Plato

Plato

I forgot to read the blog prompt, so here' s the response to the blog prompt.

Week 3List out as many things about Plato that you know. What does he suggest about finding the Truth, about oral persuasion, about writing, about the value of rhetoric? Also, as we agreed from Week-1, please point out the progress you're making on your final project in each blog post. Thanks.

Plato was a student of Socrates and got his start as a philosopher so to speak writing dialogues, probably based on discussions he heard as a student, between Socrates and other students. Naturally his early writing was probably what Socrates believed, but his later writings were about his ideas.

He thinks the Truth is contained in forms--perfect somethings--the forms get fuzzy here. Forms are permanent and unchangeable. We discover forms through thought alone, because we are born with an innate knowledge of the forms. We must rediscover it.

Unfortunately most people don't know anything about the forms, so they are easily persuaded about stupid things like going to war, electing officials, and putting certain slovenly philosophers with unpopular friends to death.

Honestly, Plato clearly wrote down his dialogues to pass down their wisdom, but since literacy was an emerging skill, he didn't trust the written word. Even his writing is often a speech, a dialogue. He thought the search for truth was a process and writing was too static and unchangeable to really help someone find the truth.

Plato didn't value rhetoric. He felt clever people used rhetoric to persuade others, but he was not above using rhetorical techniques to make his points.

I have done no further work on my paper. Still thinking about how classical rhetoric influenced communication theory and about how changing communication theory should influence our programs.

Kendall