Response to Plato's Phaedrus

For this weeks reading response, I found Plato's Phaedrus about the art of rhetoric to be one of the easier, yet interesting section of RT to read. Although I dread classical writing, it was quite interesting to see how the art of  persuasion in ancient times, has remained very similar to the process of persuasion today.

The Phaedrus is a dialogue written by Plato with two men, Socrates and Phaedrus. The discussion between the two men, focus's around the art of rhetoric. In the Phaedrus, Socrates explains to Phaedrus how to successfully influence the soul through words. In this case, Socrates states "To influence the soul, the rhetor must know the truth. To know the truth, the rhetor must first make distinctions among things, that is he must analyze- and then he must be able to recombine his ideas, he must synthesize" ( Plato 85). Socrates is a master of speech!  I found this to be very similar to the way I would prep myself before attempting to persuade my roommate to help clean our apartment. Again, since my comprehension level for classical writing is rather novice, I decided to implement the context into my everyday life.

I am a master at the art of persuasion now. These are the steps I would take before approaching my roommate in order to successfully persuade him into cleaning the apartment. First ask yourself, whats the truth? Well the truth is that our apartment cannot clean itself, and I certainly wont do it myself all the time, I need his help. Next, we analyze. I can remember when we lived in our old apartment, never once did he vacuum, sweep, or wipe counters. Even when we had to clean the apartment at the end of the year, you left without cleaning a thing.  Finally, we synthesize, I organize all of the times where he never helped to clean in the past and remember to say those ideas carefully. While this is a simple, yet silly way to prep yourself for persuasion, we can see how Socrates steps are actually very similar to the way people persuade today.

Furthermore, Socrates makes a solid point towards the end of Phaedrus. He argues "...in effect, that a written text can only remind us of what we already know: that is, it depends on contextual information for its interpretation. Oral dialogue between congenial souls is far superior to writing because it can lead to truth" (Plato 85). Many people are afraid to write the truth because it is extremely hard to fight your argument through text. For example, (relating back to roommate) If I were to text him to help clean the apartment once in a while because he never does, my voice is not there to back up what I'm trying to get across. In essence, the sound of emotion in one's voice will help bring out the truth (meat) of what you are attempting to persuade.