Rhetoric and Refutation

In Plato’s Gorgias, the reader experiences the dialogue between Socrates and Gorigas (and later, two students of rhetoric) unfold with much frustration on the part of rhetors. At first, it seems rather one sided and Socrates comes off as closed-minded and doggedly pursuing the argument that rhetoric is a not a true art until the dialogue ends. However, the reader could interpret this exchange as a series of misunderstandings.

Socrates employs this method of questioning and refutation that the students of rhetoric in the book fail to grasp. Kastley writes in, “In Defense of Plato’s Gorgias,” that the students are inept and fail to answer in a dialectic way that Socrates expects. Thus, the conclusion Socrates sought is never quite reached. With misunderstanding at the very beginning of the text, it is a wonder how the dialogue even proceeds. Gorgias and Socrates seek to define rhetoric, but ultimately that topic shifts to an investigation of the use of justice (or lack of use) by a rhetor.

However, one particular concern stood out in this text. If Kastyley claims that Socrates was using rhetoric during this dialogue, then, why didn’t the Gorgias or his students recognize its use? Furthermore, when someone uses a tactic employed by an opponent, is it fair to imply that rhetoric has no real purpose. Discrediting rhetoric by using rhetoric seems to create a paradox and contradiction.

We see this in a number ways. Most recently, I’ve come across a pro-choice rebuttal to common pro-life reasoning floating around the Internet.

The creator of this photo uses life jackets as a stand in birth control. In the political climate, we’ve seen many public and political figures attack the affordable health care bill for covering women’s birth control pills in full. In their minds, birth control is immediately associated with sexually promiscuity even though many women use it mediate symptoms of endometriosis and other health issues. Likewise, this photo turns their same rhetoric back on them. Life jackets only encourage people to go near the water because they don’t fear drowning (in the same way women won’t fear sex outside of marriage if they do not have to worry about unwanted pregnancy). Whether or not the pro-life camp recognizes this use of their own reasoning remains unknown just like it is ambiguous in Gorgias if the rhetors realize that Socrates has used rhetoric on them. From the text, it may not seem so. The students grow increasingly frustrated with Socrates to the point that they agree in the hopes the dialogue will end.

One could argue that if Socrates dialogue is rhetoric and he chose his arguments based on each rhetor, then Socrates’ rhetorically strategy to engage in philosophical dialogue may have back fired a little. When Polus and Socrates speak back and forth, Socrates says, “Moneymaking therefore releases one from poverty, medicine form sickness, and justice from intemperance and injustice,” (Gorgias 66, 478b). Socrates’ definition of justice doesn’t specify exactly what justice is, which is as the note claims, “a rhetorical offense against conversing of which he accused Polus.” Going back to the image above, the creator with an efficient use if kairos states in the last line a almost word for word parody of Representative Todd Akin’sjustification for his stance on rape and abortion. He claimed that women’s bodies have a way of shutting down and protecting itself from unwanted pregnancy in the case of rate. Obviously this is a ridiculous claim and the creator of the image is clearly trying to ridicule him. However, is this really working rhetorically?

Yes, you might show how one aspect of the argument is ridiculous, but have you made any strides in defining why the need for birth control and access to abortion is important? That is debatable. In the same light, Socrates uses rhetoric to try to reach out to Gorgias and come to an understanding of the definition of the word, but inevitably falls short.

Socrates: And it is in amazement at these things, Gorgias, that I have long been asking what in the world the power of rhetoric is. For it manifestly appears to me as a power demonic in greatness, when I consider this way.

Gorgias: For they imparted their skill to these men to use justly against enemies and doers of injustice, in defending themselves, not in starting something: but these en, perverting it use the might and art incorrectly.

Gorgias goes on to explain how just because one uses rhetoric unjustly, doesn’t mean that the thing itself is unjust. The human element perverted the use of rhetoric. While Socrates persisting questioning might have been aimed at coming to a very narrow definition of rhetoric that he could logically agree with, he ultimately failed to do so. So if Kastely suggests that Socrates himself was using rhetoric, I have to wonder if it was very successful. What makes rhetoric successful in terms of its widespread use among sophists to teach students from a variety of cities across ancient Greece is the ability to adapt and meet the audience on their terms. If rhetoric involved some level of persuasion, then I have to question whether or not Socrates persuaded anyone of anything. They seemed to give in to him based off pure frustration. Perhaps, Socrates didn’t fully understand audience and thus missed a key part of what we might look at today as the rhetorical situation of the dialogue.