“A philosopher is someone who takes a natural law and applies logic to the natural law and derives an idea from that logic. On the other pole, a rhetorician has an argument, applies the most effective logic, and compares it to a natural law to conclude one’s definition.” http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jimhinch/A%20Rhetorician's%20Art.pdf

I was googling the definition of rhetorician and this was one of the websites that popped up. I have been sitting here for a really long time trying to think… which one of the blogs I can talk about when I can’t really wrap my head around either topic. So I thought my best bet would be to turn to my good ‘ol friend Google.

Is it sad to think that all of our philosophers are turning into rhetoricians… when we all know that rhetoric’s main purpose is to persuade? It seems to me that the days of Plato and Aristotle sitting around, drinking a class of mead, looking at the stars and getting down to some deep, philosophical conversation are, unfortunately, long gone. Indeed that is a sad thing to me. I bet Plato was a deep dude and awesome to hang out with and just listen to all his ideas and theories. I bet he would have listened to Pink Floyd had he been of this time... but I digress...

Lanham’s theory will have a huge impact on the way composition is taught, as more and more technology is developed and information even more at our fingertips. In the article, it says for rhetoricians, every argument has a counter-argument. The use of the internet makes it so much easier for rhetoricians to go back and forth, debating over who is right in their argument, why they are right… and vice versa. The article also says, “A good rhetorician acts by compromising and correlating spontaneously in a debate in a public sphere of interaction with an audience.” My example of this: blogs. I may be way out in left field here, but it just seems to me that philosophers were the great thinkers and rhetoricians are nothing but megalomaniacs who are hell bent on proving themselves right and persuading their listener over to their side of the argument. I wonder if I am even making any sense. I know what I am trying to say, formulating the idea into a coherent blog… well that is a totally different story.