Socrates Rhetoric Is A Knack And Not An Art

Rhetoric, or oratory, is a knack and not an art. The statement is made by Socrates and is the main argument in Platos Gorgias. Although oratory is the point of the discourse between Socrates and Gorgias and Polus, Socrates is careful to align oratory with other activities that knacks such as cooking, beauty-culture (i.e., cosmetics), and sophistry (i.e., popular lecturing) sophistry together to expound the importance of intention when defining art. Arts are activities that are learned through study for the benefit of people’s body and soul. A knack, according to Socrates, is a natural aptitude that is perfected though routine to catch “fools with the bait of ephemeral pleasure” (30). Therefore, knacks are dishonorable and bad, because

Polus claims that oratory is good for the practitioner because orators are powerful people who can do like tyrants do, to which Socrates replies, saying that orators like tyrants “are the least powerful persons in the city.” (36) Firstly, Socrates points out that when someone acts “he wants not his act, but the object of his act,” (37) or, in other words, what is considered good or bad is not the action taken, but its intention, and because a tyrant mostly acts on the basis of what he considers beneficial to the state, he is not doing what he wants then, but doing what the state wants in order to remain in power. At this point, Socrates was speaking only about power, because, as he stated, Polus’ claim required two answers. Once establishing that freedom to act as intended is true power, Socrates then asks Polus if a person with power would intend to do what is good or evil. Polus admits that a person would intend to do what is seemingly good. (38) As such, if the orator says what the audiences want to hear in order to remain popular with them, the orator is a slave to the whims of the public, and if what the orator says

According to Callicles, morality, which contains the concept of honor and justice within it, is a product of the many who are weak, and used to set limits on the few who are strong by nature. (67) Of course, Socrates points out that weak and strong can be defined in many ways, making Callicles statement invalid. Abandoning his original claim, Callicles then admits that what he meant is that the stronger are those who can do as they please, moderation belonging to the “half-witted.” Once again, and therefore happier. Socrates restates his thought on free will, this time, as it applies to acts done in the pursuit of pleasure. He had already shown in his earlier discourse with Polus that there is a difference between what is pleasing and what is good; a person sees a practitioner of medicine even if doing so offers no pleasure because the outcome is good. Considering that a person can seek pleasure whose outcome could be bad, it makes sense that acting for the sake of pleasure itself is fool hearted, and fools who seek to experience pleasure regardless of outcome, as Socrates explains, are like a sieve because they lack the