“I have heard that one who is to be
an orator does not need to know what is really just, but what would seem just
to the multitude who are to pass judgment, and not what is really good or
noble, but what will seem to be so; for they say that persuasion comes from
what seems to be true, not from the truth” (156).
I found this section of Phaedrus to
be the most interesting; this could be in part because I actually understood this
section. When I read this quote I
instantly thought of how this applies to my future career plans. If you don’t already know I am planning on
attending law school next fall, in hopes of being a lawyer. I saw myself and all lawyers as orators. It
is not that we don’t need to know what is just, but that our jobs sometimes
require us to argue for our client who may not have been just. We need to know
how to appeal to the “multitude who are to pass judgment” or in my case the
jury. As a lawyer I will paint a picture of what “seems” to be good or noble,
because I will be working for my client and not the opposing side. In my future
career it is not whether I am right or wrong, but whether or not I can spin a
story of innocents to a jury. I agree with the very end of the quote, that
“persuasion comes from what seems to be true, not truth.” A jury makes up their minds based on what
they perceive to be true and not truth itself.
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ReplyDelete"A jury makes up their minds based on what they perceive to be true and not truth itself. "
ReplyDeleteThat's true, but that is hardly the only time that perception of truth matters more than the actual facts. A great deal of our daily lives depend more on the perception of truth than on reality.
For example, we went to war with Iraq because we thought they had WMDs. While most of congress and the public supported it at the time, most of that support came from the perception that they posed an imminent/immediate nuclear threat.
Similarly, if everyone gets the idea that a certain bank is going to fail they will stop investing with it, pull their money out, and cause it to fail even if it was actually sound.
The one thing I didn't see mentioned in the reading that seemed particularly relevant to a discussion on perception/reality is that, while it may be true that "persuasion comes from what seems to be true, not from the truth” (156, it is usually easier to persuade when the truth is on your side.
I may be able to convince you a country has weapons it doesn't have, or that a sound bank is unstable, but it will (usually) take a lot more work and skill than convincing you a country that actually has weapons has weapons or that an unstable bank is unstable.
I have no experience in anything that has to do with law but I can give you my perspective for whatever it is worth. If you do run into a case where you are defending someone who is guilty or not exactly innocent, you would most likely need to know what they did in great detail. These details are the weakness in your argument from a rhetoric standpoint. You either have to bring these details into the light to permanently erase it from the jury's mind by persuasion or hide it and for lack of a better word mislead the jury away from the incriminating facts. This is where is gets sticky especially according to the class goals, specifically rhetoric being moral. Is it moral for you to mislead and pull the jury to your side for some one who could be guilty. This is something you can only figure out but it leads to the point that rhetoric is only as moral as the person using it.
ReplyDelete