This video is part of my POT4936 class, Democracy and Propaganda, in which students read a variety of political theory texts relating to truth, propaganda, and democracy. In this video I talk about the first part of Plato's dialogue with Gorgias in which the two work together to come up with a definition of rhetoric. By asking students to identify each step of the process we can see how truly collaborative the Socratic method is. Gorgias is not a vanquished foe that Socrates defeats and he is not merely a sounding-board for Socrates' ideas. Gorgias participates in building the definition of rhetoric just as much as Socrates does. That's how the dialectic works. It's a long, time-consuming process but it works by showing us how the truth is arrived at. The truth is not given to us from on high. Socrates is not a God. His is not a divine truth. His truth discernment process (logical reasoning) does not require us to believe anything on faith. Why should we believe Plato and Socrates? Not because they're famous revered philosophers but because the dialectic shows us how logic works. That's the take-away for this video/class.