To Paulinus. (360?)
Your point about the kinship of our professions is well taken. The philosopher and the rhetorician have more in common than either usually admits, and the quarrel between them -- which goes back to Plato, and which neither side has won -- is in many ways a family quarrel: the bitterness comes from proximity, not distance.
Where I differ from you is on the question of priority. You place philosophy first and rhetoric second, as the handmaid of wisdom. I would reverse the order -- not because I think rhetoric more important than truth, but because truth that cannot be communicated is truth that cannot change the world. And what is the purpose of philosophy if not to change the world?
But this is an argument for a long evening with good wine, not for a letter. I look forward to that evening, whenever the gods and our respective obligations permit it.
Your point about the kinship of our professions is well taken. The philosopher and the rhetorician have more in common than either usually admits, and the quarrel between them -- which goes back to Plato, and which neither side has won -- is in many ways a family quarrel: the bitterness comes from proximity, not distance.
Where I differ from you is on the question of priority. You place philosophy first and rhetoric second, as the handmaid of wisdom. I would reverse the order -- not because I think rhetoric more important than truth, but because truth that cannot be communicated is truth that cannot change the world. And what is the purpose of philosophy if not to change the world?
But this is an argument for a long evening with good wine, not for a letter. I look forward to that evening, whenever the gods and our respective obligations permit it.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.