Introductions
via text are so awkward. I think it’s hard to learn what a person is really
like over a medium that hides the person behind a computer screen, but that’s
what being a writer is, right?
Anyway, I’m
Matt and as others are in this class I am also a Writing Major. Much like
Carson, I just love to write and create!
I started off
at MSU as a Snow Science Major, and then moved to being an Environmental
Science Major. Honestly I became sick of regurgitating information back onto
tests week after week, it got old! To be honest, my dream would be to become
some sort of meteorologist, but as I move more and more away from the sciences
that dream seems to be dwindling more every day.
Like Carson, I
do have a large interest in the sciences. But if anything that just fuels my
desire to write more about what I love!
-SOCRATES: Well then, I say to you that here are two questions in one,
and I will answer both of them. And I tell you, Polus, that rhetoricians and
tyrants have the least possible power in states, as I was just now saying; for
they do literally nothing which they will, but only what they think best.
Why does Socrates
clump both rhetoricians and tyrants into the same group? What does Socrates
mean by “least possible power in states”? Does this still relate to todays politicians?
I think that Socrates is using a pretty blatant rhetoric tool here (which is kind of funny) by playing with the audience's emotions. Tyrants are obviously bad, and, therefore, rhetoricians are also bad. I think he might also be comparing them to tyrants because they manipulate people in order to get them to do what they want because they believe that they have more power than their audiences do. I think Socrates is then saying that, although they believe themselves to have the most power, they actually have the least power because their only tool and skill is words. If their audience would only think, then it would be obvious that they have no power over anything. It is easy to overpower a rhetorician when their only weapon is speech. I think that it does relate to today's politicians. Look at the current election. The candidates tell their audience what they want to hear. They talk about issues they know are strong within their circle of voters, and will do anything to get the vote. It's all words. There is no action involved, yet we rally behind our favorite, sure that they will fix everything. In reality, they know there is nothing that they can do, and I think that we know there is nothing they can do, and still we sign on to their rhetoric whole-heartedly and dream of a better world. It may be a little cynical, but it's how I see it...
ReplyDeleteI see the connection as having to do with the belief that getting people to do what you want them to do seems like a good, even if those things the people do are bad - because it represents power. Callicles especially wants to drive this point home, and Socrates wants to make the case that getting people to do the wrong thing is a sign of weakness, not strength, and this person should be pitied like any wrong-doer who hasn't been sufficiently punished. He's taking away the "power" of rhetoric as a tool in its defense, just as he would suggest that honoring a tyrant for being powerful (which is really all most tyrants have, in the end, or rather, just before the end, like Assad in Syria right now) is missing the poor effect of that power. It's also an argument by example - rhetoricians are like tyrants, and etc...
ReplyDelete