On Ritual and Rhetoric in Plato

Abstract

Ancient myth, ritual, and rite had penetrated Plato’s thought to an extraordinary degree. Why did they do so? Evidently these archaic acts and sayings possessed a rather special significance and use for him. One suggestion intended to explain this use is that he recognized their persuasive power. Rhetoric is the art of producing participation by the intermediation of symbols. Participation thus produced is called persuasion. Ritual is a powerful tool for producing persuasion. In combating the Sophists with their own weapons, Plato quite naturally turned to these powerful weapons in the rhetorician’s arsenal. In addition ritual is associated with basic mythic beliefs. These native mythic beliefs of a people predispose them to the acceptance of certain kinds of convictions and to the rejection of others. Plato, who envisaged a truth more difficult to attain than Sophistic beliefs, was, therefore, much concerned with the structure and content of the Greek initial mythic convictions and so no doubt in the question whether or not they were coherent with his own views. Plato, moreover, is not one to accept the use of anything, no matter how apparently effective, until it is seen, in consequence of dialectical testing, to fit into an intelligible and defensible schema. Let us ask, then, concerning the nature of the ritual which descended to Plato and how he converted it to an instrument of his own kind of persuasion, a persuasion effective in various ways even in our own time.