Plato’s ‘Gorgias’ Lesson 2

Learning Intention:

To identify and define the key concepts in Gorgias.

Reading:

Gorgias : Socrates’ attempts to have Gorgias define ‘what is rhetoric’.

 

The dialogue naturally falls into three divisions, to which the three characters of Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles respectively correspond; and the form and manner change with the stages of the argument. Socrates is deferential towards Gorgias, playful and yet cutting in dealing with the youthful Polus, ironical and sarcastic in his encounter with Callicles. In the first division the question is asked–What is rhetoric? To this there is no answer given, for Gorgias is soon made to contradict himself by Socrates, and the argument is transferred to the hands of his disciple Polus, who rushes to the defence of his master. The answer has at last to be given by Socrates himself, but before he can even explain his meaning to Polus, he must enlighten him upon the great subject of shams or flatteries. When Polus finds his favourite art reduced to the level of cookery, he replies that at any rate rhetoricians, like despots, have great power.

The characters of the three interlocutors also correspond to the parts which are assigned to them. Gorgias is the great rhetorician, now advanced in years, who goes from city to city displaying his talents, and is celebrated throughout Greece. Like all the Sophists in the dialogues of Plato, he is vain and boastful, yet he has also a certain dignity, and is treated by Socrates with considerable respect. But he is no match for him in dialectics. Although he has been teaching rhetoric all his life, he is still incapable of defining his own art. When his ideas begin to clear up, he is unwilling to admit that rhetoric can be wholly separated from justice and injustice, and this lingering sentiment of morality, or regard for public opinion, enables Socrates to detect him in a contradiction.

Taken from: http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/greek/plato/gorgias.html

Independently:

Try to develop your own definitions for the key terms in Gorgias:

What is ‘rhetoric’? what does it mean to be a rhetorician?

What does a rhetorician produce (as a cobbler produces shoes or an painter produces art)?

What is ‘justice’ and ‘injustice’?

Is it possible to teach someone to be just?

Is it possible for a just person to commit an injustice?