DawgNotes

Back in the Phaedrus, Socrates claims rhetoric, “an art which leads the soul by means of words” is equally concerned with small and large things. He goes on to comment that a rhetorician can make the same thing appear just and unjust to different audiences, can make an issue seem to the state good or not good at different times (which, again, is the problem).

After reciting the several elements that are in the books on rhetoric, Socrates compares rhetoric to the art of healing, the latter concerned with the body and the former with the soul. In this section one might think Socrates is actually okay with rhetoric, as he discusses the need for the would-be rhetor to learn study and learn to be good at it:

unless a man take account of the characters of his hearers and is able to divide things by classes and to comprehend particulars under a general idea, he will never attain the highest human perfection in the art of speech. But this ability he will not gain without much diligent toil, which a wise man ought not to undergo for the sake of speaking and acting before men, but that he may be able to speak and to do everything, so far as possible, in a manner pleasing to the gods. (164).

This last reference, of being pleasing to the gods, seems to give rhetoric as practice a good status.

Socrates next comments on writing - which he faults because it cannot engage in dialog, can't respond to questions about its meaning. This, combined with the way written words can be used by both those who understand the meaning and those who don't, creates for him the same problems as rhetoric does. Not because rhetoric is inherently bad, but because it is too easy for rhetoric to be good but not the best, not motivated by pure ideals, rightness or understanding.

This leads us to Plato's reference to cookery. It's not just that rhetoric is like cookery, though Socrates does refer to both of them as producing gratification and pleasure, but that each of these compares to a more serious practice and falls short.

Socrates distinguishes two arts, one, called politics, having to do with the soul and broken down into legislation and justice, and the other having to do with the body and broken down to gymnastics and medicine. Gymnastics to the body is similar to legislation to the soul, and the same with justice and medicine. The first functions to maintain, the latter to repair, or heal. But if flattery comes alone, and pretends to be any of these arts without caring for what is best, she deceives. Offering that which is most immediately pleasant instead of what is best, flattery deceives and leads to folly. In this analogy, "cookery assumes the form of medicine, and pretends to know what foods are best for the body" and so there is a corresponding flattery for each of the four arts:

cookery is flattery disguised as medicine; and in just the same manner self-adornment personates gymnastic: with its rascally, deceitful, ignoble, and illiberal nature it deceives men by forms and colors, polish and dress, so as to make them, in the effort of assuming an extraneous beauty, neglect the native sort that comes through gymnastic. Well, to avoid prolixity, I am willing to put it to you like a geometer…as self-adornment is to gymnastic, so is sophistry to legislation; and as cookery is to medicine, so is rhetoric to justice… (98).

Thus rhetoric, falling into this category of flattery, is not an art, but merely a habitude (production of gratification and pleasure), and it is a disgrace precisely because it "aims at the pleasant and ignores the best" (98).

But Socrates isn't finished with this analogy. After a long part of the dialog having to do with philosophy and the kind of men who should rule in the society, he returns to this comparison to distinguish between sophistic and rhetoric and as he makes this separation he also manages to speak back to Gorgias's comment about the teachers not being responsible for the student misusing the skill:

in reality sophistic is a finer thing than rhetoric by so much as legislation is finer than judicature, and gymnastic than medicine: in fact, for my own part, I always regarded public speakers and sophists as the only people who have no call to complain of the thing that they themselves educate, for its wickedness towards them; as otherwise they must in the same words be also charging themselves with having been of no use to those whom they say they benefit (134).

Gorgias concludes with Socrates emphasizing the importance of being good (rather than just appearing so), of being just, of correcting wrong in every case, of avoiding flattery (as described in the analogy) and by using rhetoric soley for the purpose of "point to what is just" (138).

I'm not convinced, based on these dialogs, that Plato is all that hostile to rhetoric, despite its negative potential. Further, I think the difference between Plato's often referred to comparison of rhetoric to cookery is reductive, and that an effort needs to be make to really draw out the point he is actually making. This is an argument for more emphasis on learning these foundational texts, for reading them carefully taking the time to fully understand these theories.

Plato. “Gorgias.” Bizzell and Herzberg. 87-138.
Plato. “Phaedrus.” Bizzell and Herzberg. 138-168.