Rhetoric and the Beast, by Plato

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And you may suppose further, that when, by continually attending upon him, he has become perfect in all this, he calls his knowledge wisdom, and makes of it a system or art, which he proceeds to teach, although he has no real notion of what he means by the principles or passions of which he is speaking, but calls this honourable and that dishonourable, or good or evil, or just or unjust, all in accordance with the tastes and tempers of the great brute. Good he pronounces to be that in which the beast delights, and evil to be that which he dislikes; and he can give no other account of them except that the just and noble are the necessary, having never himself seen, and having no power of explaining to others, the nature of either, or the difference between them, which is immense.

By heaven, would not such a one be a rare educator?

by Plato ?424/423 BC - 348/347 BC

abridged

Abridged from ‘The Republic of Plato; an ideal commonwealth’ (1901) translated by Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893), with an introduction by William Cranston Lawton (1853-1941). The passage occurs in Book IV §493.

Précis

The Sophists, Socrates went on, collect their observations of the human animal in the mass, and make of them a system which they dignify as Wisdom. He wondered that such men, who neither understood nor cared about what they taught except insofar as it stirred a response in the savage public, could be thought of as teachers.

Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

Jigsaws

Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.

Sophists studied popular assemblies. They found out what they liked and disliked. They taught others what they learnt.

See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.

IFashion. IIPass on. IIIResearch.

Précis

Questions for Critics

Jigsaws

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