I want to share some memorable quotes by Plato's Socrates in Phaedrus, which should make us continue asking if Plato was our friend or foe:
"If you have a natural ability for rhetoric, you will become a famous rhetorician, provide you supplement your ability with knowledge and practice. To the extent that you lack any one of them, to that extent you will be less than perfect."
"...those who now write Arts of Rhetoric...are cunning people; they hide the fact that they know very well everything about the soul. Well, then, until they being to speak and write in this way, we mustn't allow ourselves to be convinced that they write on the basis of the art."
"...one who intends to be an able rhetorician has no need to know the truth about the things that are just or good or yet about the people who are such either by nature or upbringing. No one in a lawcourt, you see, cares at all about the truth of such matters. They only care about what is convincing. This is called 'the likely,' and that is what a man who intends to speak according to art should concentrate on....Whatever you say, you should pursue what is likely and leave the truth aside: the whole art consists in cleaving to that throughout your speech."
"If you have a natural ability for rhetoric, you will become a famous rhetorician, provide you supplement your ability with knowledge and practice. To the extent that you lack any one of them, to that extent you will be less than perfect."
"...those who now write Arts of Rhetoric...are cunning people; they hide the fact that they know very well everything about the soul. Well, then, until they being to speak and write in this way, we mustn't allow ourselves to be convinced that they write on the basis of the art."
"...one who intends to be an able rhetorician has no need to know the truth about the things that are just or good or yet about the people who are such either by nature or upbringing. No one in a lawcourt, you see, cares at all about the truth of such matters. They only care about what is convincing. This is called 'the likely,' and that is what a man who intends to speak according to art should concentrate on....Whatever you say, you should pursue what is likely and leave the truth aside: the whole art consists in cleaving to that throughout your speech."
Socrates, Phaedrus
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