The Phaedrus and True Rhetoric

1
The Phaedrus and True Rhetoric

• Speaker must know the truth
• Philosopher
• Define terms and distinguish the debatable
• Logician

2
The Phaedrus and True Rhetoric

• Principles of order and arrangement must be
  introduced
• Aesthetics
• Know the nature of the soul and motivations of
  humans
• Psychologist

3
The Phaedrus and True Rhetoric

• Master style and delivery
• Performer
• High moral purpose and expressing what is
  acceptable to God
• Theologian

4
Plato

• For Plato the highest form of engagement was
  dialogue or dialectic
• Next was rhetoric
• Finally writing

5
Plato

• The true art that restores lost health to a sick
  soul is
• Justice
• not rhetoric
• Rhetoric is the counterfeit to justice
• True justice aims at restoring health to a sick
  soul

6
Plato

• He argued that rhetoric as practiced by the
  Sophists
• perverts justice by suggesting that actual
  justice has been achieved
• When only persuasion of justice has occurred

7
Plato and the Soul

• Three parts
• Wisdom
• Nobility and honor
• Lust and the appetites
• Thus, individuals are categorized by which part
  of the Soul is most dominate

8
Plato

• The techne
• or, the method(s) used to create a true Art of
  Rhetoric
• Used to bring about justice and harmony in a
  society
• Based on knowledge of justice and of the Soul

9
Plato

• The goal of rhetoric is to establish
• ..order in the State and the Soul
• The wisdom part persuades the other two parts to
  submit to its control
• Speculate what kind of world would we have if
  this was actually put into practice?
• How do these ideas relate to current theory about
  Soul/soul, psychology, and theology?