Category: Blog

I had an incredible day yesterday with our first in-person class back on the Tampa campus. We are reading Plato in my special topics class, POT 4936 Democracy and Propaganda, and I realized that a big part of the reason why teachers let themselves be exploited as workers, working far more hours than we get paid for, is because we love learning so much. I thought I had a good understanding and appreciating of Plato before this but there’s nothing like teaching Plato to really start seeing all these new connections I never noticed before such as how incredibly cool the dialectic (Socratic method) is and how cleverly it is demonstrated within a dialogue like Gorgias. Previously I would’ve said that the people Socrates talks with in Plato’s dialogues are “defeated” by Socrates’ indefatigable logic but now I realize that it’s not a vanquishing of an opponent so much as it is a collaboration with a colleague. In the Gorgias dialogue Socrates asks Gorgias, an itinerant teacher of rhetoric to say what rhetoric is exactly and Gorgias tries multiple times to define the word. I asked students to list all the ways he tries to define it and what we found was this: first, Gorgias says 1.) rhetoric is speeches, then he has to refine that a couple of times when Socrates points out problems with that definition so Gorgias refines his definition by saying 2.) rhetoric is speeches about things that don’t produce handiwork but then Socrates says that still includes arithmetic and geometry (and we wouldn’t call those things rhetoric would we?). So then Gorgias has to try again and he says 3.) rhetoric is speeches about “the greatest of human affairs.” Finally, Gorgias has to refine the definition even further to say 4.) rhetoric is about political affairs. But even that is still not enough though because when Socrates asks who rhetoric is likely to convince, Gorgias has to admit it doesn’t work on everyone, only on “those who don’t know.” So ultimately, for those who don’t know [much about politics], rhetoric works to convince them of political things.

That’s the definition of rhetoric that they (Socrates and Gorgias) come up with in the first part of the dialogue. It’s not a vanquishing at all, is it? It’s a collaborative endeavor to discover the truth. This truth-discernment process takes a long time and involves quite a lot of work. It would be so much faster if Socrates just told us what rhetoric is in the first place. But if he did that, why should we believe him? Socrates is not God. His is not a divine truth delivered to us from on high. He’s just some dude who lived a long time ago. Sure, he is revered today, but that’s no reason why we should just take his word on faith, is it?

Fortunately we don’t have to rely on faith. Logical reasoning never relies on faith or emotional manipulation to convince us of the truth. By showing us how the dialectic works collaboratively with a partner to build up a definition that proceeds slowly and methodically by adding one premise to another only after everyone has agreed to the previous, Plato shows us an incredibly amazing thing: a universal truth –logic. It’s the method, not its conclusions, that would work in any culture, at any time. It’s absolutely brilliant and not least because it’s so ancient, but because it works.

That’s the power of the dialectic that I am just beginning to appreciate at a new level of understanding this week, all because I got to teach a special topics class at my university.  This is why teachers will give up so much in order to be able to share their love of learning with a new generation of human beings. There is nothing more essential to the human race than this and some or many of us will let ourselves be underpaid, go without health care benefits or retirement funds, even live in poverty because this work is so important.

Remember this on Teacher Appreciation Day whenever that is. And also support your local teacher’s union fighting for better working conditions for teachers everywhere.