Persuasion

Use in the book

At 114b–d Socrates tells Alcibiades to treat him as the Assembly. The prospective public adviser must persuade individuals there too. Teachers of letters and arithmetic are used to support the claim that the same knowledgeable person can persuade one or many about the same subject. The difference of audience size is treated as secondary to knowledge of what is said.

The claim has a polemical purpose. Alcibiades cannot excuse failure to answer one interlocutor by appealing to his imagined success before a crowd. Socrates is not offering a comprehensive sociological theory that audiences never differ in susceptibility or circumstances. He is demanding that public confidence survive a private test of its content.

At 114e Socrates explains why the respondent should speak. Alcibiades would be most fully persuaded if he himself says that the conclusion holds. He is told not to believe another person's assertion unless he hears the point from his own answers. The intended conviction is therefore tied to participation and ownership, although the quality of the underlying inference still matters.

At 124a the same family takes the form of listening to Socrates and the Delphic inscription. Here being persuaded shades into heeding a practical injunction. The sequence joins accepting reasons with acting upon them, without identifying the two. Alcibiades can assent during the conversation while the durability of his changed conduct remains uncertain.

Places to read

1. 114b–114dPersuading one and many is tested through teachers’ subject knowledge
2. 114eThe respondent’s own speech is presented as the strongest route to conviction
3. 124a–124bHeeding Socrates and the inscription introduces the command to know oneself

Translation in this edition

“Persuade” renders the active verb, while “listen to” at 124a renders πειθόμενος. The change reflects context rather than a new Greek root. At 114c–d the question expects agreement that audience size is the proposed difference; reversing its polarity would change the exchange.

πείθω

Attested: πείθειν (peithein; 114b); πεπεισμένος (pepeismenos; 114e); πειθόμενος (peithomenos; 124a). At 114b: Bring a person to accept a claim; Socrates asks why knowledge should persuade a crowd if it cannot persuade one person. At 114e: Fully convinced through one's own answers, the educational purpose Socrates assigns to the respondent's speech. At 124a: Heeding Socrates and the Delphic inscription, a practical response expressed with the persuasion family. Lexical identification: lemma: πείθω. See Persuasion.

Use in the book

In the Hermetic divine assembly, Hermes offers persuasion together with wisdom, self-control, truth, and discovery. Persuasion is thus one of several capacities contributing to the human world. Its proximity to truth is significant, but the list does not define all successful persuasion as truthful.

Places to read

1. I.49.44.32Hermes promises persuasion among his gifts.

Translation in this edition

“Persuasion” preserves both the activity and the capacity; a personal divine figure should be inferred only when the context requires one.

Use in the book

The wind leading a ship supplies an image of guidance without force. Another maxim connects persuasion to what people already want: dissuasion can expose a difference between actual and imagined desire. In the extended oratorical contrast, persuasion makes the audience partners, moving rather than merely holding them and giving feelings and acts of will as well as thoughts. The kneading image keeps the force of this influence visible. A subsequent note rejects the restriction of persuasion to pathos, allowing rightness and clarity of expression to persuade through light. Finally persuasion is valued above conviction because it makes people act rather than chaining them. These contexts make persuasion active without reducing it to coercion or to bare demonstration.

Places to read

1. I, p. 91, entry 7, ¶1Persuasion leads as wind leads a ship.
2. I, p. 293, entry 3, ¶1Dissuasion can disclose what someone actually wants.
3. II, p. 541, entry 14, ¶1The audience participates in persuasive eloquence.
4. II, p. 631, entry 1, ¶1Light and emotion offer different means of persuasion.
5. II, p. 803, entry 4, ¶1Persuasion moves to action where conviction chains.

Translation in this edition

The English translation preserves persuasion and persuade. The rhetorical pathetic concerns emotion, not pitiful quality. Joubert’s attributed Boileau quotation remains distinct from his response; its independent textual location is not established. The God passage is a theological assertion in the notebook, not a translation rule for conviction elsewhere.