Sophists Essay -- Philosophy, Socrates, Plato, Gorgias, Aristotles

Sophists have been perpetuated in the history of philosophy in the main due to their most fierce critic Plato and his Gorgias, where Socrates brings profound accusations against the practice of sophists and declargons notoriously rhetoric to be a part of flattery (, 463c). This paper focuses on the results to sophists practices by Plato and Aristotle, analysing on the one hand chiding made on their practice, on the other, however, trying to evaluate in which respect the repartees of the two philosophers differ. Thus, taking the polemic of sophists as a starting point, the paper moves forward into discussing the cardinal differences in the treatment of rhetoric as perceived by Plato and Aristotle. For this terra firma (and in order to present a fuller account of Platos theory of rhetoric) not only Platos Gorgias, but also his Phaedrus is bodied to the following analysis. Plato on sophists and rhetoricIn Gorgias Plato claims that rhetoric is not a (462b) and his accusations a gainst sophists or rhetoricians seem to be reducible to three closely colligate arguments first, that rhetoric doesnt have its sustain subject (that would make it a ) second (and most weightyly) that it lacks the theoretical basis that is necessary for a , and thirdly that rhetoric is used for morally base intentions and pursuits, which corrupt the souls of the citizenship (503a). And, as volition be apparent below, a discussion of these problems is offered both in Platos theory of true rhetoric in Phaedrus as well as in Aristotles treatment of rhetoric in his Rhetoric. Thus, the above presented accusations are latently put forward also in Phaedrus, where Plato presents his positive concept of rhetoric, however which obviously sta... ...or Plato actually) rhetoric happens (McCabe 1994 152), the sophistic practice has an impact on its auditory modality and thus it must be possible to find out the implicit in(p) system of this practice (1.1.1) that would enable one to call i t an art. Further, it seems that Aristotles response is in some sense more fundamentally a response to Plato, at least in terms of taking the problems Plato articulates in his Gorgias as well as in his Phaedrus into serious consideration, and building up his own theory that would not suffer of the problems demonstrated in Platos works. Thus, Aristotle is genuinely profoundly in a dialogue with Plato, accepting some of his criticism against the sophists (rhetoric should be basically a rational practice, with morally-neutral pursuits), while rejecting others (the appeal to emotions plays an important part in Aristotles theory, for example).