devin stauffer the unity of platos gorgias rhetoric, justice, and the philosophic life 2006

7/28/2019 Devin Stauffer the Unity of Platos Gorgias Rhetoric, Justice, And the Philosophic Life 2006

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THE UNITY OF PLATOS GORGIAS

This book brings out the complex unity of Platos Gorgias. Through a care-

ful analysis of the dialogues three main sections, including Socrates famous

quarrel with his archrival Callicles, Devin Stauffer shows how the seem-

ingly disparate themes of rhetoric, justice, and the philosophic life are woven

together into a coherent whole. His interpretation of the Gorgias sheds new

light on Platos thought, showing that Plato and Socrates had a more favorable

view of rhetoric than is usually supposed. Stauffer also challenges common

assumptions concerning the character and purpose of some of Socrates most

famous claims about justice. Written as a close study of the Gorgias, The Unity

of Platos Gorgias treats broad questions concerning Platos moral and political

psychology and uncovers the view of the relationship between philosophy andrhetoric that guided Plato as he wrote his dialogues.

Devin Stauffer is Assistant Professor of Government at The University of Texas

at Austin. He is the author ofPlatos Introduction to the Question of Justice and

coauthor and cotranslator ofEmpire and the Ends of Politics: Platos Menexenus

and Pericles Funeral Oration.


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To Dana


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The Unity of PlatosGorgiasRHETORIC, JUSTICE, AND THE PHILOSOPHIC

LIFE

Devin Stauffer

The University of Texas at Austin


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cambridge university press

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, So Paulo

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Contents

Acknowledgments page vii

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1 Examining the Master of Rhetoric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

The Prelude 17

The Ensnaring of Gorgias, Part One 20

The Ensnaring of Gorgias, Part Two 29

2 Polus and the Dispute about Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Socrates Description of Rhetoric 43

Are Rhetoricians Powerful? 50

The Turn to Justice and the Socratic Thesis 55

Polus Refutation of Socrates 58

Socrates Refutation of Polus 64

3 The Confrontation between Socrates and Callicles . . . . . . . . 82

Callicles Opening Speech 85

Socrates Examination of Callicles View of Justice 92

Moderation versus Immoderation, and the Questionof Hedonism 102

4 Socrates Situation and the Rehabilitation of Rhetoric . . . . 123

Noble Rhetoric, the Order of the Soul, and

the Socratic Thesis 127

v


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vi Contents

Socrates Situation, the Question of Assimilation,

and the Issue of Self-Protection 140

Callicles and His Heroes, True Rhetoric, and SocratesTrue Political Art 149

TheLogos about the Afterlife 167

Conclusion: A Final Reflection on Noble Rhetoric . . . . . . . . . . . 177

Bibliography 183

Index 189


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Acknowledgments

For their financial support while I was working on this book, I would

like to thank the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, the Lynde and Harry

Bradley Foundation, Kenyon College, and The University of Texas at

Austin. I would also like to thank the readers for Cambridge Univer-

sity Press and the colleagues and friends who helped me in various

ways during the years I spent working on this book. In particular,

I am grateful to Fred Baumann, Christopher Bruell, Kirk Emmert,

Robert Faulkner, Pam Jensen, Lorraine Pangle, Thomas Pangle, and

Tim Spiekerman. An earlier version of a section of Chapter 3 appeared

in the Review of Politics in the Fall of 2002.

vii


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Introduction

F ew philosophers have endured more criticism and abuse in mod-ern times than Plato. As one of the great figures of the classicaltradition, Plato was subjected to powerful attacks by the founders of

modern philosophy and their followers, who set out to succeed where

they thought the nave and utopian ancients had failed. And the attacks

on Plato continue unabated today, as postmodernists look back to his

works to find the source of the faith in reason that they want to root out

of the West. Yet, for all that, Plato has not lost his power to attract and

enchant. Those who first sought to overthrow the intellectual authority

of classical philosophy, men such as Machiavelli and Hobbes, would

be amazed to learn that their foe continues to attract partisans and

even devotees. And more recent critics, such as Derrida and Rorty, aresimilarly dismayed that their efforts finally to put Plato to rest have not

succeeded. Is it not a strange feature of our late modern or postmodern

age that there still remains serious interest in Plato?

Yet perhaps the very difference between Plato and his critics, from

the early moderns to those of our time, can help us to understand

why his works have not lost their appeal. For one of the most power-

ful things drawing readers back to Plato today is their sense that his

works contain a richer and truer account of human life, of the soul and

its deepest concerns, than one can find even in the greatest works of

modernphilosophy. In particular, many sense that the modernphiloso-

phers, by emphasizing mans undeniable fear, self-interest, and desire

for power, fail to do justice to the loftier aspects of our humanity and

1


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2 Introduction

to the highest aspirations that are, if not always the most effective,

perhaps the most revealing expressions of human nature. And more

simply, readers are drawn to Plato by what has always drawn readersto him, but now is made all the more appealing by its absence from

modern thought: an answer to the question of the best life, conveyed

by a moving portrait of a noble figure who lived that life.

Of course, to feel an initial attraction to a thinker is not yet to under-

stand his thought, to say nothing of judging its adequacy. Especially

for those of us who are drawn to Plato by an enchantment with his

vision of the philosophic life as it was lived by Socrates, that initial

attraction, if it is to be more than the idle dreaming that his modern

critics claim Plato encourages, must transform itself into a more seri-

ous encounter with his work. What precisely is Platos account of the

philosophic life? How is it related, for instance, to his understanding

of virtue, his estimation of political life, and his analysis of human

nature and human concerns? When we probe questions such as these,

we are likely to find ourselves before long in a state that Plato would

have called aporia a state of perplexity, or, translated more literally,

a state of being without a path. The primary source of our aporia

is the apparently chaotic, strikingly foreign, and undeniably daunting

world that one enters in reading Platos dialogues. Platos dialogues, for

all of their immediate attractiveness, are extremely complex and diffi-cult, perhaps especially so on basic questions such as those I have just

posed. It is true and part of their appeal that Platos works address

some of the simplest questions of human life. But they treat those

questions in ways that are anything but simple or straightforward.

They certainly were not written for readers with the habits formed by

our modern embrace of convenience and efficiency. The experience of

reading Plato, then, is likely for many of us to be a mixture of attrac-

tion and frustration, or of initial attraction followed by a sense of the

great difficulty of understanding Platos treatment of the issues under

discussion in the dialogues.

This mixed experience in reading Plato is provoked by no dialogue

more than by the Gorgias. On the one hand, Plato presents Socrates


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Introduction 3

in the Gorgias as the noble figure whose intransigent defense of moral

principle and the philosophic life draws so many admirers. Especially

in his dispute with Callicles, the most outspoken critic of the philo-sophic life that we find in Platos corpus, Socrates comes to sight as a

hero. In this most memorable part of the dialogue, Socrates confronts

and responds to an attack that has been called, in a famous remark by

Paul Shorey, the most eloquent statement of the immoralists case in

European literature.1 The tension and gravity of the conflict between

Socrates and Callicles have led commentators to speak of the unfor-

gettable intensity, the moral fervor and splendor, the vast scope

and profundity, and the peculiar emotional power of the Gorgias.2

If a story attributed by Themistius to a lost dialogue of Aristotle is

to be believed, they are probably also what led a Corinthian farmer,

after reading the Gorgias, to abandon his farm and devote his life to

Platonic philosophy.3 More broadly, the conflict between Socrates and

Callicles especially the heroic role thatSocratesplays in that conflict

makes it easy to understand why the Gorgias has always been regarded

as one of Platos greatest works, and why it has been popular in every

age in which Plato has been read, including his own.

On the other hand, the conflict between Socrates and Callicles

occupies, roughly speaking, only half of the dialogue. And when one

surveys the dialogue as a whole, it quickly becomes a bewilderingmaze without any clear unifying theme. Largely for this reason, most

1. Shorey, What Plato Said, 154; Shorey is quoted by Dodds, Gorgias, 266,

Newell, Ruling Passion, 1011, and Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue,

126. See also Williams,Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, 22: Once at least

in the history of philosophy the amoralist has been correctly represented as

an alarming figure, in the character of Callicles. So powerful is Calliclesattack on Socrates that several commentators have expressed the view that

Plato must have felt considerable sympathy with it. See Dodds, Gorgias,

1314; Jaeger, Paideia, 2:1378; Kagan, The Great Dialogue, 161.

2. These phrases are from Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, 125; Taylor,

Plato, 103; Jaeger, Paideia, 2:126; Dodds, Gorgias, 31.

3. The passage from Themistius can be found in Grote, Plato, and the Other

Companions of Sokrates, 2:317n.


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4 Introduction

interpretations of the Gorgias have focused almost entirely on the sec-

ond half of the dialogue, especially in their general pronouncements of

what the dialogue is about. We are told, for instance, that the dialogueis about the challenge of defending the basic principles of Socratic

morality against attack from spokesmen for its most drastic alterna-

tive;4 that its purpose is to put a typical life of devotion to the supra-

personalgoodagainst the typical theoryof the will topower at its best

such that life and the way it should be lived . . . is the real theme;5 and

that in the Gorgias Plato sets out to defend the Socratic belief about

justice especially by compelling even a highly critical interlocutor to

accept the Socratic belief.6 These claims reflect the most widely held

view of the dialogue. Broadly speaking, the Gorgias is most often read

as a crucial part of Platos presentation of or, according to some,

a crucial stage in his development of a moral position capable of

overcoming the arguments and attractions of even the most radical

immoralism.7 Yet this view of the dialogue takes its bearings primar-

ily by the section of the dialogue in which Socrates confronts Callicles.

The claims I have quoted display the common but questionable ten-

dency to begin from the second half of the Gorgias in trying to make

sense of the whole. Admittedly gripping and important as the Calli-

cles section is, it is doubtful that the unity of the dialogue and its true

theme can be understood without an adequate consideration of theentire dialogue. Attempts to treat the dialogue as a whole, however,

4. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, 127.

5. Taylor, Plato, 106.

6. Irwin, Platos Ethics, 95.

7. Allowing for considerable differences of nuance and emphasis, this view

is especially common in works that treat the Gorgias in broader studies ofPlatos thought or that discuss the development of classical philosophy as a

whole. For a sense of the very wide range of sources in which a version of

this view can be found, see, in addition to the sources from which I have

quoted above, Jaeger, Paideia, 2:13659; Shorey, What Plato Said, 14150;

Voegelin, Plato, 2445; Santas, Socrates, 21821; Seung, Plato Rediscovered,

17; Romilly, The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens, 15660; MacIntyre,

After Virtue, 1401.


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Introduction 5

are rare, and, in my view, none has successfully explained how its

different parts fit together.8

To be sure, the temptation to move quickly to the conflict betweenSocrates and Callicles is great. Not only are the intensity and gravity

of that section attractive, but even a brief overview of the movement of

the dialogue can show how complex and apparently disorganized it is.

Before the battle between Socrates and Callicles, the dialogue opens

with Socrates arrival at a site in Athens where the famous rhetorician

Gorgias has just finished giving a display of his rhetorical powers.

8. While there have been many discussions of the Gorgias in broad studies of

Platos thought, these discussions generally make only cursory mention of

large sections of the dialogue, often virtually ignoring the first half. This

is true also of the many articles that have been written on the Gorgias.

Of the few book-length works devoted entirely to the Gorgias, two are the

well-known commentaries of Terence Irwin and E. R. Dodds. Since theseare written as commentaries accompanying editions of the Greek text, how-

ever, they provide many interpretive remarks without offering a complete or

unified interpretation of the dialogue as a whole. Beyond the works of Irwin

and Dodds, Ilham Dilmans Morality and the Inner Life is subtitledA Study in

Platos Gorgias. Dilman himself stresses, however, that his book is intended

less as a close textual interpretation of the dialogue than as a wide-ranging

reflection on a cluster of questions presented in the Gorgias approached

as having a life independent of the dialogue (vii). Dilmans study, in anycase, proceeds in a very different way from my own, and it leads to very

different conclusions. The same is true of George Plochmann and Franklin

Robinsons A Friendly Companion to Platos Gorgias. While Plochmann and

Robinson search, as I do, for the unity of the dialogue, they end up, in their

final attempt to provide an intuitive awareness of the unity that binds

together the dialogue, listing nine conclusions that have more to do with

unity in the cosmos as a whole than with unity in the sense of the coher-

ence of the parts of the Gorgias itself (see 3501). Finally, one of the mostinteresting and impressive interpretations of the Gorgias is Seth Benardetes

The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy, half of which is devoted to the

Gorgias. Although I have benefited from Benardetes study, his many fas-

cinating observations are pieced together in a cryptic fashion that seems

intended more to point the reader down intriguing roads of reflection than

to present a clear path that leads from the surface of the text to a unified

interpretation of the dialogue.


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6 Introduction

Socrates speaks first with Gorgias and then with a young admirer of

Gorgias named Polus. A summary of the main themes discussed in

these conversations and then in the Callicles section can suffice tobring out the difficulty of grasping their unity. After discussing with

Gorgias the character of the art of rhetoric and its relationship to jus-

tice, Socratesargueswith Polus about the nobility of rhetoric, and then

engages him in a longer argument about the temptations of tyranny

and about whether it is worse to do injustice or to suffer it. The con-

clusion of Socrates argument with Polus in particular, the conclu-

sion they reach that doing injustice is indeed worse than suffering

it prompts Callicles entry into the conversation. Callicles responds

to a brief provocation from Socrates by delivering a long, vehement

attack both on the position Socrates took in his argument with Polus

and on Socrates way of life as a whole. But following Callicles attack,

which seems initially to bring a measure of clarity to the dialogue by

directing the conversation to the question of the best life, Socrates

returns first to the question of justice, then abruptly turns away from

that question to discuss moderation and self-control. The discussion

of moderation and self-control is followed by a critique of hedonism,

after which Socrates returns to the theme of rhetoric, turns for some

time to the issues of virtue and the proper aims of politics, and then

finally comes back again to rhetoric and to the contest between thephilosophic life and the political life. This is an oversimplified sum-

mary of the dialogue that does not include, among other things, the

theme of punishment, the issue of self-protection, or the account of

the afterlife at the end of the dialogue. What could possibly tie this

apparent chaos of a dialogue together?

The unity of the Gorgias can bebrought out only by a careful study of

the dialogue as a whole, one that follows its every twist and turn, con-

stantly examining the connections between its various parts. Beyond

even what is typical of Platos dialogues, the Gorgias is full of strange

passages, questionable arguments, and confusing transitions. Only a

reading of the dialogue that begins fromthe surface and works through

the complexities that appear even or especially on the surface can


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Introduction 7

reasonably hope to uncover what the dialogue is really about. Such a

reading is what I have attempted in what follows. I have tried to avoid

imposing an order on the dialogue that is not its own. Rather thandefending from the outset a thesis about the dialogues meaning or

ultimate aim, I have attempted to follow the path of the dialogue itself,

raising and wrestling with questions as they come up in the course of

thinking ones way through the text, and allowing the themes of the

dialogue and the connections between them to disclose themselves

gradually. In short, I have tried in my writing to reproduce something

close to my own experience of reading and reflecting on the dialogue.

Admittedly, my approach requires some departure from the most

common modes of analysis and presentation, which have advantages

in terms of clarity and structure of argument. Yet it seems to me that

Platos own art of writing requires a mode of reading and writing that

cannot be tightly bound by conventional practices. Without entering

deeply here into the complex arguments over the significance of Platos

dialogue form, let me state my basic view.9 Because Platos dialogues

are written as unfolding dramas, full of puzzles, perplexities, and even

intentionally flawed arguments, they require readers to do more than

take in information and arguments as they read. They require readers

to wonder, to question, even to speculate and then test speculations

against later passages, and, above all, to think about the issues underdiscussion in a way that at once leads beyond the text and also returns

continually to the details and movement of the conversations Plato

presents. In my view, what more conventional approaches to reading

and writing on Plato gain in clarity and orderliness of presentation,

9. There are a number of excellent discussions of the character of Platos dia-logues and how they should be read. Those that I have found most valuable

are Klein, A Commentary on Platos Meno, 331; Strauss, The City and Man,

5062, On a New Interpretation of Platos Political Philosophy, 34852;

Alfarabi, Platos Laws, 8485; Schleiermacher, Introductions to the Dia-

logues of Plato, 1718; Bolotin, The Life of Philosophy and the Immortality

of the Soul, 3941, Platos Dialogue on Friendship, 1213; Sallis, Being and

Logos, 16; Ahrensdorf, The Death of Socrates and the Life of Philosophy, 37.


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8 Introduction

they lose in arbitrariness of interpretation, which is the result of taking

passages out of context and imposing on Platos writings a structure

that is not their own. For these reasons, too, I think it is counterpro-ductive to give at the outset of an interpretation a full description of

where one is headed. The journey through a Platonic dialogue should

be a journey of gradual discovery, and that process is distorted if the

destination is announced before one begins.

Nevertheless, let me try to provide some orientation by saying a

word about the issues in the Gorgias and the place of the dialogue

in Platos corpus. In the following study, as I have indicated, I try to

follow the movement of the Gorgias on its own terms or as it comes to

sight by following the movement of the text. Yet it is important to keep

in the back of ones mind the relationship of any particular dialogue

to the broader whole composed of all of Platos dialogues. But what

does that mean? Since there are many ways of viewing Platos corpus

many ways of looking at its overall purpose, many ways of ordering

the dialogues, many ways of dividing them into groups, and so forth

any attempt to consider the place of a single dialogue would seem to

cast one into a sea of difficult questions that have been the subject of

long-running controversies. As with the question of the significance of

Platos dialogue form, these controversies are too vast to be considered

in detail here.10

I would submit, however, that it makes the most senseto approach Platos corpus in the way that is suggested by a sweeping

look at the most obvious theme of the dialogues as a whole. That

theme is the life of Socrates. Accordingly, Plato himself would seem to

recommend an approach that focuses, in the first place, on his account

of Socrates life, and that follows the indications the dialogues provide

about the contribution each of them makes to understanding that life.

10. The most helpful discussion of these controversies, and especially of their

roots in the nineteenth century, divide between Friedrich Schleiermacher

and Karl Friedrich Hermann, is Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, 36

48. For two discussions that approach the same issues from a perspective

different from Kahns, see Irwin, Platos Ethics, 316, and Vlastos, Socrates,

Ironist and Moral Philosopher, 45106.


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Introduction 9

Unlike the common efforts to uncover the development of Platos own

thought as it purportedly moved away from its Socratic origins, this

approach is in accord not only with the surface of the dialogues butalso with Platos claim that there are no writings of Plato but that those

that bear his name belong to a Socrates who has become beautiful

and young.11

If one takes this approach to Platos dialogues, the dialogue that

most immediately suggests itself as the proper starting point, and as a

guide to the others, is the Apology of Socrates. Although this dialogue

occurs near the end of Socrates life, it contains the most direct por-

trait of that life. Socrates defense speech at his trial, as it is reported in

the Apology, even includes a kind of Socratic autobiography. Accord-

ing to this autobiography, the most important event in Socrates life

the event that gave his life its distinctive character was a report he

received of a pronouncement by the priestess who spoke for the god

at Delphi that no one surpassed him in wisdom.12 Socrates responded

to this report by devoting much of the rest of his life to the exami-

nation of his fellow citizens as a way of testing the gods claim, and

thus was born his distinctive form of philosophizing.13 Now, whatever

one makes of Socrates response to the pronouncement of the Delphic

Oracle whether one admires it as a model of piety, or raises an eye-

brow at Socrates unwillingness simply to bow to the authority of thegod one of its outcomes, as Socrates stresses, was to arouse the ire

of many of Socrates fellow citizens. This outcome would have been

11. Second Letter314c24. While Platos remark points to the central impor-

tance of his portrait of Socrates, it also suggests that that portrait may be

an embellishment of the historical Socrates. This remark from the Second

Letter should be considered together with Seventh Letter 341b7342a1,another important statement by Plato on his own writings that is in har-

mony with the statement in the Second Letter. Although the authenticity of

Platos letters has been challenged, a strong defense of their authenticity

is Morrow, Platos Epistles, 316. See also Caskey, Again Platos Seventh

Letter, 22027; Rosen, Platos Symposium, xiiixviii.

12. Apology 20c421b5.

13. Apology 21b823c1.


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10 Introduction

predictable, for Socrates examinations of the claims to wisdom made

by some of his fellow citizens not only led to the humiliation of a

number of prominent Athenians, but also implied a refusal on his partto accept the conventional or orthodox views of justice, nobility, and

other important matters.14 To make matters worse, Socrates did not

confinethisrefusal tohimselfbut spread it toat least someof the young

Athenians who became his followers.15 Even in Athens, which was far

from the strictest of the ancient cities, such heterodoxy did more than

make one an outcast from the comfortable circle of communal belief.

We must not forget the simple fact that Socrates was on trial for his

life on charges of not believing in the gods of the city and corrupting

the young. If the fury of the Athenians is hard for us to grasp, that is

a reflection of the great difference between our own modern liberal

political orders and earlier ones that were not shaped by the modern

efforts to do away with the conflict that led to Socrates execution. In

short, the picture of Socrates life that emerges from the Apology is

one that confirms and goes a considerable way toward explaining the

conflict between that life and the city. The Apology teaches us never

to forget Socrates activity of relentless questioning, nor the ultimate

response to that activity by the city of Athens.

The picture of Socrates life that emerges from the Apology should

remain in our minds as we approach Platos other dialogues. This isespecially true of theGorgias,fortheGorgias and theApology are linked

inbothminorand majorways. Oneof the minor links comesat the very

beginning of the Gorgias, where Socrates arrives on the scene together

with his friend Chaerephon, the same man whom he credits with ask-

ing the crucial question of the Delphic Oracle in the Apology. Of the

connections of more obvious significance, the clearest is the promi-

nence of rhetoric as a theme in both dialogues. In theApology, Socrates

denies that he either practices or teaches rhetoric, and he traces the

citys hostility toward him, in part, to the fact that he was slandered

14. See especially Apology 21c323a7.

15. See Apology 23c2d1, 33b9c4.


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Introduction 11

for many years while no one spoke up on his behalf.16 Socrates sug-

gests, then, that rhetoric might have helped to protect him, had he

been more willing to practice it himself or had someone practiced iton his behalf. And this is tied to another broad issue that also links

the Gorgias to the Apology, the issue of what may be called, in broad

terms, the defensibility and the nobility of Socrates life. In a section

of the Apology that follows Socrates Delphic autobiography and his

direct response to the official charges against him, Socrates raises an

objection that sounds very similar to an objection Callicles raises in the

Gorgias. Perhaps someone would say, says Socrates, conjuring up a

potential critic of his life, Arent you ashamed of engaging in a pursuit

from which you now run the risk of dying?17 Not only does this objec-

tion sound as if it could have come from the mouth of Callicles, but

Socrates response in the Apology bears many similarities to positions

he takes in the Gorgias. Most important, he argues in both dialogues

that considerations of reputation and safety should be subordinated

to considerations of justice.18 At least in the Apology, however, the fact

that Socrates offers this argument as a response to an objection he

himself raised, and by doing so presents himself as a hero resembling

the great Achilles,19 should give us some pause. Moreover, while he

suggests that his life resembled that of Achilles in his willingness to

put justice above all other considerations, especially his concern toprotect his own life, Socrates goes on to respond to the understand-

able question of why his devotion to justice did not lead him into

politics by pointing to the risks to his life that political activity would

have entailed.20 The context, character, and seeming inconsistency of

Socrates self-presentation in this crucial section of theApology should

16. See Apology 17a118c8.

17. Apology 28b35.

18. Compare, e.g., Apology 28b530c1 with Gorgias 508c4513d1 and 521b4

522e6.

19. See Apology 28b329b9.

20. Compare Apology 28b531c3 with 31c433a1, especially 32e233a1. Con-

sider also 28d529a2 in light of 21a2c2.


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12 Introduction

lead us to wonder about its purpose. Might Socrates response to the

Calliclean objection he conjures up belong to an effort on his part

to win for himself a certain reputation in his most public and mem-orable of all speeches? In other words, it is reasonable to wonder

whether, despite Socrates disavowal of rhetoric, there is not some-

thing rhetorical about his speech at his trial. Could it be that Socrates

was more open to rhetoric than he explicitly suggests? To be sure, such

a conclusion would require attributing to Socrates a greater concern

with reputation and with the goods provided by reputation than his

explicit self-presentation suggests he had. But is it not possible that

that very self-presentation was a part, not to say the heart, of a kind of

rhetoric?

If the Apology leaves us wondering about these and related ques-

tions, the Gorgias can be of help. For in the Gorgias, we find a much

fuller treatment both of rhetoric and of the question of the defensi-

bility and nobility of Socrates own life. Questions similar to those I

have just raised about the Apology will come up in the course of our

consideration of the Gorgias. For example, we will consider whether

Socrates famous arguments about justice including his striking

claim that doing injustice is always the greatest of all evils, and thus

always worse than suffering injustice should be read as straightfor-

ward expressions of his own convictions. What are we to make, forinstance, of Socrates frequently overlooked acknowledgment that, in

defending this claim, he is not defending a view that he knows to

be true but merely taking a position that no one he encounters can

oppose without becoming ridiculous? Might Socrates defense of this

claim serve more to reveal the depth of the human concern for justice,

even within the souls of such seeming cynics as Polus and Callicles,

than it does to uncover Socrates own deepest convictions? And might

Socrates, in defending this view and also in presenting his own life

as one of heroic resistance to Calliclean temptations, be pointing

toward a form of rhetoric that is nobler than the sophistic rhetoric

practiced by Gorgias? On this last point, it is of course well known

that the Gorgias contains a severe critique of rhetoric. In fact, this


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Introduction 13

critique is second only to Socrates duel with Callicles as the most

memorable feature of the dialogue. But a thorough consideration of

the dialogue as a whole will challenge the common conclusion thatSocrates was simply a critic of rhetoric. Socrates critique of rhetoric,

I will suggest, should be understood as a critique only of a certain

kind of rhetoric, not as a critique of rhetoric as such. This surpris-

ing conclusion, together with the unsettling questions that will arise

about the true character and purpose of Socrates claims about jus-

tice, will lead to a new view of the lessons of the Gorgias. This new

view of the Gorgias can ultimately help us to see Socrates himself in

a new light, and to better understand the philosophic life he lived.

Finally, given the importance of the themes of rhetoric and the philo-

sophic life in the Gorgias, a new understanding of the dialogue can

also shed light on the aims of Platos own literary-rhetorical project.

For the project through which Plato has given us a Socrates who

has become beautiful and young was guided by his appreciation

of the issues and problems that find their fullest expression in the

Gorgias.

Before concluding this introduction and turning to the body of my

study of the Gorgias, I should say a word about the sources I have

consulted in the course of my work on the dialogue. My interpretationhas been influenced by a consideration of the views of other scholars,

including classicists, philosophers, and political theorists. One of the

challenges of Platonic scholarship is to try somehow to synthesize or

at least to give due consideration to a wide range of interpretations,

produced by a wide range of approaches. I have tried to give a fair

hearing to and to learn from commentators who approach the text

with assumptions and interests very different from my own. I also have

been influenced by transcripts of two courses on the Gorgias taught

by Leo Strauss in 1957 and 1963. These transcripts have shaped my

views of the Gorgias as much as any published work I have read. I have

benefited from E. R. Doddss authoritative edition of the Gorgias and

his excellent commentary. Unless otherwise noted, all references in the


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14 Introduction

body of my text are to Doddss edition of the Gorgias. The translations

from the Greek are my own, although I have frequently consulted

the recent translation of the dialogue by James Nichols Jr. All otherreferences to classical texts are in the footnotes; they refer to the most

widely available Greek texts, which for Platos works are the Oxford

editions edited by John Burnet.


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1 Examining the Master of Rhetoric

T he Gorgias is divided into three main sections of unequal length.The shortest of the three sections is Socrates opening conver-sation with Gorgias, which is followed by a longer conversation with

Polus, and then by Socrates much longer confrontation with Callicles.

This movement from briefer to lengthier conversations would seem to

mirror the dialogues ascent in intensity. That is, the dramatic tension

is greater and the themes are more profound in the Polus section than

in the Gorgias section, and the Polus section is surpassed in turn by

the Callicles section.1 Yet the impression conveyed by this movement,

as I stressed in the introduction, should not lead us to overlook the

crucial question of the unity of the dialogue: What ties the three sec-

tions together? Nor should we overlook the fact that the dialogue iscalled Gorgias, a title that may be intended to call attention to the spe-

cial importance of the opening section of the dialogue as somehow

holding the key to its unity.

A more obvious reason that the dialogue is named after Gorgias is

that he is the person to whom Socrates has come to speak as the dia-

logue opens (447a1c4). He is also by far the most eminent of Socrates

three interlocutors. A man who in his own time and for several gen-

erations afterwards would need no introduction, Gorgias was one of

1. Many have stressed this feature of the dialogue. See, e.g., Friedlander, Plato,

2:244; Taylor, Plato, 11516; Jaeger, Paideia, 2:138; Dodds, Gorgias, 45;

Voegelin, Plato, 28; Kahn, Drama and Dialectic in Platos Gorgias, 76.

15


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the ancient worlds most famous rhetoricians and teachers of rhetoric.

Although he came from Sicily, Gorgias was a cosmopolitan man who

spent his life traveling from city to city. His travels were business trav-els. He was in search of audiences to whom he could display his art of

rhetoric and students to whom he could teach it. Since he accepted pay

for teaching the art of clever speaking, and since he was surely in some

sense a wise man, Gorgias can be loosely classed as a sophist.2 Yet

Gorgias is distinguished from at least many of the sophists, and in par-

ticular from Protagoras, the most famous of all sophists, by his denial

that he was a teacher of virtue. Unlike Protagoras and many other

sophists, Gorgias limited his teaching to rhetoric; and he imposed this

limitation on himself not out of humility but out of disdain for those

who claimed to teach virtue.3 Gorgias opinion of himself, if not of the

worth of teaching virtue, was just as high as Protagoras. In fact, it

was so high that, if reports can be trusted, he liked to appear on public

occasions wearing a purple robe styled after the robe worn by the king

of Persia, and when he visited Delphi his offering was a golden statue

of himself.4

Gorgias pride is on full display when we meet him in the Gorgias.

He boasts that he can answer any question put to him (447d6448a2),

laments that no one has asked him anything new for many years

(448a23), and proclaims that he is no ordinary rhetorician but agood one, if you wish to call me, as Homer says, what I boast that

2. In the Greater Hippias, Socrates refers to Gorgias as the sophist from

Leontini (282b45). The question of whether Gorgias should be regarded

as a sophist has been a matter of considerable debate. The most direct dis-

cussion of the issue is Harrison, Was Gorgias a Sophist? 18392; See also

Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement, 26, 4445; Rankin, Sophists, Socratics,and Cynics, 3545; Romilly, The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens, 2, 6073,

9597; Consigny, Gorgias, Sophist and Artist, 132; Dodds, Gorgias, 610.

3. See Meno 95b9c4; consider also Philebus 58a7b3, Greater Hippias 282b4

c1. Compare Protagoras 316c5320c4.

4. SeeDodds, Gorgias, 9; Philostratus,Lives of the Sophists, I.9.16.OnGorgias

pride and wealth, see also Romilly, The Great Sophists of Periclean Athens,

5, 3536; Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement, 26.


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The Prelude 17

I am (449a78). When Socrates arrives at the beginning of the dia-

logue, Gorgias has recently finished giving a display of his powers. As

he learns from Callicles, with whom Gorgias is staying during his visitto Athens, Socrates has shown up too late and missed the splendid

feast (447a16).5

THE PRELUDE (447a1449c8)

Socrates blames his late arrival on his companion Chaerephon, who

caused him to miss Gorgias display by compelling him to linger in

the agora (447a78). In greater need of an explanation than his late

arrival, however, would seem to be Socrates desire to come at all. But

the opening of the dialogue encourages us to consider these questions

together: Why was Socrates delayed in the agora? And why was he

eager to leave behind whatever he was doing in the agora in order

to come to see Gorgias? A possible answer to the first of these ques-

tions emerges if we consider the man who kept Socrates in the agora:

Chaerephon. For it may be no mere coincidence that this is the same

Chaerephon who, according to Socrates autobiographyin theApology,

asked the famous question of the Delphic Oracle Is there anyone

wiser than Socrates? which set in motion Socrates efforts to exam-

ine his fellow citizens in order to test the veracity of the gods answer

5. The precise location of the conversation presented in the Gorgias is left

unclear. While some have suggested that the dialogue takes place at Callicles

house, Dodds has convincingly argued that it is more likely that it occurs

in some unspecified public building in which Gorgias has been speaking.

Dodds suggests that, after an initial encounter between the main partici-

pants outside the building, they then move indoors. See Dodds, Gorgias,188. Consider 447c7, d6. See also Saxonhouse, An Unspoken Theme in

Platos Gorgias, 141; Taylor, Plato, 106.

The date of the conversation is also unclear. The dramatic date of the

Gorgias is impossible to establish due to a series of conflicting indications

within the text itself. On this issue, see Dodds, Gorgias, 1718; Benardete,

The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy, 7; Taylor, Plato, 1045; Fussi, Why

Is the Gorgias So Bitter? 42.


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that no one surpassed him in wisdom.6 Since the examinations that

were made necessary by the gods answer to Chaerephons question

took place in public,7

there may be a deeper meaning to Socratesclaim that he was compelled by Chaerephon to linger in the agora.

Whatever the true nature of the compulsion in question,8 Socrates

lingering in the agora may refer to the time he was forced to spend

investigating the claims to knowledge raised by his fellow citizens.

In other words, it may refer to his activity of dialectical cross-

examination that at a certain point in his life became central to his

search for wisdom.9 If that is what Socrates is referring to, his interest

in speaking to Gorgias comes to sight as a departure from that activity,

although perhaps one connected to it. Could Socrates activity in the

agora somehow contribute to his eagerness to seek out Gorgias? To

avoid speculating any further, let us limit ourselves for now to observ-

ing that Socrates unidentified activity in the agora forms the backdrop

against which the Gorgias unfolds.

Socrates claims that he has come to see Gorgias because he wishes

to learn from him the power of the mans art, and what it is that

he proclaims and teaches (447c23). Now, the most straightforward

way of learning these things would seem to be to watch a display such

as the one Gorgias has just completed before Socrates arrival. But

Socrates rejects the offer of another display by Gorgias. He says thathe wishes instead to converse (dialechthenai) with Gorgias (447b1c4).

Socrates preference for a conversation rather than a display a

6. See Apology 20e621b9. That the role played by Chaerephon at the begin-

ning of the Gorgias establishes a link with the Apology is suggested also by

Saxonhouse, An Unspoken Theme in Platos Gorgias, 1401, and Seung,Plato Rediscovered, 28.

7. See Apology 21b823d2, 29c631a7.

8. Consider Apology 37e338a8.

9. On Socrates turn to his distinctive dialectical activity, see, in addition

to Apology 20c423d2, Phaedo 96a6102a1. See also Phaedrus 229c6230d5;

Xenophon, Memorablia, I.2.1116. Bruell, On the Socratic Education, 1428,

helps to illuminate the passage from the Apology.


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The Prelude 19

preference for what would seem to be a less direct path to his stated

aims adds to the mystery surrounding his intentions in coming to

see Gorgias. And further adding to that mystery is Socrates decisionnot to question Gorgias directly, but to begin by using Chaerephon

as a front man (see 447b8d5). By pushing forward and urging on

Chaerephon, a pale and skinny man nicknamed the bat, who was

perhaps the strangest of Socrates many strange friends,10 Socrates

provokes a skirmish between Chaerephon and Polus, an admirer of

Gorgias who displays the appropriateness of his name, colt, by leap-

ing in to answer in Gorgias place. The bat takes on the colt, or,

alternatively, the poor mans Socrates takes on the poor mans Gorgias,

in what is supposed to be an examination of the identity of Gorgias

art but ends up as a comedy leading to a speech by Polus in praise of

Gorgias art as the noblest of all arts (447d6448c9).

Since Chaerephon proves to be less than a master of cross-

examination, Socrates must step in to object to Polus speech. And

we may safely assume that Socrates never intended to let Chaerephon

do all of his work for him. Nor does Socrates want to spend much time

speaking with Polus. He shoves him out of the way so that he can speak

with Gorgias. Socrates does this by complaining to Gorgias about

Polus speech: rather than answering Chaerephons question by identi-

fying Gorgias art that is, by saying what it is Polus instead praisedthat art as if someone were blaming it (448d1e4). In other words,

Socrates complains that Polus gave a rhetorical rather than a dialecti-

cal answer. With this complaint, together with Socrates further elabo-

ration of it (448e6449a2), an important distinction between rhetoric

and dialectics begins to emerge out of the din of this early bickering

(see especially 448d910). The most obvious difference between the

two, according to Socrates suggestions, is that rhetoric involves giv-

ing long speeches, whereas dialectics involves brief questions and brief

answers (449b4c6). But Socrates also points to another, perhaps more

10. Chaerephons peculiarities made him a favorite target of Aristophanes

ridicule. See Clouds 104, 144ff., 5034, 831, 1465; Birds 1296, 1564.


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fundamental, difference through his complaint about Polus speech:

the difference between praising something as if someone were blam-

ing it, on the one hand, and saying what that thing is, on the other (seeagain 448e37).11

Socrates thus succeeds, even before beginning his conversation with

Gorgias, in bringing to the surface the difference or, perhaps better,

the issue of the difference between Gorgias art of rhetoric and his

own art of dialectics. To be sure, Socrates early treatment of this issue

would seem to be critical of rhetoric. And yet we must bear in mind

that rhetoric is the art about which Socrates has come to speak with

Gorgias. The dramatic situation, in other words, may shed light on the

conversation. As we have already observed, Socrates has come to one

of the most renowned rhetoricians to inquire about rhetoric, leaving

the agora where, we may surmise, he was practicing dialectics. By the

end of the prelude to their conversation, Socrates has secured Gorgias

commitment to have a dialectical discussion. But it will be a dialectical

discussion about rhetoric and one, we may suspect, that will differ in

its aims from Socrates agora dialectics. In any case, the prelude

we have considered does not solve, but serves only to introduce, the

mystery of Socrates interest in Gorgias.

THE ENSNARING OF GORGIAS, PART ONE (449c9455a7)

If the prelude has already indicated something about the character of

rhetoric, Socrates conveys something further through the analogies he

offers as he begins to question Gorgias about his art. Socrates analo-

gies are the arts of weaving and making music (449d24). Although

he brings up these arts merely to illustrate the sense in which the var-

ious arts stand in relation to various beings (e.g., the art of weaving is

11. See Nichols, The Rhetoric of Justice in Platos Gorgias, 1312: According

to Socrates, whereas dialectic seeks to state what a thing is, rhetoric praises

or blames by proclaiming what kind of thing something is. At first sight

rhetoric involves praise and blame, whereas dialectic seeks knowledge that

is more fundamental and, perhaps, dispassionate.


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about [peri] the production of cloaks), Socrates choice of these two

arts as his examples heightens our suspicion that his knowledge of

rhetoric runs deeper than he lets on. For couldnt rhetoric be describedas a kind of weaving of speeches rather than threads to create

protective cloaks?12 And doesnt rhetoric move mens passions and

bewitch their souls in a manner similar to music?13 Despite these indi-

cations that he is not without some understanding already, Socrates

presents himself as eager to learn about rhetoric from Gorgias. The

question he puts to him to initiate their conversation is, What among

the beings is rhetoric about? (449d12), or, reformulated, About

which of the beings is rhetoric a science? (449d9). Gorgias initial

reply is, about speeches (449e1). But Socrates quickly points out that

rhetoric is surely not about all speeches; it is not about the speeches,

for example, that make clear to the sick by what way of life they would

become healthy (449e14). If we put the suggestion conveyed by this

example together with that conveyed by the preceding analogies, we

are led to the suggestion that rhetoric more closely resembles an art

that provides protection through the creation of cloaks and an art that

sways mens passions than it does an art that might clarify the path to

true health.

The purpose at hand, however, is not to uncover Socrates view of

rhetoric but to learn about the art from Gorgias, the presumed mas-ter. Or rather, this is Socrates professed purpose, as we have seen.

Socrates opening question about rhetoric is only the beginning of a

long examination of Gorgias about the nature of his art. Yet this exam-

ination will ultimately lead to the ensnaring of Gorgias in a kind of

Socratic trap: Gorgias will be lured into a crucial blunder, which will

then allow Socrates to win a victory over him. Since their conversation

ends in this way, and since we have already been given reason to won-

der about Socrates motive in approaching Gorgias and to suspect that

Socrates knows more about rhetoric than he lets on, we should keep

12. Cf. Protagoras 316d3e5.

13. Cf. Gorgias, Encomium of Helen, 811.


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awake our doubts that Socrates professed purpose is the final word

about his true purpose. But it is better to withhold judgment about

Socrates true purpose until we have followed the steps in his exami-nation of Gorgias. Before considering why Socrates ensnares Gorgias,

we need to see precisely how he ensnares him.

Socrates has already given two statements of his guiding ques-

tion to Gorgias. His second formulation, which speaks of rhetoric

as a science (episteme, 449d9), has the effect of drawing Gorgias

attention more directly to the knowledge possessed by the rhetori-

cian; and Gorgias affirms that he regards the rhetorician as a knower

(see 449e56). Yet this movement makes even more difficult the task

that Socrates sets for Gorgias of distinguishing rhetoric from the

other arts, since many of the other arts can also be said to be about

speeches, namely, about those speeches that concern the subject mat-

ter (to pragma) of which each art has knowledge (see especially 450b1

2). For instance, just as the medical art is about speeches (those about

diseases), so the gymnastic art is also about speeches (those about

the good and bad condition of bodies). Are these and other such arts,

Socrates asks, also to be regarded as rhetorical since they are about

speeches (450a3b5)? Gorgias first attempt to escape this difficulty is

not to point to a particular subject matter (apragma) of which rhetoric

alone among the artshas knowledge,but rather to suggest that rhetoricis distinctive because it operates entirely through speeches. Unlike the

other arts, each of which involves some handiwork toward which the

artisans knowledge is directed, rhetoric, according to Gorgias, has its

entire action and efficacy through speeches (450b6c2). But this will

not suffice. For while there are indeed many arts that involve a consid-

erable amount of handiwork, Socrates reminds Gorgias that rhetoric is

far from the only art that operates primarily through speeches. Arith-

metic, calculation, geometry, draughts-playing, and many other arts

involve just as little handiwork and operate just as exclusively through

speeches as rhetoric does (450d4451a6). Thus, Socrates reasserts the

issue to Gorgias: try to say what rhetoric, which has its power in

speeches, is about (451a67).


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That Socrates goes on at considerable length to explain how various

arts are about various subject matters (see 451a7c9) makes only

more striking the extreme brevity of Gorgias responses throughoutthis opening section of their conversation. In fact, this is the most

striking feature of Gorgias early attempts to distinguish rhetoric from

the other arts. Next to Socrates lengthier speeches, Gorgias replies

are so remarkably brief that it becomes increasingly difficult to explain

them merely by Gorgias desire to live up to his playful boast that his

vast rhetorical repertoire includes even an unsurpassable capacity for

brief-speaking (see 449b6c8). A more serious reason that Gorgias is

so unforthcoming suggests itself if we reflect on the topic at hand:

the difference between rhetoric and the other arts. For whereas in the

other arts, as Socrates has indicated, the speeches of any given art are

speeches about the subject matter of which that art has knowledge,

that is, about the pragma of the art (see again especially 450b23), this

can be questioned in the case of rhetoric. Is it really true that what

the rhetorician speaks about is the same thing that he knows? Might

it not be the case, instead, that while the rhetorician gives speeches

about many subjects, and most importantly about justice, injustice,

and other such matters, what he knows is not so much these subjects

themselves as the effects that speeches about them have on peoples

souls?14

If so, then the true subject matter of rhetoric is only in a sensespeeches. In a deeper and more precise sense it is the passions or the

human soul, as opposed to the subjects about which the rhetorician

speaks.

But why would this lead Gorgias to give such brief answers? Why

wouldnt he explain the difference between rhetoric and the other arts

and correct the false impression that the relationship of rhetoric to its

subject matter is as simple as that of the other arts? The reason he

14. Consider Protagoras 312d3e6, Phaedrus 259e1260a4, 267a6b2, 272c10

273c5. Seealso Gorgias,Encomium of Helen, 811. On Gorgias appreciation

of the psychological impact of rhetorical speeches, see Romilly, The Great

Sophists in Periclean Athens, 6569.


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does not do so, and the explanation of his brevity, is unlikely to be

a lack of understanding on Gorgias part. A more plausible explana-

tion, especially given Gorgias expertise, is that he is aware that thedifference between rhetoric and the other arts is not unproblematic

for rhetoric. For if rhetoric has the character just ascribed to it, a

problem becomes visible: when speaking about justice, injustice, and

other such matters, the rhetorician must give the impression that these

are his primary concerns, although his deepest concerns or the true

objects of his attention are the souls of his listeners and the effects

his speeches will have on them. But doesnt this expose rhetoric to the

charge of deception and manipulation in matters in which honesty

is most demanded?15 And doesnt rhetoric thus appear as the most

morally questionable of all arts? Gorgias brevity, I suggest, reflects an

awareness of this problem and thus of the need to conceal the true

character of his art. To put this suggestion another way, his brevity is

the brevity of reserve or caution, not a sign of slowness or of pride in

his capacity for brief-speaking.

But Socrates gives Gorgias a chance to be more forthcoming about

his art by shifting the central question as he moves forward. Socrates

guiding question to Gorgias has so far been, in short, What is rhetoric

about? (see especially 449d12, d89, 450b35, 451a67). But after

reconfirming Gorgias view that rhetoric operates through speeches,Socrates now asks: What is this thing among the beings that these

speeches that rhetoric uses are about? (451d16). Although it had

already been stressed that rhetoric operates through speeches, only

now does Socrates ask about the subject of those speeches themselves,

as opposed to the matter of which the art itself has knowledge. This

difference may appear slight, but its significance can be seen by reflect-

ing on the possible divide that I have sketched between what the

rhetorician knows and what he speaks about. Socrates new ques-

tion, no longer requesting an identification of the deepest object of

15. Compare Apology 17a118a6; see also Romilly, The Great Sophists in

Periclean Athens, 6869.


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the rhetoricians knowledge, allows for a franker and fuller answer.

And Gorgias takes the opening he has been offered, thus confirming

that caution has been the source of his restraint. Although still brief,Gorgias response is now much bolder: the speeches that rhetoric uses

are about the greatest and best of human affairs (pragmaton) (451d7

8). With this response, the first glimmers of Gorgias view of rhetoric

become visible. But since Gorgias continues to show some reserve by

clinging to his brief-speaking, Socrates responds to Gorgias bolder

answer with a further maneuver. First, he twists Gorgias answer by

acting as if his claim was not that rhetoric speaks about the greatest

and best of human affairs but rather that rhetoric provides human

beings with the greatest and best benefit (compare 452a45 and c6d4

with 451d58). Socrates is then able to provoke Gorgias by presenting

him with three rivals who would challenge Gorgias (supposed) claim

that rhetoric provides the greatest good for human beings. Reminding

him of a drinking song according to which to be healthy is best, sec-

ond is to have become beautiful, and third is to get rich without fraud,

Socrates conjures up a doctor, a physical trainer, and a moneymaker

to defend the arts that provide each of these goods and to ask Gorgias

what benefit could possibly justify the supremacy of rhetoric (451d9

452d4). Although he distances himself somewhat from this challenge

by speaking as the voice of these rivals, Socrates not-so-subtle strategyhere hardly rises above the level of taunting. To crack Gorgias reserve,

Socrates uses a blunt weapon to strike at his pride.

While his attack is crude, Socrates proves to have chosen his target

well. Gorgias responds to the demand of his rivals that he identify this

greatest good that rhetoric provides for human beings (see 452c8d4)

by giving a bolder and fuller statement than any he has given thus

far. The good that rhetoric provides, he proclaims, is that which is

truly the greatest good and the cause of freedom for human beings

themselves and at the same time of rule over others in each mans own

city (452d58). Despite its boldness, however, Gorgias statement is

not without ambiguity. For what, according to Gorgias, is the greatest

good? Is it the possession of his art itself or the freedom and rule of


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which the art is the cause? A literal reading of his statement suggests

the former, but that is a more enigmatic answer than the latter.16

To understand the ambiguity of Gorgias reply, we must considerhis own situation as a teacher of rhetoric. Gorgias himself is a rhetori-

cian,but not one whohas directedhis art to its typical end. Rather than

enter politics himself, he is content to train aspiring politicians in the

art of speaking persuasively. Thischoicemay reflect a kindof respect or

appreciation on his part for knowledge itself, or at least for the exper-

tise that belongs to his art; yet the knowledge or expertise to which

he has devoted himself would seem to be directed toward the service

of other ends.17 Certainly, Gorgias must appeal to these other ends in

order to attract students, who are eager to possess the rhetoricalart not

for its own sake but for the sake of those ends, or, stated more bluntly,

he must advertise with a more alluring slogan than learn rhetoric for

its own sake.18 Gorgias advertising becomes clear in his response to

Socrates request that he say more about the great good that rhetoric

provides. No longer speaking as if the art of rhetoric were somehow

itself the greatest good that is, no longer preserving the ambiguity

of his preceding statement Gorgias indicates his interest in potential

students by speaking to them directly:19

I at any rate say that [the good provided by rhetoric] is to be able, by

using speeches, to persuade judges in law courts, councilors in the council,

assemblymen in the assembly, and in any other gathering, whenever there

16. Cf. Benardete, The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy, 17.

17. Consider Republic 341c4342e11, 345e5346d8; see also Nichols, The

Rhetoric of Justice in Platos Gorgias, 135.

18. See Dodds, Gorgias, 10: Men like Callicles did not pay high fees to Gor-gias because they enjoyed playing tricks with words, but because they were

hungry for power.

19. We can gather fromthis passage and fromothers (see, e.g., 455c6d5, 458b4

c5) that an audience is watching the conversation between Socrates and

Gorgias. When Gorgias uses the second person in his following statement,

he is speaking directly to the members of that audience. On this issue, see

Lewis, Refutative Rhetoric as True Rhetoric in the Gorgias, 1989.


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is a political gathering. And in fact with this power you will have the doctor

as your slave, and the trainer as your slave and that moneymaker will

come to sight as a moneymaker for another, not for himself, but for you,the one with the ability to speak and to persuade multitudes. (452e18)

If Gorgias pride is one spur to frankness, his related desire to expand

his following of students is another. And most important is the char-

acter of his bold and frank appeal to potential students. Promising

them power and success, he expresses no qualms at the prospect of

manipulation and exploitation.20

Given the blunt and amoral tone of Gorgias statement, we may

be surprised that Socrates does not respond to this statement with a

condemnation of rhetoric. Instead, he responds by embarking with

Gorgias on a joint effort to clarify further the nature of rhetoric, an

effort that has at least the appearance of elaborating a view they share

(consider 452e9455a7). Among the points acknowledged, the soul

is now mentioned for the first time as the object of the rhetoricians

concern: the rhetorician aims to produce persuasion in the souls of his

listeners (see 453a47). Also, Gorgias now speaks even more openly

about the most important topics of the speeches used by rhetoric.

Perhaps encouraged by the impression that he and Socrates are in

agreement, Gorgias distinguishes rhetoric from the many other arts

that can also be said to produce persuasion by saying that rhetoric

produces persuasion in law courts and in other mobs, and about the

things that are just and unjust (454b57). Rhetoric uses speeches

that are, above all, about justice, and it is further distinguished

20. Kastely, In Defense of Platos Gorgias, 100, is wrong to claim that Gorgias

does not defend rhetoric as a means to increase personal power; he seesit as an art existing for the benefit of the community. Romilly, The Great

Sophists of PericleanAthens, 6870, and Weiss, Oh, Brother! 2034, present

more nuanced views, but they, too, describe Gorgias as more public-spirited

than he is. More accurate, in my view, are Dodds, Gorgias, 10; Nichols,

The Rhetoric of Justice in Platos Gorgias, 1335; Rankin, Sophists, Socrat-

ics, and Cynics, 43; Murray, Plato on Power, Moral Responsibility and the

Alleged Neutrality of Gorgias Art of Rhetoric, 3579.


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from those arts that produce persuasion by teaching people about

their subject matters. Unlike those arts that produce knowledge,

rhetoric produces the persuasion of mere belief, or, as Socrates putsit, rhetoric is a craftsman of belief-instilling [pisteutikes] rather than

didactic [didaskalikes] persuasion about the just and the unjust

(454e9455a2).

This last point might seem to be a serious criticism of rhetoric. Is it

not a sign of rhetorics inferiority to the didactic arts, and even of its

manipulative character, that rhetoric produces belief (or trust, pistis)

rather than knowledge? Yet Socrates offers a defense of the manner

in which rhetoric operates. His defense of rhetoric is as simple as it is

powerful: the rhetorician must stick to mere belief-instilling persua-

sion(pisteutikes peithous) becausehe would not beable ina short time

to teach such a large mob such great matters (455a57).21 That this

argument is offered by Socrates rather than Gorgias strengthens the

impression at this point that Socrates and Gorgias are in agreement.

If their conversation ended here, it would be very hard to see what

might divide them. And the argument that Socrates makes is certainly

not without force. Since political life requires even the wisest speakers

to speak for limited amounts of time before many who do not share

their wisdom, effective political speech must include appeals to mere

opinions or beliefs, appeals that have the necessary effect of strength-ening or further instilling those very opinions or beliefs. This neces-

sity preventing political speech from being simply didactic has been

explained best by one of the wisest of all political speakers, Thucydides

Diodotus, who famously described the necessity in the same speech in

which he bowed to it.22 Socrates own acknowledgment of the truth of

the basic Diodotean insight into the nature of political speech should

21. Compare Apology 18e519a7, 37a2b2. See also Benardete, The Rhetoric

of Morality and Philosophy, 2122; Saxonhouse, An Unspoken Theme in

Platos Gorgias, 141.

22. See Thucydides 3.4243. On this passage in Thucydides, see Orwin,

The Humanity of Thucydides, 15862, Democracy and Distrust, 31325;

Bolotin, Thucydides, 2831.


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make us wonder where exactly the difference between Socrates and

Gorgias lies, and whether Socrates is not a more complicated, not to

say less hostile, critic of rhetoric than he is generally taken to be. At anyrate, we should keep this passage in mind when we come to Socrates

later criticisms of rhetoric and as we continue to wonder about the

still unanswered question of Socrates interest in Gorgias.23

THE ENSNARING OF GORGIAS, PART TWO (455a8461b2)

If the impression that heand Socratesare onthe samepagehas encour-

aged Gorgias to be outspoken about his art, Socrates gives Gorgias a

further push before abandoning him. Socrates gives this further push

by combining another argument meant to ruffle Gorgias pride in his

art with a direct appeal to Gorgias desire to attract students. Socrates

argues, first, that when cities make some of their most important deci-

sions, they turn for counsel, not to rhetoricians, but to experts in the

arts most relevant to the matters at hand; for instance, they turn to doc-

tors or shipwrights when they are choosing doctors or shipwrights, to

architects when they are constructing walls, harbors, or dockyards,

and to skilled generals when they are making battle plans (455b2c2).

Or what do you have to say about these things, Gorgias? (455c23).

23. Most commentators share the views of Barker, Greek Political Theory, 134,

that Socrates and Plato held a severely unfavorable view of rhetoric, and

Romilly, The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens, 71, that one of the aims of

the Gorgias is to reject rhetoric utterly. See, e.g., Jaeger, Paideia, 2:127

32; Friedlander, Plato, 2:24755; Grote, Plato, and the Other Companions of

Sokrates, 2:3701; Dilman, Morality and the Inner Life, 1424; Irwin, Platos

Ethics, 9597.Morenuanced views can be found inNichols, TheRhetoricofJustice in Platos Gorgias, 13149; Weiss, Oh, Brother! 195206; Kastely,

In Defense of Platos Gorgias, 96109; Black, Platos View of Rhetoric,

36174. As Black points out, there are a number of passages in other dia-

logues that support the suggestion that Socrates and Plato held a more

complicated and less negative view of rhetoric than most suppose. In

addition to Phaedrus 259e1279c8, see Republic 414b8415c7, 459c8d2,

493c10494a5; Statesman 303e7304e1; Laws 663a9664c2.


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To make sure that Gorgias will respond to this question or challenge

with the least possible detachment, Socrates then reminds him of his

claim to be a teacher of rhetoric and urges him to bear in mind thatthere may be potential students among those listening to their conver-

sation (455c38).24 Socrates even goes so far as to present himself as

a kind of recruiter for Gorgias. Or, more precisely, he presents him-

self as a go-between who is promoting Gorgias business (see 455c5)

while also speaking up for Gorgias potential students who may be

too ashamed to ask the questions on their minds (see 455c6d1).

The shame that may be holding these potential students back may

extend beyond their hesitancy to question such a prominent man as

Gorgias. For their questions, spoken through the mouth of Socrates,

are blunt and self-interested: What will there be for us, Gorgias, if

we associate with you? About what things will we be able to coun-

sel the city? About only the just and the unjust or also about those

things Socrates just mentioned? (455d2e4). Socrates could not pose

the challenge in a more provocative way: Try, then, to answer them

(455e5).

The temptation that Socrates holds out to Gorgias proves to be more

than he can resist. Socrates has been dangling a piece of bait in front

of Gorgias, and Gorgias quickly seizes it. Announcing his intention to

reveal clearly the whole power of rhetoric, he begins by objecting toone of the examples in Socrates previous argument. For surely you

know, he protests, that these dockyards and the Athenian walls and

the preparation of the harbors have come about from Themistocles

counsel, and others from Pericles, not from the craftsmen (455d6

e3). Gorgias invocation of Themistocles and Pericles, the greatest of

all Athenian statesmen-rhetoricians and the men most responsible for

24. Socrates reference to those inside (t on endon ont on) at 455c6 refers, as

Dodds explains, to those who had been listening to Gorgias earlier speech

and are now observing the conversation between Socrates and Gorgias. See

Dodds, Gorgias, 209.


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the rise of the Athenian empire, is only a prelude to his longest speech,

which proclaims and celebrates the power of rhetoric.

In his speech, Gorgias argues that rhetoric is a kind of master ability,because it is the only art that is able to gather under itself all of the

other arts and to put them into its service or into the service of the man

who possesses it (456a78; see again 452e48). This bold claim is to

some extent obscured by Gorgias first example, in which he describes

his own ability as a rhetorician to help his brother and other doctors

by convincing their patients to submit to painful treatments (456b1

5). Although this example conveys the impression that the rhetorician

is an excellent servant of others, Gorgias is unwilling to leave matters

at that, and he goes on to make a much different argument on behalf

of rhetoric. Rhetoric allows the rhetorician himself, if he wishes, to

triumph in any public contest. For instance, if a rhetorician were to

enter a city to compete with a doctor in a contest that required each of

them to speak in the assembly about why he should be chosen as the

citys doctor, the doctor would get nowhere and the rhetorician would

get the job if he wanted it (455b6c2). And the doctor is just one of

the craftsmen who could easily be defeated by the rhetorician, for

there is nothing about which the rhetorician would not speak more

persuasively than any of the other craftsmen before a crowd (456c6

d5). In short, Gorgias argument is that rhetoric is so powerful that therhetorician always wins (see 456c67).

But there is a problem with this argument. For, although it may

be a strong argument for the power of rhetoric, arent the victories

that rhetoric enables the rhetorician to win over the other craftsmen

undeserved? Gorgias argument, in other words, draws attention to

what makes rhetoric so attractive to potential students, but it does

so at the expense of highlighting what is dubious about rhetoric: the

ability to win undeserved victories is an ability that enables one not

only to defeat the other arts but also to triumph over justice itself. This

problem helps to explain the dramatic and sudden turn that occurs

in the middle of Gorgias speech. Immediately after boasting about


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the power rhetoric gives the rhetorician, Gorgias changes course and

argues that rhetoric must not be used unjustly (see 456c6d5; the shift

comes at 456c7).25

According to Gorgias new argument, rhetoric islike any other powerful skill such as skill in boxing or the ability to

fight with weapons that must not be turned to an unjust use. And if

it is ever turned to an unjust use, he argues, the teacher should not be

blamed or punished, since he imparted the art to be used justly and did

not expect the student to abuse his skill: If someone, having become

a rhetorician, does injustice with this power and art, one should not

hate the teacher and expel him from the cities. For he imparted it for

the sake of a just use, but the student used it differently. It is just, then,

to hate, expel, and kill the one who uses it incorrectly, but not the one

who teaches it (457b5c3).

Now, this remarkable change in Gorgias speech reflects his aware-

ness of the straits in which the dubiousness of rhetoric leaves him as

a teacher of rhetoric who has spoken so openly about the power of

rhetoric. Wanting to trumpet the power of his art in order to attract

students, Gorgias is caught between this desire and his awareness that

the teacher of an unjust art must worry about the wrath of the cities.

This tension governs his speech, explaining its movement (compare

especially 456b6c6 with 457a4c3).26 Yet to say that Gorgias has an

awareness of the problem posed by his boasts about the power ofrhetoric is not to say that his awareness is sufficiently acute or that

his solution to the problem is satisfactory. His solution, to repeat, is to

claim that he imparts the art of rhetoric to be used justly and thus to

try to shift all of the blame to the student whenever it is used unjustly.

But this is hardly convincing, since surely a teacher must bear some

responsibility for the unjust use to which a student puts his lessons,

especially if that teacher attracts students in the first place by holding

25. This shift in Gorgias speech is stressed also by Benardete, The Rhetoric of

Morality and Philosophy, 23; see also Weiss, Oh, Brother! 199202.

26. Compare Protagoras 316b8d3. A similar tension can be found inProtagoras

famous speech, which runs from 320c8 to 328d2 of the Protagoras.


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out a vision of the undeserved victories his students will be able to win

once they possess his art (see again 452e18, 456b6c6). Gorgias has

said much more than he should have. He has crossed a crucial line bydrawing so much attention to the power of rhetoric for accomplishing

unjust ends. Perhaps if his art were indeed all-powerful, he would have

no need to worry about its public reputation. But the power of rhetoric

is not so great that it can overcome the need for concealment.27

Considering the retreat with which his speech ends, Gorgias must

have some sense that he made a mistake in the first part of his speech.

If this leaves him worried after his speech, Socrates immediate reply

cannot be encouraging. For Socrates tells Gorgias that he has spot-

ted an inconsistency in what Gorgias has said (457e15). In other

words, Socrates lets Gorgias know that he now has him on a hook.

And Socrates sets this hook more deeply in Gorgias mouth by giv-

ing a long speech about the difference between competitive arguers

who love victory and truth-seekers who would gladly be refuted if they

said something false (457c4458b3). Claiming to belong to the latter

group himself, Socrates gives Gorgias the choice of affirming that he,

too, is such a person and thus continuing the conversation or break-

ing off the conversation where it stands. This choice, of course, is

no real choice at all, since no one with a sense of pride could well

declare himself a lover of victory who would prefer flight to refuta-tion. Gorgias makes some effort to squirm off the hook by appealing

to the members of the audience, who, he points out, must be tired from

watching the display he gave even before Socrates arrival (458b4c2).

But this feeble attempt at escape backfires when Chaerephon and

Callicles speak for the whole audience in urging Gorgias and Socrates

to continue (458c3d4). As he himself acknowledges, Gorgias is stuck,

27. Gorgias dilemma is discussed also by Kahn, Drama and Dialectic in Platos

Gorgias, 8084; Shorey, What Plato Said, 1367; Nichols, The Rhetoric of

Justice in Platos Gorgias, 1334; Romilly, The Great Sophists in Periclean

Athens, 6870; Benardete, The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy, 2425;

Murray, Plato on Power, Moral Responsibility and the Alleged Neutrality

of Gorgias Art of Rhetoric, 35961.


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since it would be shameful to abandon the conversation, especially

for a man who boasts that he can answer any question put to him (see

458d7e2).Socrates proceeds

devin stauffer the unity of platos gorgias rhetoric, justice, and the philosophic life 2006

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