The sophists have been perpetuated in the history of philosophy mainly thanks to their most ferocious critic Plato and his Gorgias, where Socrates brings profound accusations against the practice of the sophists and famously declares that rhetoric is part of the flattery (κολακεία, 463c). This contribution focuses on the responses to the practice of the sophists by Plato and Aristotle, analyzing on the one hand the criticisms made of their practice, on the other, trying to evaluate in what sense the responses of the two philosophers differ. Therefore, taking the controversy of the sophists as a starting point, the paper proceeds by discussing the fundamental differences in the treatment of rhetoric as perceived by Plato and Aristotle. For this reason (and to present a fuller account of Plato's theory of rhetoric) not only Plato's Gorgias but also his Phaedrus is incorporated into the following analysis. Plato on sophists and rhetoric In Gorgias Plato states that rhetoric is not a τέχνη (462b ) and his accusations against sophists or rhetoricians seem to boil down to three closely related arguments: first, that rhetoric does not have its own subject (which would make a τέχνη); secondly (and above all) that the necessary theoretical basis for a τέχνη is missing, and thirdly that rhetoric is used for morally base intentions and pursuits, which corrupt the souls of citizens (503a). And, as will become clear later, a discussion of these issues is offered both in Plato's theory of true rhetoric in the Phaedrus and in Aristotle's treatment of rhetoric in his Rhetoric. Therefore, the accusations presented above are also latently advanced in Phaedrus, where Plato presents his positive concept of rhetoric, but which obviously lies... in the center of the paper... or Plato actually) rhetoric "happens" (McCabe 1994 : 152), sophistic practice has an impact on its audience and therefore it must be possible to discover the system underlying this practice (1.1.1) that allows it to be called art. Furthermore, it seems that Aristotle's response is in some sense more fundamentally a response to Plato, at least in the sense of taking seriously the problems that Plato articulates in his Gorgias as well as his Phaedrus, and of constructing his own theory that does not it would be to suffer from the problems demonstrated in Plato's works. Therefore, Aristotle is in a very deep dialogue with Plato, accepting some of his criticisms against the sophists (rhetoric should be fundamentally a rational practice, with morally neutral objectives), while rejecting others (the appeal to emotions plays an important role in thought of Aristotle). theory, for example).