Plato and Aristotle are two rhetoricians who had a great impact on the history of rhetoric. Although they were similar in many respects, their use and definition of rhetoric were different. Plato had the more classical approach in which he used rhetoric as an educational means to convey his beliefs and practice of rhetoric to his students. He believed that it should be used to educate the masses, provoking thought and thus preserving that knowledge. Plato thought rhetoric should be used to convey truth, truths already known to the public, revealed through that dialectical critical thinking. Plato also operated on absolute truths, things that are right or wrong, black or white. Aristotle was more modern in that he used rhetoric as a tool of persuasion in the polis. He thought the main purpose of rhetoric was to persuade, provoking emotions in his audience as a tool of persuasion. Aristotle's rhetoric was more science-based, using enthymemes and syllogism to aid logical thinking. He believed that rhetoric was a means of discovering the truth. His rhetoric was highly deliberative as he used it primarily for persuasion. I will discuss their differences in more depth in the following essay. Plato's rhetoric uses dialogue and dialectics as a means of making meaning known. Anthony Petruzzi states that Plato's “Truth is neither a correspondence with an “objective” reality, nor does it exist exclusively as a coherent relationship with a set of social beliefs; rather, the truth is at the same time a revealing and a hiding, or rather a withdrawing arrival” (Petruzzi 6). However, for Plato, truth becomes a question of correspondence or correctness "in the agreement of the mental concept (or representation) with the thing" (Petruzzi 7). In other words, the tr...... middle of the paper... thus helping in the decision-making and knowledge acceptance process” (199). For both Plato and Aristotle, the ultimate goal was truth and justice. For Plato, rhetoric must be used for good to persuade one through speech. The rhetoric for Aristotle, on the other hand, was that the truth could be arrived at by discussing and understanding both sides with the use of knowledge and enthymemes, thus ultimately deciding what is best. For Plato, the primary use of rhetoric should have been to educate rather than just be used to persuade. Persuasion without the intention of discerning the difference between good and evil was disturbing to Plato. Aristotle, in contrast, believed that not all viewers could be effectively informed and that some needed help to be persuaded. For all their differences, both have had important effects on historical rhetoric.