Channels, Fall 2016

Channels • 2016 • Volume 1 • Number 1 Page 83 teach virtue but fail—fail to pursue truth. They serve themselves rather than the common good (Benoit 1991; Corbett and Connors 1999; Poulakos 1985). Since the Sophists used rhetoric to manipulate, Isocrates limits its role in communication to protect the audience. He calls rhetoric the “worker of persuasion” and suggests that “orators pursue nothing else than persuasion” (Benoit 1991, 34). Likewise, he asserts that rhetoric alters how audiences perceive reality since it deals directly with absolute truth (Benoit 1991; Black 1958). On the other hand, Plato writes that “rhetoric produces persuasion. Its entire business is persuasion; the whole sum and substance of it comes to that” (Benoit 1991, 64). He also writes that since rhetoric often exists in the public sector, some orators use it for unjust ends. Because orators may use rhetoric to manipulate their audience members as many of the Sophists did, Plato disagrees with Isocrates and suggests that rhetoric does not relate to absolute truth (Benoit 1991; Black 1958; Corbett and Connors 1999; Poluska 1985). Consequently, although both Plato and Isocrates disapprove of the way the Sophists ignore truth as they employ rhetoric, neither Plato nor Isocrates defines truth in the same way (Benoit 1991; Black 1958; Corbett and Connors 1999). Like Plato and Isocrates, Aristotle responds to the notion that orators seem to be “more concerned with words than with matter” (Corbett and Connors 1999, 492). Aristotle replies to what Plato writes to elevate rhetoric where Plato limited it. Much of what Aristotle considered in his treatise concerns the “matter” of rhetoric: how it intersects with ethics and politics (Duska 2013; Johnson 2004; Kallendorf and Kallendorf 1989; Rorty 2011; Yack 2006). Unlike Aristotle, Plato asserts that rhetoric indirectly relates to absolute truth, and Isocrates links rhetoric directly with truth. However, Aristotle suggests that rhetoric deals with opinion and contingent truth rather than absolutes (Hunt 1920; Johnson 2004; Yack 2006). Aristotle also emphasizes that orators must know what to say and how to speak appropriately within their discourses (Hunt 1920; Yack 2006). As scholars study Aristotle’s rhetoric, they broadly define several of its functions. When Isocrates considers the topic, he delineates three distinct ways orators may employ rhetoric: to display their skill, to promote the good of the audience, and to consider important issues (Benoit 1991). Similarly, Plato writes that the orator should pursue “the engendering of justice in the souls of his fellow citizens and the eradication of injustice, the planning of self-control and the uprooting of uncontrol, the entrance of virtue and the exit of vice” (Benoit 1991). Aristotle seems to define rhetoric as a means by which orators discover probable truth and pursue social action (Grimaldi 1980; Katz 1999; Kennedy 1991). When Aristotle defines rhetoric, he notes that the skill itself is amoral. Fuller notes that since rhetoric is an amoral tool, “[w]hether [the rhetor] uses this power [of rhetoric] in the interest of truth or falsehood, of right or wrong, makes no difference. Rhetoric is good or bad rhetoric according as it wins its case” (quoted in Rowland 1985, 26). However, scholars have debated whether Aristotle completely separates rhetoric from ethics. Even though he considers rhetoric an amoral tool, Aristotle prescribes some ethical principles for orators (Duska 2014; Johnstone 1980; Kallendorf and Kallendorf 1989; Katz 1999; Sullivan 2004). According to Aristotle, orators should use rhetoric to present both sides of an argument since rhetoric leads to social action (Garver 1985; Johnstone 1980; McKeon 1947; Miller