Midterm Essays

Prompt 5 - Politics and Rhetoric

In Ancient Greece, politics required rhetoric. The government was run by the people and completely depended on leaders’ and citizens’ ability to persuade one another to rally to one side or another and vote for specific leaders and laws. In a predominantly oral culture, people had to know how to plead their cause in a strategic way especially by taking into account the branches of oratory, the Canons of rhetoric and the different schools of thought that they most identified with.

When we really think about it, politics is just made up of different perceptions of people and the world around us. Governments run a certain way because people believe, or at least once believed, that that way would be most compatible with human nature to form an effective society.

In Ancient Greece, unlike today, there wasn’t extensive research to back up political agendas. People had to take an idea, for instance the Socratic concept of idealism, and then look to the past to see what was done justly or unjustly without idealism (judicial); look to the future to see if idealism would be advantageous or disadvantageous to society (deliberative); and then present it at a kairotic time while raising it up as a virtuous cause and perhaps blaming or praising members of society who had or hadn’t implemented it and either succeeded or failed as a result to solidify its validity (epideictic). In communicating a proposal relating to idealism, one would have to go through all stages of the Canons of rhetoric by inventing a political idea, carefully arranging it, crafting it stylistically, finding ways to make it memorable for themselves and others, and finally delivering it to the people using their rhetorical strategy.

I honestly don’t think that it’s too bold to say that rhetoric was the essential cornerstone of the creation of government and political ideals in Ancient Greece. 

Prompt 4 - Medium and Message

Socrates was a leader in philosophy and thought in the way that he encouraged deep thought processes. As I thought about the way that he discouraged writing for its tendency to decontextualize ideas, I realized that his intentions must have been different than his fellow philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, who wanted to record and spread their ideas in order to implement a certain idealism in society. What Socrates wanted to elicit was the actual act of thinking—digging deeper to reflect on life and to question what and why things happen. His primary medium of communication was oral dialogue, especially one-on-one.

One-on-one oral communication was vital to his philosophy as he worked with mentees by having reflective, logical conversations with them. By abstaining from writing and other methods of recording, he eliminated distractions from the raw thought. He went further than considering what was true and introduced the concept that perhaps there are few things that we can really prove absolutely. So, we have to connect with ourselves and truly ask: what is moral and right? In talking this all out, he used syllogism to put a little bit of a form to thoughts so that they could be considered through a logical process.

Further, structuring ideas in this pattern allowed them to be more memorable. Even though he opposed writing, he encouraged acquiring knowledge by committing it to memory. It seems as though this were a sort of process: have a reflective conversation about an idea, think about it deeply, verbalize it structurally and then commit it to memory. This not only encouraged Socrates’ own beliefs for effective pondering, but set the groundwork for future philosophizing in a more concrete way than ever before.