6 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2018
  2. Jul 2017
  3. Sep 2013
    1. Moreover, (2) before some audiences not even the possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct. Here, then, we must use, as our modes of persuasion and argument, notions possessed by everybody, as we observed in the Topics when dealing with the way to handle a popular audience.

      Reminds of me Isocrates in a strange way. He spoke against the Sophists in that they didn't have a complete knowledge of things teachable. Yet even with a complete knowledge there still isn't a way to reach everyone in your audience. Persuasion without disclosure of complete knowledge seems to win out.

    1. But I urge all who intend to acquaint themselves with my speech, first, to make allowance, as they listen to it, for the fact that it is a mixed discourse, composed with an eye to all these subjects; next, to fix their attention even more on what is about to be said than on what has been said before; and, lastly, not to seek to run through the whole of it at the first sitting, but only so much of it as will not fatigue the audience.

      Guidelines for approaching this writing.

    2. It is, at any rate, written with devotion to the truth

      Key point. His aim is Truth with a capital T.

    3. being frank discussions about philosophy and expositions of its power.

      Topic of discussion