Thursday, February 4, 2010
Orators
I agree with the ancient Greeks and feel that an orator should be morally good. For many years in Greece the people there were illiterate and they had no other way to learn about anything besides trusting what the orator told them. On pages 8 and 9 of the text, Trenholm talks about the Renaissance and how even priests were illiterate and had to hire professional dictators to teach them about religious dispensations. During this time, preaching was very important and if a priest needs a professional dictator to teach him about the word of God, then it would be unethical to tell a priest the wrong thing because then he would preach it out to other people and then it just branches off from there. The connection between goodness, truth and public communication is if something is told publically to people that is true then only goodness will come out of it, at least for religion and laws.
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Very interesting post! I actually took the opposite position on the topic, but from reading your post I have seen the other side and understand the question in a different way. My first impression of the question took me in the direction of whether in order to be an orator a person had to be morally good, rather then taking it as should the orator be morally good. I agree with you that the fact that many people were illiterate, an orator had the moral and intellectual obligation to be good since they hold such a high position in society. Unfortunately, human nature is not always so proper, and with increased power, people tend to try to take advantage, fulfill egotistical motives, or etc.
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