Week 8: Overview from after the Fray
This is one of the more complex dialogues of Plato (not quite on the order of the Republic, but nevertheless with a range of different and narratively interesting interlocutors along the way. It has a number of different angles of approach, and there is no tidy symmetry that will enable us to square all the pieces up separately. It does, however, leave a lot of questions open, and those are worth exploring.
Wrap-up
- What have we learned about the validity of rhetoric? Is it generally and absolutely true of rhetoric in all situations, or is it really a partial view of rhetoric as narrowly defined by Socrates?
- In some of Socrates’ other dialogues we have run into the distinction between genuine knowledge, true opinion (which may be coterminous with knowledge in its surface, but not supported by a logos), and false opinion. What is the role of persuasion and how does it navigate between these three things?
Going beyond the dialogue
- Is persuasion in a one-on-one discussion fundamentally different in kind from one-to-many rhetoric?
- Is it possible to harness rhetoric to the service of the truth?
- Can one persuade in a morally correct way by offering a valid logos? Is this anything other than a species of teaching? (And if so, what do we make of that?)
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