• Persuasion, Communication, and Our Moral Obligations

    What does ancient Greek rhetoric have to do with today? Perhaps we don’t recognize it with its official title, as it is more commonly referred to as the art of persuasion. Often, when we learn or reflect on history, we don’t look at it through a lens of communication. However, different forms of communication and their advancements over time have helped contribute to significant societal downfalls, which makes it worth paying attention to. In the early democratic cultures of Athens and Rome, citizens were afforded access to information and an open system of debate to prepare them for voting. But true to human nature, deceptive propaganda soon overwhelmed both cities,…