Plato and Gorgias on rhetoric

I believe that Gorgias is certainly a very polemical and persuasive piece that demonstrates Plato's own need to use persuasion to capture and lecture to his audience, to which he wants the reader to understand as well as completely agree with his assertions against the sophists, Gorgias and his friends. In effect, Gorgias and Plato are one and the same, especially in their view of trying to persuade others into accepting their orations as doctrine. Interestingly enough, we do not really know if this meeting of the minds ever really took place, and therefore, Plato is using "untruthful" logic to persuade the reader that truth is of a higher being than flattery. Similarly in Phaedrus he attempts to dislodge writing as an acceptable form of communication, when in reality, it is through the medium of writing that he gets his point across to the masses.

Jen