Philosophy and rhetoric

Rhetoric and Truth

Plato's quarrel with rhetoric — the art of persuasion that the sophists taught and sold — and his charge that it flatters rather than instructs, producing conviction without knowledge, the manipulation of the soul against the truth.

The quarrel with the sophists

The relation of rhetoric to truth is the subject of one of Plato's most passionate quarrels — his argument with the sophists, the professional teachers of persuasion who sold the art of winning arguments and swaying assemblies. The platform reads the Gorgias as the central text: a confrontation in which Socrates charges that rhetoric, as commonly practised, is not an art at all but a knack of flattery, producing conviction without knowledge — persuading the ignorant, by the ignorant, of what merely seems good rather than what is.

Flattery against medicine

The platform reads Plato's central charge through his memorable analogy: rhetoric stands to genuine statecraft as pastry-cooking stands to medicine. The doctor gives the patient what is good for him, often unpleasant; the pastry-cook gives what is pleasant, often harmful, and would beat the doctor in a popularity contest before a jury of children. So the orator gives the assembly what it wants to hear and wins its favour, while the true statesman, who tells it hard truths for its good, is resented and destroyed — as Socrates himself was. The platform reads this under rhetoric and truth: the danger Plato sees is that in a democracy, persuasion unmoored from knowledge governs, and flattery defeats wisdom.

The qualified defence

The platform reads Plato's position as more subtle than a simple condemnation. In the Phaedrus he allows that there could be a true rhetoric — an art of leading souls toward the truth, practised by one who knows both the truth and the souls he addresses, the philosopher rather than the flatterer. The platform reads this as the key distinction: Plato does not reject persuasion as such but the divorce of persuasion from knowledge. The problem is not that the orator persuades but that he persuades without knowing, and aims at his own advantage rather than the good of the persuaded.

Why it matters for Virtue & Power

Rhetoric and truth is Plato's permanent warning about the relation of persuasion to knowledge in public life — a warning that every democracy, then and now, has had to weigh. It connects his thought to the platform's reading of political argument and the Athenian democracy at war, and it is central to Plato versus the Sophists.

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