Response for Sept. 18, 2007

Last class period, we spent a good amount of time on the McComiskey article. In the article, the author made arguments to why the real Gorgias wouldn’t have answered the way Plato made him. I thought that his article was interesting because he used a tone and language that made it very convincing to me. The question “did Plato really distort sophistic beliefs to suit his own purposes” was presented at the beginning of the discussion. After reflecting on what other classmates had to say, I believe that Plato did distort the beliefs somewhat. For instance in the second claim, Plato gets Gorgias to accept absolute knowledge, however, in real life he would have rejected it because of his beliefs in the senses. The sophists were interested in the action of an audience, and in some ways Plato was too. Plato didn’t just desire truth and absolute knowledge, he was also persuading his audience to accept his views, school of thought, and teachings. I found it interesting that Plato viewed the sophists with such disdain when he himself was using rhetorical devices.
The other article we spent time on was also interesting in that it was very informative into what kairos was. Before reading the article, I had a vague sense of the word from a freshman philosophy class I took. Anyway, I really enjoyed adapting that to the Martin Luther King Jr. speech. I thought it illustrated the importance of anticipating speaking opportunities and of taking advantage of them when they happen. This is a very elementary example, but I have one friend who does not employ kairos. For instance, she talks about any subject at any time to really anyone. She’s not concerned with the timeliness or appropriateness of her speech because she is more interested in just getting attention from others. Basically, she is not in tune with the community needs around her and is more interested in her own voice. Overall, I think that it is important for people to develop good speaking skills because not only are people making judgments about the speaker and the subject, but they are also making judgments about those associated with the speaker and the subject.