Along with Socrates and Aristotle, Plato is one of the members of the Big Three that made a significant impact on the emergence and development of philosophy. Plato distinguished between appearance and reality while describing the systems of the universe. This philosopher also claimed that people have both opinion and knowledge about the universe, which should be considered separately. This paper focuses on examining the identified concepts and their relation to persuasion, as it was viewed by Plato.
To better understand the distinction between reality and appearance, it seems to be important to clarify the metaphysics of Plato. It was stated that metaphysics refers to the matters of substance, while Plato used the concept of metaphysical dualism. On the one hand, the realm of ideal forms was characterized as stable, eternal, and being beyond the space and time. On the other hand, the realm of everyday reality was defined as a subject to the space and time, finite, and flexible (“The big three”, n.d.). Regarding reality and appearance, Plato thought that there are truths that are to be discovered in the real world. In this context, the reality is objective as it does not change depending on a person’s perceptions or any other factors. By developing knowledge, people can obtain the understanding of the universe as a set of forms (Borchers & Hundley, 2018). In this way, it is possible to achieve an ideal. The forms were considered to be the most real and perfect representations of objects.
The concept of appearance, according to Plato, meant the way a person perceives the reality through his or her feelings, emotions, and experiences. The world of appearances is not false, but it is different for every person. It is viewed through the senses and composes the notion of opinion. Namely, beliefs about objects and conjectures, including images and shadows, are integrated into opinion. Opinions were viewed as the reflections of the changing world of sensations, and knowledge – as a certain issue. At the same time, it should be stressed that opinion and knowledge are not mutually exclusive (“Plato and persuasion”, n.d.). They can be used in combination or separately to learn the world around, focusing on reasoned understanding or sensory beliefs. Both opinion and knowledge can be true, but in the first case, a person cannot justify it, and, in the second case, there are undeniable arguments that the person knows why it is true.
The views of Plato on opinion and knowledge, as well as reality and appearance, are related to his rhetoric, the key purpose of which is persuasion. As stated by Borchers and Hundley (2018a), in Ancient Greece, rhetoric was used to pass laws and make legal decisions, which means that to promote an idea, it was necessary to be a good orator. As a philosopher, Plato wanted to disseminate his ideas in society, and his speeches were based on the identified distinctions. In general, Plato’s rhetoric was established on three components, such as ethics (morality), metaphysics, and epistemology (the matters of truth) (“The big three”, n.d.). Most importantly, this philosopher considered that speech is an effective method of directing people’s souls. It was useful to protect personal assumptions in battles with other philosophers, which was a common issue in Ancient Greece.
In “Gorgias”, Socrates aims to understand the nature of rhetoric and its role in persuasion. This work shows that any professional needs to be persuasive, for example, teachers should convince students that mathematical equations are correct by means of knowledge (Jowett, n.d.). One may suggest that persuasion is associated with the notions of right and wrong, and another example is a courtroom. Gorgias states that rhetorical oration is a useful tool to convince people, and no expert can be more persuasive than an orator, who uses justified arguments rather than opinions only (Jowett, n.d.). Through the words of Gorgias and Socrates, Plato provided arguments to his opponents. The philosopher discusses the beliefs of Athenians, applying rhetoric as a foundation for convincing the readers and clarifying false and true issues (“Plato and persuasion”, n.d.). The passionate content of “Gorgias” explicitly shows the distinction between knowledge and opinion, as well as reality and appearance.
Another benefit of Plato’s dialectic is the promotion of debates on such important areas as justice, morality, politics, and so on. For example, in “Gorgias”, the author gives a topic and asks questions, and when the answer is received, a new follow-up question is given (“Plato and persuasion”, n.d.). Such an approach contributes to further thinking, which shows that the understanding of common things can weaker compared to how people used to consider them. Thus, According to Plato, rhetoric was regarded as the tool to serve ethics and morality to address social atrocities and achieve a more just condition (Borchers & Hundley, 2018a). It is possible to conclude that Plato’s rhetoric and the distinction between knowledge and opinion were used to find and translate the truth, while the differences between reality and appearance reflected the ways of thinking.
References
The big three. (n.d.). [PowerPoint slides].
Borchers, T., & Hundley, H. (2018). Defining rhetoric and rhetorical theory. In Rhetorical theory: An introduction (2nd ed., pp. 3-24). Waveland Press.
Borchers, T., & Hundley, H. (2018a). Rhetoric as persuasion. In Rhetorical theory: An introduction (2nd ed., pp. 27-56). Waveland Press.
Jowett, B. (n.d.). Gorgias by Plato, pp. 59-151.
Plato and persuasion. (n.d.). [Lecture notes], pp. 1-47.