Classes

Parent for all the individual classes

Aristotle’s Lying for Dummies

The readings this week reminded me heavily of the discussions we’ve been having in class thus far.  While many of the issues we’ve been talking about were very relevant in the Aristotle reading in particular, the one that really interested…

Aristotle’s Rhetoric

Go from one Greek philosopher to the next, throw in a few Roman thinkers and it becomes clear through this class’ readings that the power of rhetoric is not lost on today’s society. Comparing the education of today with that…

Week 2- Commentary

I often look at people who can’t get along with others, or who always seem to be at odds with society, and I say, “That person just doesn’t get it.”  What I usually mean by this is that they don’t…

quintillian and aristotle

Throughout Aristotle and Quintillian’s works, we are presented with various interpretations of rhetoric. For Aristotle, rhetoric is “defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion”. In his neatly packaged treatise on rhetoric, Aristotle…

Week 2: Aristotle’s “Rhetoric”

The first line in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, “Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic”, began my frustration.  Having previously read Plato’s Grogias, wherein Socrates, in a very nonlinear, disorienting way, establishes the notion that the object of rhetoric is persuasion and belief and it is only…

Gorgias

“That is just what I suspected you meant, Gorgias. But don’t be surprised if a little later on I repeat this procedure and ask additional questions when the answer seems to be already clear. This, as I say, is not…

The Art of Rhetoric

Gorgias tries to defend his ideas on what rhetoric stands for and tries to define the term to Socrates.  Socrates allows Gorgias to hang himself with his definition of the term and Socrates pokes holes into Gorgias ideas.    SOCRATES:…

Gorgias

In Gorgias, Socrates concludes that rhetoric is the power of persuasion. By questioning Gorgias, it’s as though he reveals the truth about rhetoric by revealing that in itself it offers neither truth nor knowledge. When Gorgias states, “he should not…