The ancient Greek sophists were the first well-documented teachers of rhetoric. They taught about its importance, its dangers, and, largely, about its techniques. In other words, they cared about arguments and how to make them more effective. Each Sophist, however, had a different idea as to what an “effective argument” meant. In this essay, I will define several types of arguments and ultimately argue in favor of Aristotle’s notion of effective argumentation, borrowing Gorgias’ ideas on truth. Using the sophists, I believe an effective argument is one that moves the audience closer toward the position the speaker wants them to hold, and that the measure of effectiveness is in the amount of said change produced in the desired audience.
Having established the strength of rhetoric, it is essential to examine why we engage with it so frequently and what it reveals about truth. Gorgias, again in the Encomium of Helen, asserts that “if all men on all subjects had both memory of things past and awareness of things present and foreknowledge of the future, speech would not be similarly valuable.” (Gorgias, trans. 1925). He suggests that speech allows us to fill each other’s knowledge gaps; if all individuals possessed complete knowledge, speech would lack rhetorical value and purpose. Conversely, this implies that, due to our imperfect knowledge, we must construct false premises or at least ones we cannot definitively verify. This raises questions about the nature of truth in arguments. In contemporary discourse, much emphasis is placed on truth and persuasion. However, as Gorgias points out, the very essence of speech compels us to navigate uncertainty. All rhetoric, by definition, engages with approximations of the truth rather than objective truth. Aristotle also addresses this in The Art of Rhetoric, stating that “the true and the approximately true are apprehended by the same faculty.” (Aristotle, trans. 1924). Here, he references doxa, a concept I will explore later. The implication is that, cognitively, whether something is genuinely true or merely appears to be true is inconsequential, as the outcomes are the same.
Aristotle posits that rhetoric “In its strict sense, is concerned with the modes of persuasion.” (Aristotle, trans. 1924). Therefore, it logically follows that a rhetorically strong argument is one that is persuasive. If rhetoric is necessary to construct an effective argument, it follows that effectiveness is strictly a measure of persuasion. Thus, an effective argument differs from other forms in a critical way: the goal is not necessarily to align beliefs with truth or reality but to guide an audience in a desired direction. This stands in contrast to what we might label a “productive” argument, where beliefs closely align with reality and enable accurate predictions of events, or a “good” argument, which is logically sound if its premises are true.
Let me illustrate these definitions with some examples. First, consider an effective argument that is both productive and good, exemplified by an October 28, 2021, press release from the Biden White House regarding the Build Back Better Bill. The release is internally consistent; for instance, the section titled “Health Care Expansions” includes subpoints about delivering “health care coverage to up to 4 million uninsured people” and “helping older Americans access affordable hearing care” through Medicare expansion (Biden White House Archives 2021). In this way, the press release maintains focus, unlike popular arguments from the Trump campaign, which, according to the AP, justified tariffs on all foreign goods on the basis of balancing the budget, stopping human trafficking and fentanyl smuggling, imposing global fairness, making America rich, national retaliation, paying for American childcare, and protecting the soul of the nation (Masquelier-Page, 2025).
Biden’s Build Back Better Bill was also productive, as it aligns the audience’s reasoning with real-world data. In other words, it provides the audience with a predictable framework that can be tested. Aristotle would argue that they have substituted a useful “approximate truth” for an unattainable objective truth. Rather than claiming that the economy is better with the bill than without it, Biden’s team breaks down this ultimate truth into measurable approximate truths such as reducing the deficit, creating affordable housing, lowering health premiums, and offering tax credits for families with children (Biden White House Archives 2021). By measuring these metrics and using them as a predictive framework, one can assess productivity. Without these benchmarks, there would be no way to evaluate the real-world impact—or productivity—of the bill.
Finally, how does one measure the effectiveness of this particular press release? One must examine how well the bill fared in relation to the speaker and look at tangible actions that resulted. From July to November, Biden’s approval ratings dipped from 48% to just 42%, while the Build Back Better Act, a central focus of Biden’s rhetoric during this time, maintained an approval rating of 63-62%, according to a series of polls by Gallup, Data for Progress and Navigator Polls (Brenan, 2025) (Conley et al., 2021) (Bennett, 2021). Therefore, there must be some rhetorical influence beyond Biden’s ethos. I propose that the “goodness” and “productivity” of his arguments drove this approval rating so high. The ultimate test for effective rhetoric is whether people will take an action they previously would not have after engaging with the speaker's rhetoric. In the case of the BBB Act, Biden’s rhetoric shines once again. Notably, the press briefing occurred more than seven months after the bill's announcement, during a period of congressional gridlock (Gambino et al., 2021). Remarkably, just 13 days after the press release, Congress approved the BBB Act, overcoming previous hesitations.
In contrast, one of the most striking examples of an argument that lacked goodness and productivity yet proved extremely effective was Donald Trump's “Stop the Steal” rhetoric during the 2020 election. I consider this rhetoric effective due to the events of January 6th, when unprecedented mass protests with violent insurrectionist intentions occurred at a certification ceremony. The AP states that the January 6th Committee final report chiefly implicates Trump’s rhetoric as the cause of the insurrection (Jalonick et al., 2023). However, this rhetoric lacked productivity, as demonstrated by its disconnection from reality; Reuters writes that numerous claims of election fraud were dismissed in courts, even those presided over by Trump-appointed judges, and there has been no substantial evidence supporting such claims (Tanfani & Lewis, 2020).
Furthermore, the arguments lack internal coherence, even Vanity Fair has pointed out that Republican leaders focused solely on the presidential seat during the 2020 election. In doing so, these newly elected officials seemingly disregarded any concerns about fraudulently altered down-ballot races, such as their own, that one would think would accompany an event of widespread fraud from the Democrats (Levin, 2022).
This situation raises an intriguing dilemma: how could an argument that is neither internally nor externally logical be effective as a world-building tool? The answer lies in the relationship between the audience and the speaker. Plato would argue that the dynamic between Trump and his supporters resembles that of a lover and a non-lover. He posits that in relationships of this nature, “fondness of the lover is not a matter of goodwill, but of appetite which he wishes to satisfy: 'Just as the wolf loves the lamb, so the lover adores his beloved.'” (Plato, trans. 1925). In other words, Trump misleads or intentionally conceals the truth from his audience. Continuing with Phaedrus, one could argue he employs “base rhetoric” rather than “noble rhetoric.” (Plato, trans. 1925). Over time, a community forms among those who continually listen to and believe such fabrications. As Gorgias noted, these lies can be as powerful and world-forming as material forces. Now, it has been widely confirmed by the New York Times, CNN, and many other new sources that Trump lied all the time, sometimes multiple times a day (David Leonhardt and Stuart A. Thompson, 2017) (Dale, 2021) Consequently, Trump was able to draw his audience away from the shared reality they once inhabited and into a constructed narrative based on false assumptions—false gap-fillings. This enables him to evade adherence to external logic (predictable facts) and even internal logic, as he can obscure any inconvenient gaps he has filled.
This shared world Trump has created plays mainly off of doxa, or a preexisting set of beliefs, feelings, and opinions held by the audience. Trump had nearly six years up until that point to create the doxa of his supporters. He inundated them with thoughts of corrupt elites, “draining the swamp,” and widespread political corruption (Overby, 2017). I believe these points are what allowed his supporters to ignore the various evidentiary dismissals by the courts, and pre-polarized his audience into being violent towards political opponents. This doxa was also historically inconsistent. Take his praise of Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule. HuffPost quotes Trump as saying, “he’s a brilliant guy. He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist” (Murdock, 2024). The inconsistency comes when this praise is paired with Trump’s disdain towards Xi’s authoritarian policy, specifically using language such as “It is the Chinese Communist Party, with its Marxist- Leninist and mercantilist vision for the world, versus freedom-loving people everywhere” in a November 2020 White House press release (Trump White House Archives 2020). This inconsistency also helped him accomplish much of the election denialism, such as on election day when his supporters would, in different parts of the country, either chant “Stop the Count” or “Count the Vote” depending on whether that country was going blue or red (Bierman & Megerian, 2020).
To conclude, using Gorgias’ concept of truth, alongside Aristotle's definition of rhetoric, and Plato’s understanding of noble and base rhetoric, we see that rhetoric is all about the persuasive power of language, not truth, not morals, but power. Additionally, we understand that the effectiveness of an argument lies in its ability to move an audience toward a desired position, regardless of its alignment with objective reality. By analyzing effective and ineffective political arguments found in the last four years, we can further understand that while logic can certainly be a part of what makes an argument effective, it is not necessary. This ultimately brings about a debate on truth, its role in argumentation, and the way bad faith speakers can use doxa to create their own truths in an effort to pull their audience away from common, predictable discourse.