be able to be scrutinized.
So, rhetoric needs grounding, but it is no less important than the subject it is grounded in. If, again we use the Math Class as an example, and our teacher cannot convince anyone to stay, we have no class.
Gerard defined doxa as belief and episteme as knowledge, but I understood them a little differently. What I saw was doxa as practical knowledge and episteme as more foundational knowledge, a fundamental understanding about the nature of the world, or at least the nature of humanity. It's ironic that Plato pushes rhetoric into the domain of doxa when the sophists' original intention was to understand how language influences knowledge. That seems like a pretty epistemic pursuit to me.
Robby, as I read Gorgias, it also occurred to me that Plato was using rhetoric on his audience while he did his best to marginalize it. I liked what you said about his subtlety, "A Platonic dialogue differs from a Sophistic oration to the degree of its insidious subtlety: whereas the Sophists were forthright about their intentions to use tekhne to persuade, Plato pretends as if he is above such, then employs nothing but art to make his point." Is Plato playing the philosopher king here? If so, he is allowed (by his own rules anyway) to deceive us in order to convince us that his interpretation of things is, as Dan mentions in the Kauffman post, Truth with a capital T.
As I read through this string of posts I kept thinking about the value of persuassion. If a math teacher needs persuassion to influence or teach his/her students would we categorize that as honest or immoral. Shouldn't we be teaching students with the idea of passing knowledge, not with the concept of persuading them to believe the same way as the instructor or teacher? Sorry a random thought!!
I am just going to jump in now. The question of whether or not studying rhetoric makes a person "just" comes up again in the Gorgias. Gorgias seems to believe that a rhetorician is "just" because he is a rhetorician. However, it is plain by Socartes questions, that he does not believe that. He questions Gorgias about how a rhetorician can create belief about the "just and unjust" without any instruction about justness. A person can persuade another with little knowledge about a particular topic provided the listener is equally as ignorant. This would seem to be the antithesis of "just." There is nothing just about hoodwinking somebody just because it is possible. It seems to me that Plato is arguing for the importance of rhetoric and knowledge that one without the other is either ineffective(knowlege without rhetoric) or dangerous(rhetoric without knowledge). There must be both for an effective free society. If a rhetorician has no knowledge of the topic is attempting to be persuasive about he is misuing rhetoric, but the antidote to such misuse would be the audience does have the knowledge. Gorgias talks for a long time about not blaming the teacher for the misuse of skills by the student. However, it is clear from what is said in the dialog that rhetoric is powerful, so if a student boxer misuses his skills, one person may get injured. But, if a student rhetorician misuses his skills, how many will be injured? The entire society? Shouldn't someone be held accountable? Wouldn't that be just?
Good points, all. I must say I don't know what to make of it. I agree with Dan that it would seem obvious that rhetoric applies to many other fields. I thought that might be the direction Plato was going in first part of the Gorgias excerpt, but no... It seemed to me that Socrates was playing the role of a trade union rep, that he might clarify the professional role of the rhetor in society. But then he turned in to someone like my ex-husband and his friends, obnoxious high-school debaters, too smart-assed for their own good (sorry, I'm flashing back). They were always pulling the crappy little syllogistic trick of twisting your words around, for no purpose whatsoever (!) except to make other people look stupid. Maybe the whole dialogue is some kind of commercial one-upmanship technique. Maybe Socrates' goal was to attract students just by making their current teachers look like idiots. But then, what was Plato thinking? What was his purpose? Just to make fun of Gorgias. Because Plato is an ass. Gorgias would have kicked his butt in a real debate; I'd hold the Encomium up to the Dialogues any day, but then I'm a Sophist through and through. Gorgias could devastate Plato's reverence of episteme and Truth with one sentence from the Encomium: ...we see not what we wish but what each of us has experienced" (15). It's ALL doxa, baby!
Sometimes I think the contemporary field of rhetoric suffers with an identity crisis. And with good reason, because I wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked me “what’s rhetoric?” And despite my sympathy toward the identity crisis, I also want to resist arguments about what classical rhetoric is and how it developed. I’m thinking of Dsrtrosy’s post here, and I sympathize with her frustration with Gorgias’s illogical comments, and at the same time, I am less concerned with defining what rhetoric is and how it came to be.
Otherwise, this is my fourth post, and my ideas on the Gorigias are now spread thin—I don’t know what else to say on the subject. I disagree with Socrates when he says that “the whole of which is rhetoric is a part is not an art at all, but the habit of a bold and ready wit, which knows how to manage mankind: this habit I sum up under the word ‘flattery’” (17). I think wit can be so bold and ready as to approach an artistic quality. I think flattery and even lying—sometimes these two are the same aren’t they?—takes an artist, a speaker who is essentially a great actor. This reminds me of a favorite line of George Costanza’s from Seinfeld: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”
Reading Gorgias by Plato outloud yesterday seemed to help with the confusion I felt when reading it. I'm glad too that others in class expressed their idea that though on the surface the dialogue seemed to be dialectic in nature, it quickly felt contrived and like more 'rhetoric' in nature. I also felt confused between the 'big' and 'little' rhetoric mixed messages that were being given. First Socrates gets Gorgias to admit that rhetoric is indeed the 'big' rhetoric- including all discourse like mathematics and arts and medicine- however when asked how that made a Rhetorician special and different from the other areas that included the use of rhetoric Gorgias is unable to come up with a definition.
My response to this was confusion, as well as a chuckle and more confusion. When the founders of rhetoric are having trouble defining or agreeing with the definition of rhetoric what are we to do- the new scholars of rhetoric? Sarah and I discussed this a bit after class yesterday. One part of that is 'can't we learn rhetoric in any field' why be in the English dept and study rhetoric, when we can get the same information (albeit in parts) from studying a math, or science or art?' What makes this discipline special? And Sarah argued that the we can learn to communicate better or represent ourselves better in our chosen field if we study rhetoric first. Meaning that I could communicate my ideas in dance more effectively if I study rhetoric in conjunction with my chosen 'art.' Though I agree with that I fear just learning the artifice and not gaining a deeper understanding of the art. Too, I question if my own dance teachers, are only teaching the artifice and they themselves do not have a deeper meaning. I didn't see how we can distinguish the nature of 'big' and the 'little' especially in the application of rhetoric in the study of the arts according to Plato. Maybe I'm missing it thought!
To respond to jmz's comment, the reason Plato and Socrates will not accept what Gorgias might have to say about art is that they have already set up the only acceptable definition of art as being one that is allied to permanent categories (such as the forms of the cave allegory.) This is really problematic for sophistic rhetoric, which is built on the assumption that those permanent categories do not exist. So there's not so much a meeting of the minds here as much as there is a categorical misunderstanding on both sides.
Plato and Socrates' objections to persuasion without a framework (categorized as doxa, in my reading) are quite valid, but the objection refuses to recognize the framework implicit in Gorgias' rhetoric, namely that the business of morality (which I take Socrates and Plato to mean by framework; and I do not think that the analogies involving carpenters and the like are the ones that are best suited to what, after reading Gorgias, Phaedrus and The Republic, Socrates is after) in sophistic rhetoric is the problem of the rhetor. As such, yes, it is quite possible to be an obnoxious little debate team star (I was married to one of those, too; they're mostly just self-impressed), but it becomes quickly clear to an audience with any kind of training, formal or just a good ear for argument, that the rhetoric in question is without organizing principals.
I have no doubt that Gorgias would have noticed and objected to such, as it takes the practices of rhetoric and makes of them an incomplete argument. Say what you like about the sophists, they were quite capable of recognizing... er... bull leavings... as Socrates fancies himself to be. (If you can get past the self-congratulation and false modesty he shrouds himself in.) Gorgias, in my reading, has no quarrel with knowledge, or at least not the quarrel Socrates puts in his mouth in the Gorgias; he is just careful to try and allow prospective students to make their own decisions. While this can very quickly be problematic in terms of usage, to my mind it is the far more moral choice because it forces personal responsibility and choice onto the student, rather than allowing them the intellectual laziness of not deciding what moral premises are appropriate to themselves. The lack of categorical morality is NOT the lack of morality, it is only the reluctance to legislate it.
And if you've ever read the Republic, you can quickly see the impersonal drudgery that legislating morality quickly and *logically* descends into. I'm all for a meritocracy, but the total rule in matters from the imminently practical, like where to build a house and how long the workday should be, to the more spiritual, like what to believe and how to act, are decisions that are best made personally, as are the detrimental or positive effects best had personally.
I forgot to add this. If Socrates is really concerned about the spiritual growth of his students (the Phaedrus and Gorgias) and the efficient functionality of societies (the Republic again, sorry), then why is he so quick to tell them how to think? In my experience, whenever you allow someone else to think for you, the resulting intellectual laziness results in great advantage being accrued for people willing to manipulate and capable of it. It creates societies full of individuals who cannot grow.
I realize the inherent contempt in both Gorgias and Socrates for 'lesser men' is endemic, not just to them, but to people in general, but I am more comfortable for the sake of everyone's ability to retain their dignity in a democratized form of what Gorgias is selling. If nothing else, because it allows the individual to choose, even if it's the wrong choice.
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