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

Sophists have been perpetuated in the history of philosophy primarily due to their most fierce novice Plato and his Gorgias, where Socrates brings profound accusations against the dress of sophists and declares notoriously magniloquence to be a spark off of flattery (, 463c). This paper focuses on the responses to sophists practices by Plato and Aristotle, analysing on the mavin pop off criticism made on their practice, on the other, however, trying to evaluate in which respect the responses of the two philosophers differ. Thus, taking the polemic of sophists as a startle point, the paper moves forward into discussing the fundamental differences in the treatment of rhetoric as perceived by Plato and Aristotle. For this reason (and in order to present a fuller account of Platos theory of rhetoric) not only Platos Gorgias, but also his Phaedrus is incorporated to the following analysis. Plato on sophists and rhetoricIn Gorgias Plato claims that rhetoric is not a (462b) and his accusations against sophists or rhetoricians seem to be reducible to three closely related arguments first, that rhetoric doesnt have its aver subject (that would make it a ) second (and most importantly) that it lacks the theoretical name that is necessary for a , and thirdly that rhetoric is used for morally brutish intentions and pursuits, which corrupt the souls of the citizenship (503a). And, as will be apparent below, a give-and-take 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, yet which obviously sta... ...or Plato actually) rhetoric happens (McCabe 1994 152), the sophistic practice has an impact on its audience and thus it must be viable to find out the underlying system of this practice (1.1.1) that would enable one to call it an art. Further, it seems that Aristotles response is in some sense more than 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 respectable consideration, and building up his own theory that would not suffer of the problems exhibit in Platos works. Thus, Aristotle is very profoundly in a intercourse with Plato, accepting some of his criticism against the sophists (rhetoric should be basically a able practice, with morally-neutral pursuits), while rejecting others (the appeal to emotions plays an important part in Aristotles theory, for example).