Phaedrus
My questions about the ethics of rhetoric are explored in Plato--Phaedrus. In the response to the work, a question is asked: "how can you know what you think until you see what you say?" I think back to my Public speaking course in undergraduate school. Every single one of our assignments were geared towards ourselves. Our own ideas of what is right and wrong, often to persuade. Often, to seduce. I think back to a speech I made about Beyonce's album "Lemonade" when it first came out. Was I seducing the listeners into buying her album? Did the beauty I saw in the work, alongside my own emotional responses from both the visuals and music? I knew I thought highly of the album when I saw imagery and heard music that moved me. Ultimately, it cultivated a desire within me for others to enjoy it as well, despite, their own potential preconceptions about Beyonce or her music. My approach to this album as a rhetor (and I use this term loosely in regard to myself): maybe combined both Socrates' philosophical ideas of love and Phaedrus' seduction through the love in speech? These ideas are definitely very complex, and I don't feel that I have a solid grasp of them. Nonetheless, its ironic how both Socrates and Phaedrus utilize seduction in the "divine" topic of love.
Socrates says "Every one chooses his love from the ranks of beauty according to his character, and this he makes his god, and fashions and adorns as a sort of image which he is to fall down and worship." He addresses the power of the individual's own belief systems when a listener or follower. Socrates goes on to describe how followers of Zeus, for example, worshipped him because they saw values and similarities in him that they see within themselves. Maybe I as a listener of Beyonce's music am not much different?
In a perhaps ignorant summarization:
Socrates is for the "noble" and more sentimental ideas of love and speech, which are based in truth and sympathy. Phaedrus sees speech and love mainly in the aspect of pleasures and appeal, the art of appealing to the listener and enchanting them. Two sides that seem to have the same goal regardless. Perhaps Socrates can even be called a little self-righteous, and Phaedrus a little shallow. Maybe this embodies the art rhetoric, or severely limits it.
Other notes:
- Socrates states the "madness" of love is actually divine in nature.
-Phaedrus says appeal to the listener is the basis of good rhetoric. Socrates states wisdom is the basis of good rhetoric (could this also align with persuasion accompanying Objective Truth?)
-Soc and Phaedrus agree that dialectic and rhetoric are crucial in persuasion.
-Inquire more on the "ass and horse" analogy.