A Brief Overview of Rhetoric
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Petraglia-Bahri, Joseph
Georgia Institute of Technology
1996

Abstract:

Rhetoric is arguably one of the oldest disciplines in the world. Its earliest antecedent can be found in the sophist tradition of Classical Greece. Two of the earliest sophists, Tisias and Corax, made a comfortable living traveling around Hellenic Europe teaching people the finer points of oratory. The sophistic tradition was harshly criticized by major philosophers of the time (most notably, Socrates and Plato) as an unintellectual and immoral profession. In Plato's view, rhetoricians (i.e., sophists) were more concerned with appearances rather than substance--in Plato's play Gorgias, he has the character of Socrates accuse the rhetorician/sophist Gorgias of specializing in making the bad case seem best and the best case seem bad.