Socrates, You Scallywag!
Why are you so good at something you say is bad?
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In one of my favorite scenes from Jason Reitman’s (2006) cult classic “Thank You For Smoking,” the tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) teaches his son Joey (Cameron Bright) how to win a debate using the straw man fallacy.
When Naylor describes how his job “requires a moral flexibility that goes beyond most people,” he’s talking about corporate lobbying. But he’s also describing how most people think of rhetoric.
It’s certainly how Plato thought about rhetoric. In last week’s post, I described Socrates’ epic debate with the rhetorician Gorgias. In what ends up being a pretty brutal philosophical beat down, Socrates describes rhetoric as the ‘knack’ for flattery and deception.
Socrates’ attack on rhetoric is something of a one-two punch. First he indicts rhetoric, making Gorgias and his friends look like a bunch of clowns in the process. Then he successfully establishes philosophy and rhetoric as binary opposites.1 For the next 2,500 years, the former is synonymous with truth and virtue. The latter is a euphemism for bullshit.
This is partly why people think of someone like Nick Naylor when they think of rhetoric. The ‘Naylor archetype’ is charming, charismatic, and willing to do whatever it takes to get the audience on their side.
They’ll use every dirty rhetorical trick in the book, including gaslighting, stonewalling, ad hominems, whataboutism, cherry picking, gish galloping, circular reasoning, dogwhistling, sealioning, moving the goal posts, and the motte-and-bailey. The Nick Naylors of the world don’t care about the truth. The only thing they care about is achieving their own short-term goals.
The persistence (and success) of the Nick Naylor archetype creates a moral dilemma for rhetoricians. It highlights the gap between how we’d like rhetoric to be used (ethically) and how it’s actually used (strategically).
So…Plato’s critique touched on something of a sore spot.
Generally, rhetoricians have two ways of responding to Plato and “the Nick Naylor problem.” The first is what Richard A. Lanham calls the “Weak Defense” of rhetoric, which maintains that rhetoric is a morally neutral tool that can be used (or misused) according to the context and the intentions of the speaker and audience. This is the position Reitman’s film ultimately takes. It is also the position Gorgias tries (and fails) to defend in Plato’s dialogue.
The second is what Lanham calls the “Strong Defense of rhetoric,” which holds that:
since truth comes to humankind in so many diverse and disagreeing forms, we cannot base a polity upon it. We must, instead, devise some system by which we can agree on a series of contingent operating premises.
This is exactly what Socrates does throughout the entirety of Plato’s Gorgias. I’ve always loved how Socrates establishes the terms of the discussion before he cross-examines his opponent. He’s very good at getting his opponents to play by his rules. At the beginning of the dialogue, for example, Socrates asks:
will you continue to ask and answer questions, Gorgias, as we are at present doing, and reserve for another occasion the longer mode of speech which Polus was attempting? Will you keep your promise, and answer shortly the questions which are asked of you?
Socrates is claiming the home court advantage here. Remember, Gorgias is a trained orator who excels at giving speeches in front of a live audience. By getting Gorgias to agree to the dialectical method, Socrates is taking away the latter’s most reliable way of connecting with the audience.
As much as he might dislike rhetoric, Socrates is an excellent rhetorician with a keen understanding of his audience and a flair for drama.
This is partly Plato’s point. After all, if Socrates were a poor speaker or didn’t demonstrate a thorough grasp of rhetorical theory, everyone would dismiss his critique as sour grapes. The fact that Socrates doesn’t have to try very hard to spin circles around these trained rhetoricians is the most compelling and persuasive part of Plato’s argument.
That’s why we shouldn’t be surprised to see Socrates using many of the same rhetorical techniques Naylor teaches his son:
They both ask leading questions and set traps for their opponent. Naylor quickly gets Joey to admit he doesn’t want anything except chocolate, allowing the former to portray the latter as an enemy of choice. Similarly, Plato asks a series of leading questions to bait Gorgias into admitting truly just people have no use for rhetoric, since they’ll never need to be persuaded to do the right thing.
They both know how to reframe the debate around something they’re more prepared to talk about. Naylor turns a disagreement about the best ice cream flavor into a soliloquy on liberty. When Polus compares rhetoricians to tyrants, Socrates seizes the moment and transforms a dispute about the definition of rhetoric into a debate about morality and power.
They are focused persuading the audience, not their opponent. Socrates knows Gorgias himself probably isn’t convinced by the points Socrates is making — you’re not going to persuade someone to stop teaching rhetoric when it’s how they make their living. But it doesn’t matter. The audience knows Socrates is right.
Like Naylor, Socrates knows how to capitalize on his opponents’ mistakes (jumping on Polus when the latter contradicts himself, for example, or rage-baiting Callicles into passionately defending tyranny in front of an audience of democracy-loving Athenians).
They both know good theater is often just as persuasive as a good argument. Remember, Socrates gives Gorgias an opportunity to walk away — presumably to spare the rhetorician the humiliation of being upbraided in front his own audience. This is a rhetorical power move that heightens the dramatic tension by raising the stakes of the proceedings. You can practically hear Socrates cracking his knuckles before he sets to work on Gorgias.
Borrowing Lanham’s terms, we could say Socrates implicitly endorses the “Strong Defense” of rhetoric with his method, while disavowing the “Weak Defense” of rhetoric in his actual debate with Gorgias.
This doesn’t mean Socrates is a hypocrite. It just means that Plato is pragmatic enough to acknowledge that even timeless and universal truth is still socially mediated. It might exist independently, but it needs to be accepted by an audience if it’s going to have any sort of effect.
In next week’s post, I’ll wrap up this series on Plato’s Gorgias by describing how philosophy and rhetoric can be combined to strengthen your writing practices and help you respond to your interlocutors.
In the meantime, good luck with your writing!
Plato’s critique of rhetoric does not go uncontested. In his treatise on the subject, Aristotle offers a few pragmatic observations in defense of rhetoric. First, the truth alone is insufficient to persuade an audience — it often has to be communicated in the right way, at the right time, and by the right person. Second, the truth about particular situations (the details of a crime, for example) can be uncertain or contested. Training in rhetoric helps speakers and audiences identify fallacies and determine what is probably true (in situations where no one can definitively know).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, many philosophers hate Aristotle’s Rhetoric and think it is the worst thing he ever wrote.