Views of Plato & Aristotle on Rhetoric

Plato sets forth his criticism of rhetoric in a Socratic dialogue called Gorgias. In this dialogue he criticizes the rhetorical and political powers of the Sophists in the Greek city-state. Plato argues that it is only the dialectic that allows man to gravitate toward a higher understanding of Ideas and Forms. In Gorgias, he argues that politics so hits upon the care of the soul that citizens can find virtue and happiness only in an Ideal State (Plato, 1997, 802). Therefore, Plato believes the road to truth can only be accessed by the dialectic dialogue, the kind of direct confrontation that occurs among Socrates, Gorgias and Calicles.

In Gorgias, Socrates is willing ôto have a discussionö, thus maintaining that he will not hear a discourse such as that typically given by the Sophists like Gorgias (Plato, 1997, 793). Gorgias is knowledgeable only in the ôcraft of oratoryö, which Socrates thinks is not really a craft at all but a ôlong style of speechmakingö that offe

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cussion that informed men in pursuit of the good will be able to approach that good. From there they can translate the good into civic policies and action. Socrates maintains that rhetorical methods of persuasion are most likely to be full of conviction but little knowledge. Oratory may have the power to move others by shaping opinion, but it does not inform opinion. A dialogue in which the particulars of a case or a situation are explored and identified through trial and error, questions and responses, is the only route to achieving wisdom and knowledge. Such a process, unlike rhetoric, enables one to eliminate what is false and, more importantly, to know what is false and reject it as useless. High-flown rhetoric may persuade, says Socrates, but it does not teach (Plato, 1997, 803). The goal of the dialectic is to teach individuals to arrives at a reasoned conclusion that is much more likely to be truthful than any conclusions produced by rhetoric. In Gorgias, Plato also makes the point that oratory or rhetoric can be little more than flattery, that it can be addressed to (and stir the emotions and not the intellect of) women, slaves, and others and become little more than a shameful public harangue (Plato, 1997, 847-48).
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