Gorgias, Encomium of Helen Response

For Tuesday's blog, I wanted to focus on a comparison of two statements from Gorgias' Encomium of Helen.  By using the power of speech as one of his proving points, Gorgias explains why Helen is innocent of the blame put upon her. Gorgias argues that though the claims made in a speech may not always be true, it can still impact the audience in the way that their emotions are manipulated to view a subject in a certain way. Near the end of this proof, Gorgias compares speech to a drug, in that as a drug dispersed in the body can either improve or diminish the physical well-being of a person, speech has the same influence over the mind as it can cause pain or happiness and all emotions in between (13, 14). Earlier in the passage, Gorgias' claims that since most people are  not experts on all subjects and usually don't seek such extensive expertise, the often turn to the opinions of others and accept them as truth (11). The comparison of these two passages demonstrates the undeniable power of speech. From this, we can draw that our emotions are rarely influenced by truth, but often, we are persuaded to act on untruthful opinions, which time and time again, has proven disastrous.

General Introduction Responce

While reading the introduction, I really enjoyed reading the history of rhetoric. One thing I found interesting was under audience analysis when Aristotle said that people are out to seek their own self interest. Throughout the Medieval rhetoric section, I thought that that proved true with the Christian Church and their disregard for Pagan rhetoric. Also, I found Bacon's argument that human knowledge is only a version of the objective truth because it is blurred with bias proves true with today's media and literature. It seems today that we have to take what we read with a grain of salt because the media has cemented the reputation as being a slanted and untrustworthy source of information.