Due to the fact that I am primarily a Philosophy major and secondarily an

Editing, Writing and Media major, I wanted to create a project that evenly
displayed my love for philosophy and writing. I have often times considered
writing the philosophical thoughts of my own in similar ways to The Republic
and Nichomachean Ethics. With this project, I have strived to create, to the
best of my ability and understanding, the responses from a Sophistic
philosopher such as Gorgias, from Plato or Socrates as well as from Aristotle
on the topic of tree houses.
The Sophistic approach to the tree house is to revel in its beauty and
exaggerate the extent of it to all that will listen. I have created a response
that seemingly engages the listeners in excitement and plays the role of an
enabler when discussing the appreciation for the tree house.
My understanding of the potential Platonic approach is to assume that the
true beauty of the tree house lies in its history. The tree house, now old and
starting to rot, is not aesthetically beautiful; but the aging, time and history
within the tree house are what makes it beautiful.
While the Platonic and Sophistic ideals rival at the turn of beauty, the
hypothetical Aristotelian approach impresses upon listeners, or readers, that
the aesthetic of the tree house is irrelevant until one can come to know the
emotional response he has to the tree house, what has caused the tree house
to come into being and what end this reason is working toward. The
emotional response to the tree house is directly correlated to whether or not
the tree house is in accordance with ones personal ends.

In a way I am subtly hinting that both the Sophistic and Platonic approaches
to rhetorical theory are subordinate to the Aristotelian approach due in part
because Aristotle was, in my opinion, the most rational of the three and part
because he was more articulate in nature, making his notions of things more
persuasive at the core.