Philippine E-Journals

Persuasion Beyond Belief: Plato and Baudrillard Rhetoric and Media

Marc Oliver D. Pasco

Discipline: Philosophy

 

Abstract:

Is contemporary media society still interested in truth? This paper will try to unravel the vaguely suspicious epistemic relationship between information marketers and information consumers in today’s society. There seems to have been forged a feeling of quasi-omniscience within the private and public spheres wherein people, due to the sheer volume of information readily accessible for viewing at any time, become predisposed to exhibit an intriguingly relaxed relationship with knowledge. If the current systems of information seem to trivialize the question of truth or falsehood and since the public apparently is just interested in spectacles, then how must we view epistemologically the status of contemporary media discourse? Does it still reveal truth or is it simply empty talk? To address this question, the paper will discuss a possible parallelism between Plato’s critique of rhetoric in his dialogue, Gorgias, and Jean Baudrillard’s critique of contemporary media society.