the arts are made great, not by those who are without scruple in boasting about them, but by those who are able to discover all of the resources which each art affords
The definition of arts. Both Isocrates and Socrates claim that only complete knowledge can meet the definition of arts.
For, excepting these teachers, who does not know that the art of using letters remains fixed and unchanged, so that we continually and invariably use the same letters for the same purposes, while exactly the reverse is true of the art of discourse?
Rhetoric as an art form: fluid and creative; it is not analogous to something as rigid as learning the alphabet.
But I marvel when I observe these men setting themselves up as instructors of youth who cannot see that they are applying the analogy of an art with hard and fast rules to a creative process.
Because, Socrates, the knowledge of the other arts has only to do with some sort of external action, as of the hand; but there is no such action of the hand in rhetoric which works and takes effect only through the medium of discourse. And therefore I am justified in saying that rhetoric treats of discourse.
Very good, Callicles; but will he answer our questions? for I want to hear from him what is the nature of his art, and what it is which he professes and teaches
Socrates wants ask Gorgias questions about rhetoric.
Then why, if you call rhetoric the art which treats of discourse, and all the other arts treat of discourse, do you not call them arts of rhetoric?
it is a fine distinction to classify art and other forms of expression as "arts of rhetoric". "A picture paints a thousand words"
power and art have to be provided in order that we may do no injustic
Relationship of power, art, and justice