Rhetoric And Persuasion

Socrates believes that the second definition of rhetoric is the art of getting people to lie to themselves through the art of persuasion. In carrying out the act of persuasion, the target audience of the rhetorician is required to willingly participate in the process. If there was no willing participation, the rhetorician could not succeed in persuasion. The target audience is actively engaged in the process of persuasion because the audience’s own nature. For the rhetorician to persuade, he does not have to lie to the target. Indeed, the rhetorician may simply be selective in what they say to persuade the target by choosing to hide the complete truth or give statements that are factual but may not actually relate to whether the rhetorician’s …show more content…
That is, people will be susceptible to falsehoods if that falsehood is something they want to believe is true. Regardless of fact, there are some things that people may want to be true, and this fact allows rhetoricians to exploit them. This means that people will believe a falsehood simply because they want they falsehood to be true. For example, let us examine why Americans vote in presidential elections. It is a mathematical fact that an individual vote does not matter. This is because the probability of the individual vote influencing the outcome of a presidential election is infinitesimal. However, people still vote because they believe in American values of democracy and the idea that everyone’s voice is represented. We can tell all the cute stories we want that make voters feel good about themselves, but the reality is that facts do not care about your feelings. Voters want to believe that their individual vote is making a difference by influencing the outcome of the election, and the rhetorician convinces them of this. Therefore, it can be concluded that the rhetorician can exploit the vulnerability of people to want to believe what they want to be …show more content…
He can exploit the natural vulnerability that individuals want to believe things they want to be true and the fact that individuals tend to be influenced by how they derive pain and pleasure. Therefore, it can be concluded that the individual plays just as big of a role in the act of persuasion as the rhetorician. This is because if the rhetorician convinces an individual of a falsehood, the individual must be a willing participant in the act. In other words, for the rhetorician to succeed in persuasion, the individual must be willing to believe what he is saying thus convincing himself to carry out what the rhetorician wants him to do. Applying this idea to the voting example, for the voter to continue to vote, they must be a willing participant in the act of the rhetorician persuading him to vote. The voter must believe in the democratic values that say his voice matters. If the voter did not believe in the democratic values, he would simply not vote. The voter must also derive pleasure from casting his ballot and convince himself with the help of the rhetorician that his vote matters so he is doing something good. The voter is actively engaged in the rhetorician’s act of persuasion against him thus proving that individuals must be a willing participant in the act of persuasion for rhetoricians to succeed. Using this example and the reasoning behind it, a generalizable conclusion can be made that for a