Whats Rhetoric Good For Platos Gorgias pt 2

What’s Rhetoric Good For? Plato’s Gorgias pt 2

Rhetoric, Instruction: Incompatible? Gorgias, Polus, Callicles Socrates • • Persuading through rhetoric • • Appeal to preconceptions (kolakeia) Shaping of perceptions/opinions Teaching through dialectic • • Appeal to reason (logos) Critiquing of perceptions/opinions https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=3 v. DWWy 4 CMh. E#t=3 m 38 s 2/26/2021 2

Agenda • Recap and Update. . . • Gorgias Issues, Course Issues • Discussion • Is Socrates Persuasive? • Instructor’s Perspectives • Dissonant Harmonies, Concluding Questions

Recap and Update. . . Gorgias Issues, Course Issues 2/26/2021 4

Dialogue: Structure • • Overture ACT 1. Socrates & Gorgias • ACT 3. Callicles & Socrates • Definition? Utility? Philosophy vs. . • • Rhetoric. . . • • • “Demerasty” Natural-law hedonism Myth of the Afterlife ACT 2. Socrates & Polus (& Gorgias) • Rhetoric as. . . • • • 2/26/2021 Power Pandering Socratic paradox 5

What’s the Point? SOCRATES: O Callicles, if there were not some community of feelings among humankind, however varying in different persons — I mean to say, if everyone's feelings were peculiar to oneself and were not shared by the rest of his species — I do not see how we could easily communicate our impressions to one another. I make this remark because I perceive that you and I have a common feeling. For we are both lovers, and both of us have two loves apiece. I am the lover of Alcibiades, the son of Cleinias, and of philosophy. And you are lover of the Athenian dēmos, and of Dēmos the son of Pyrilampes. (481 c-d) 2/26/2021 6

What’s the Point? SOCRATES: O Callicles, if there were not some community of feelings among humankind, however varying in different persons — I mean to say, if everyone's feelings were peculiar to oneself and were not shared by the rest of his species — I do not see how we could easily communicate our impressions to one another. I make this remark because I perceive that you and I have a common feeling. For we are both lovers, and both of us have two loves apiece. I am the lover of Alcibiades, the son of Cleinias, and of philosophy. And you are lover of the Athenian dēmos, and of Dēmos the son of Pyrilampes. (481 c-d) 2/26/2021 7

Gorgias as Preview. . . • Kolakeia vs. parrhesia • Eros (love/desire/lust) for. . . • Sophistic (sophists, sophistry, sophism) • Sociality of discourse • Pandering vs. Straight-talking • • polis demos • • Epideixis Natural law • • Speech acts Dialogue 2/26/2021 8

Discussion Is Socrates Persuasive? 2/26/2021 9

Is Socrates’ persuasion regarding Callicles' natural-law hedonism “persuasive”? Why or why not? 2/26/2021 10

Instructor’s Perspectives Dissonant Harmonies, Concluding Questions 2/26/2021 11

Dissonant Harmonies • Rhetorics of manhood • • 2/26/2021 Rhetoric ≅ Sophistic (Socr. ) Philosophy = sophistic (Cal. ) Validation in numbers • Socrates as childish Callicles as effeminate Tendentious identifications • • Might as right (Polus, Call. ) Shame as evil (Call. , Socr. ) Numbers as invalid • • Philosophy v. “the many” (Socr. ) “Better” v. “slavish” (Call. ) 12

Concluding Questions • • A “Technology” of peithō? Justification for / proper use of same? 2/26/2021 ? 13