Plato’s dialogue The Phaedrus focuses around character Socrates and Phaedrus conversing in a wide range of topics that includes, love, rhetoric, writing, and philosophy. Throughout the dialogue Socrates delivers speeches to argue against the deceiving characteristics of rhetoric and explain how true knowledge is obtained. Through these speeches Socrates is trying to convince a skeptical Phaedrus to seek out true knowledge and to not be blinded by the persuasion of rhetoric. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The dialogue of Phaedrus starts off with Socrates and Phaedrus discussing a famous rhetorician named Lysias speech on love. Lysisas speech on love sought to degrade men who feel in love because of the unhealthy characteristics…show more content… His stance on rhetoric is centered on the deceiving components of the practice by making the bad seem good and the unjust seem just. Those who practice rhetoric do not know the truth of which they speak, but only know opinions which makes rhetoric as an art no really an art at all. “Rhetoric is a craft devoid of art and a real art of speaking the truth does not exist” (Plato 157). Socrates compares rhetoricians to a man who thinks he is a physician because he has read a book about medicine even though he does not have the true knowledge of a physician. Likewise rhetoricians cannot teach rhetoric or give a speech without knowing what the truth is on which they teach and speak. He believes that rhetoricians do not care about true knowledge but only about being persuasive and focusing their speech on what might have happened instead of what really happened. True oratory in Socrates eye depends on, “natural ability, knowledge and practice and a true rhetorician must be able to how to persuade men through different types of speeches that are based around their actions or beliefs” (Plato 162). Philosophy seeks out the truth and according to Socrates those who use dialectic are nobler and are able to obtain true