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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
Cambridge University PressThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK
First published in print format
isbn-13 978-0-521-85847-2
isbn-13 978-0-511-14646-6
Cambridge University Press 2006
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521858472
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision ofrelevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place
without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
isbn-10 0-511-14646-9
isbn-10 0-521-85847-x
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
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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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16 Examining the Master of Rhetoric
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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18 Examining the Master of Rhetoric
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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20 Examining the Master of Rhetoric
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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The Ensnaring of Gorgias, Part One 21
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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22 Examining the Master of Rhetoric
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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The Ensnaring of Gorgias, Part One 23
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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24 Examining the Master of Rhetoric
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 Ensnaring of Gorgias, Part One 25
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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26 Examining the Master of Rhetoric
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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The Ensnaring of Gorgias, Part One 27
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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28 Examining the Master of Rhetoric
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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The Ensnaring of Gorgias, Part Two 29
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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30 Examining the Master of Rhetoric
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 Ensnaring of Gorgias, Part Two 31
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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32 Examining the Master of Rhetoric
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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The Ensnaring of Gorgias, Part Two 33
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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34 Examining the Master of Rhetoric
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
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