Politics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Politics - Essay Example To be specific he labeled it as a ghost or counterfeit of a part of politics (Plato) Socrates found it shameful but nonetheless revealed that what Gorgias and Polus claims to be an art may be considered under flattery. It is a persuasion not done by organized logic but a form of flattery which reveals that it is not genuine (Plato). To elucidate on this concepts, Socrates used the concepts of medicine and gymnastics as masked by cookery and tiring respectively and as such are knavish, false, ignoble and illiberal (Plato). They are deceitfully overlaid with lines, colors, enamels, garments creating a spurious beauty to the neglect of the true beauty (Plato). Having said this, Socrates considers rhetoric lower than art, not a work of a scholarly person and is fake. Socrates also highlighted the point that rhetoricians can fall to injustice as opposed to Gorgias’ claim that it is to be of noble purpose such as the purpose of those in the field of medicine (Plato). In contrast Socrates refuted that rhetoric can be unjust as evidently given by Polus as an example. As fake, rhetoric cannot be used by men of justice but is associated with perverse men who desire not the good of the society but the pursuit of their own self-interest as seen with the tyrants, who are seen to kill, despoil or exile anyone whom they please (Plato). Men of the state can be rhetoricians who can persuade citizens but not do justly. In the end, Socrates considered them pitiful and definitely not to be envied as he considers the sufferers more blessed than those who bring suffering (Plato). In the end, he even cited that the man who does what he wills even though it is evil is not necessarily powerful because power is evidenced by what is good. A deep stab to the integrity of politics is Socrates’ assertion that rhetoric is under flattery and therefore not genuine. This is a painful truth that everyone