PHIL 211 PNU Dialogue Between Socrates and Phaedrus Discussion
I’m trying to learn for my Philosophy class and I’m stuck. Can you help?
In the broader context of the Phaedrus, explain Plato’s point when he writes:
“And so, when a rhetorician who does not know good from bad addresses a city which knows no better and attempts to sway it, not praising a miserable donkey as if it were a horse, but bad as if it were good, and, having studied what the people believe, persuades them to do something bad instead of good—with that as its seed, what sort of crop do you think rhetoric can harvest?” (260c).
Your job in the paper is to explain what this passage means in context, including why the issue it represents is raised and what point Plato is trying to make by raising it.