2

Heenan/McComiskey notes

English 472

Spring 2007

Dr. Katherine Heenan

English 472

Spring 2007

February 15, 2007

McComiskey, Bruce. “Disassembling Plato’s Critique of Rhetoric in the Gorgias (447a-446a).”

Rhetoric Review 10:2 (Spring 1992): 205-216.

Purpose: to show that “the acceptance of Plato’s treatment of sophistic doctrines—especially those regarding the art of logos—has resulted in an impoverished contemporary view of sophistic rhetoric” (205)

·  cites passages from Gorgias’ Encomium on Helen and Plato’s Gorgias to illustrate fallacies within Plato’s treatment of Gorgianic/sophistic rhetorical

·  suggests “Plato misrepresents the Leontinian sophist as having a foundational epistemology, while retaining Gorgias’ kairos-governed methodology, making him appear contradictory and absurd” (208)

·  argues for a contemporary view of rhetoric that recognizes the sophists’ contributions

·  places Plato’s Gorgias within a historical context to suggest Plato’s probable motivation for delegitimizing sophistic doctrine.

·  Gorgias written soon after Socrates’ death

·  in an unstable political climate soon after bloody upheaval—overthrow of democratic gov and installation of an oligarchy which puts dissenters to death

·  Athenians questioning legitimacy of oligarchic leaders—threatening Plato’s view that “access to true knowledge was limited to those of wealth and high birth, and those born with these qualities were the only legitimate candidates to be counted among the philosophic ruling few” (207)

·  democracy consistent with sophistic relativistic doctrine, defining “knowledge” as (doxa) public opinion, out of which laws and policies are: “All people, claimed the sophists, are able to govern a dêmos, and nobility of birth and high economic status are irrelevant” (207)

·  by discrediting Gorgias, Plato sought to discredit sophistic teaching and so democracy

·  seeking to establish the validity of philosophy and to denigrate rhetoric Plato presents Gorgias’ technê as though it had arisen out of an epistemology grounded on the belief in extralinguistic, a priori truths and certain knowledge—both of which are assumptions that Gorgias would have flatly rejected” (207-08)

Focuses on Round Two: Socrates and Polus

·  rhetoric is to the soul what cookery is to the body

o  rhetoric is not art because its irrational

o  rhetoric is flattery because its goal is to elicit pleasure without concern for the greatest good

o  rhetoric is knack because it can’t articulate its methods or their causes

o  however, an examination of the extant fragments shows a very different Gorgias

1.  Plato’s claim that rhetoric is not art because its irrational depends on G agreeing to a knowledge vs opinion binary—would never have agreed with this view because saw all knowledge as opinion (209)

2.  Plato’s claim that rhetoric is flattery because its goal is to elicit pleasure without concern for the greatest good depends on G agreeing to an opposition instruction vs persuasion binary which he never would have agreed to because as a sophist he would have rejected notion of absolute knowledge of right and wrong—believing instead that knowledge is constructed and audiences are moved by aesthetics (211)

3.  Plato’s claim that rhetoric is knack because it can’t articulate its methods or their causes good depends on G agreeing to a language vs content binary which he would never have agreed to (213)