This week, we read excerpts from Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Plato’s Phaedrus. Reading ancient philosophy is always slightly intimidating, but I found both readings to be not only understandable, but surprisingly relevant to modern society.

For instance, in the first chapter of Rhetoric, Aristotle comments on the justice of a judge’s ruling in court and stresses that the verdict should be decided by a judge who is uninfluenced by prejudices, rumors, or the opinions of his colleagues.

It is not right to pervert the judge by moving him to anger or envy or pity — one might as well warp a carpenter’s rule before using it. Again, a litigant has clearly nothing to do but to show that the alleged fact is so or is not so, that it has or has not happened. As to whether a thing is important or unimportant, just or unjust, the judge must surely refuse to take his instructions from the litigants: he must decide for himself all such points as the law-giver has not already defined for him.

I thought this was an interesting scenario for Aristotle to mention because it is extremely applicable to ourselves as individuals in the progressive society we live in. Everyday, we are faced withcountless decisions- from the mundane “what do I wear” to the more significant ones that encourage us to form our own opinions about difficult topics. For instance, prior to the election, I had several politically-charged discussions with my roommates, who both hold opinions on some issues that are quite different from my own. In these mini-debates, I had to take a stance and defend my position and not allow my roommates’ thoughts to influence my own. Today, largely due to the ubiquity of the media, we are constantly bombarded with society’s views of what we should think, how we should act, and who we should be. But I think Aristotle’s comment is point-on: as individuals, we must take this steady stream of messages and information and employ our creativity, intelligence, and personal values to determine what is valid or invalid, true or false.

Furthermore, in Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates and young Phaedrus discuss a speech the young man has recently heard and then debate the use of rhetoric. Phaedrus claims that persuasion is more important than the actual content of a speech. Socrates goes on to claim that:

Every speech must be put together like a living creature, with a body of its own; it must be neither without head nor without legs; and it must have a middle and extremities that are fitting both to one another and to the whole work.

In other words, he believed rhetoric to be a combination of several factors, an argument not just skillfully presented, but well thought-out. This discussion between the two philosophers reminds me of the famous  debate between Vice President Richard Nixon and Democratic candidate Senator John F. Kennedy in the 1960 Presidential election. Americans who listened to the debate on the radio tended to think that Nixon won the debate, while those who viewed the debate on television or in person thought that Kennedy fared better. This goes to show that both Phaedrus and Socrates are correct in their views of rhetoric. John F. Kennedy was known to be an skilled and charismatic orator, capable of persuading audiences through his speech-making abilities. Phaedrus would have appreciated this about the Massachusetts Senator. Meanwhile, Nixon’s argument, while perhaps not as eloquent, contained the structured and thorough argument that Socrates encourages. The philosopher’s distinct views on rhetoric call to mind several more powerful speakers of recent history: from Martin Luther King to President Obama. I believe such talented orators possess a balance of these views: they are at once articulate and knowledgable, persuasive and informative.