Writing a Conclusion

In Rhetoric, Aristotle argues that the concluding section of a speech should reinforce the various impressions the speaker wants to produce, remind the audience of the main points of his arguments, and contrast his argument with that of his opponent.

For the first composition of this class, we were assigned to create a work of art that interprets an argument from the significant texts of Plato for a contemporary audience. In this composition, I sought to interpret Plato’s theory of truth by drawing on his view of absolute truth as seen in “The Allegory of The Cave”, as well as his argument in Gorgias on the relationship between rhetoric and truth. My piece takes the form of a dodecahedron, a geometrical object with twelve faces. I represented our perception of truth with a picture of a rainbow as captured within droplets of water, with the water’s distortion of the rainbow showing that human perception makes our understanding of truth different from what truth really is. Each face of the dodecahedron holds a different rendering of this same picture as seen shining through the Greek word for truth, “ἀλήθεια”, embodying my claim that rhetoric, or any form of persuasive speech, would not even be able to adequately represent this perception of truth.

In the conclusion of my write-up, I addressed the concept of truth from the perspective of Plato, as well as my response to it. I first reinforced my view that human perception of truth is coloured by the limited way our senses can perceive truth to be. I then established my view of absolute truth – that “our understanding of the world is coloured by human perception, and can never hold the objectivity of pure truth.” On top of reminding the audience of my view on truth, this statement provides the basis on which I contrast Plato’s view on truth, as represented by the Allegory of The Cave.

I proceeded to represent absolute truth and human perception of truth in a way that corresponded with Plato in his allegory. I started with “comparing the things [we] both have said...directly” (284), making parallels between Plato’s analogy and mine, which put our analogies on equal status. To represent absolute truth, Plato uses the real world outside the cave, while I use the actual rainbow. To represent human perception of truth, Plato used the shadows cast on the wall, while I used the picture of rainbow as distorted by the droplet. In order for me to show the validity of my argument, in contrast with the inadequacy of Plato’s, I immediately followed by extending my argument to address ideas beyond what Plato did. I argued that while we assume that the actual rainbow exists based on what we can infer from the distorted light emitting from the water droplet, the rainbow that we assume to exist is a different level of human perception as well. This is because “[d]epending on the light waves and the properties and shape of the refractive body used, it is entirely possible that two different objects (the sources of reflecting light rays) could potentially give us the same image when captured in a photograph.” And it follows that the rainbow is not actually absolute truth, but what we perceive absolute truth to be.

As illustrated in the above example, an effective conclusion should include the following elements: A reiteration of your main ideas, a reinforcement of the impressions you want to have on your audience, and a contrast between your argument with your opponent’s to turn the audience’s views in your favour.