Is Plato’s True Rhetoric True Enough? Gorgias, Phaedrus and the Protreptic Rhetoric of Republic

Rhetoric has always had a bad reputation among philosophers. As far as we know, the first discussion of rhetoric in the history of philosophy takes place in Plato’s works. Plato accuses sophistry as possessing an attitude that contains rhetoric, and thus accuses it for having almost no philosophical value. However, Plato himself uses a kind of rhetoric in some of his works too — this rhetoric can be called a ‘true rhetoric.’ In this work, the notion of rhetoric is analysed considering Gorgias, Phaedrus and Republic, and it will be queried as to whether the ‘true rhetoric’ of Plato is true enough.