It’s not clear whether
Quintilian is directly answering Plato or simply a tradition of thought that
follows from Plato. Here he answers Plato’s argument that the rhetor must know
all things he speaks of. Instead, Quintilian makes the post-structuralist
argument, than none of us can ever be certain.
“Oratory is the art of speaking well, and the orator knows
how to speak well. But it is said he does not know whether
what he says is true; neither do the philosophers, who say that fire, or water,
or the four elements, or indivisible atoms are the principles from which all
things had their origin, know that what they say is true; nor do those who
calculate the distances of the stars, and the magnitudes of the sun and the
earth, yet every one of them calls his system an art.”
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