Step One: Answer one of the following questions in 350-500 words. Use examples from Herrick AND my lectures to support your response. Remember to cite page numbers when appropriate. Avoid direct quotations from the textbook.
1. Some people have criticized rhetoric for being manipulative. Do you believe that rhetoric is, by its very nature, manipulative? If not, what ethical guidelines might be important for constraining the practice of rhetoric so that it does not become a tool for manipulation?
If rhetoric itself is freedom of speech, it should be labeled as manipulative, just like abusive substances should be labeled with the effects they have. Rhetoric has traditionally been associated with persuasion and is closely associated with gaining compliance. The many ways to manipulate others into feeling, thinking, or believing they feel a way in which they otherwise would not. Ancients used rhetoric to make decisions, resolve disputes, and to mediate important issues, but rhetoric today, …show more content…
Sophists were a category of narrators, educators, writers, and supporters, who received the reputation for their displays of language and for dazing their audiences with their “brilliant” styles, intriguing appearances and loud personalities. The Sophists believed that law was conservative/cautious and truth was relative. Seeing persuasion as the center of education, they also believed their practices of persuasion should be accessible for anybody to learn. Sophists were social freethinkers who questioned the foundational assumptions of Greek society through shock and provocation. They taught rhetoric, careful management of resources, and some aspects of leadership. Also, they taught through talk, or inventing arguments for and against a proposition. They also had a view of justice far different than what the norm was for Greek society at the time, which stated that public law and morality were matters of social agreement and local practice not the dictates of a god or a
1. Some people have criticized rhetoric for being manipulative. Do you believe that rhetoric is, by its very nature, manipulative? If not, what ethical guidelines might be important for constraining the practice of rhetoric so that it does not become a tool for manipulation?
If rhetoric itself is freedom of speech, it should be labeled as manipulative, just like abusive substances should be labeled with the effects they have. Rhetoric has traditionally been associated with persuasion and is closely associated with gaining compliance. The many ways to manipulate others into feeling, thinking, or believing they feel a way in which they otherwise would not. Ancients used rhetoric to make decisions, resolve disputes, and to mediate important issues, but rhetoric today, …show more content…
Sophists were a category of narrators, educators, writers, and supporters, who received the reputation for their displays of language and for dazing their audiences with their “brilliant” styles, intriguing appearances and loud personalities. The Sophists believed that law was conservative/cautious and truth was relative. Seeing persuasion as the center of education, they also believed their practices of persuasion should be accessible for anybody to learn. Sophists were social freethinkers who questioned the foundational assumptions of Greek society through shock and provocation. They taught rhetoric, careful management of resources, and some aspects of leadership. Also, they taught through talk, or inventing arguments for and against a proposition. They also had a view of justice far different than what the norm was for Greek society at the time, which stated that public law and morality were matters of social agreement and local practice not the dictates of a god or a