The Republic of Plato
Feb. 22nd, 2003 12:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sathorThis is just something from the introduction:
Reduced to simplest terms, rhetoric means the art of persuading a crowd that a certain course of action is the right one to take, or a certain person has the right on his side. But where is the assurance that the persuasive orator knows what is right, what ends are worth achieving by public policy, or what are the means to individual happiness? -skip a little-
Gorgias' hot-headed pupil, Polus, claims that the orator wields the despot's power to do whatever he likes. Socrates replies that unlimited power without the knowledge of good and evil is at best unenviable, and that the tyrant who uses it to exterminate his enemies and rivals is the most miserable of men.
That is bush. All you people who don't believe me when i say that good and evil don't exist, that they are just points of view - read that. All of you who think america isn't a tyranny, read that.
Reading this book is making me see that i'm not insane, and that my ideas were also thought of by those of like minds.
Reduced to simplest terms, rhetoric means the art of persuading a crowd that a certain course of action is the right one to take, or a certain person has the right on his side. But where is the assurance that the persuasive orator knows what is right, what ends are worth achieving by public policy, or what are the means to individual happiness? -skip a little-
Gorgias' hot-headed pupil, Polus, claims that the orator wields the despot's power to do whatever he likes. Socrates replies that unlimited power without the knowledge of good and evil is at best unenviable, and that the tyrant who uses it to exterminate his enemies and rivals is the most miserable of men.
That is bush. All you people who don't believe me when i say that good and evil don't exist, that they are just points of view - read that. All of you who think america isn't a tyranny, read that.
Reading this book is making me see that i'm not insane, and that my ideas were also thought of by those of like minds.
