Some Issues About Gorgias

Some Issues about Gorgias

By Trish Roberts-Miller

I. General interpretive issues

  1. Ordering of dialogues (Phaedrus, Gorgias, Symposium, so that Symposium represents his final word on persuasion; Symposium, Gorgias, Phaedrus); dating of dialogues (Loeb intro makes it sound definitive).
  2. Premises about argument
    1. people never do wrong if they know right.
    2. Notions of definition: one must identify the unique essence as well as differentiation (man is the two-legged beast without feathers).
    3. ontic logos: geometry describes everything (argument regarding punishment and suffering, cf 496); all effects have a cause.
  3. issues of class, propriety, shameful behavior (see information on erastes and erastemos; Callicles’ irritation with the kinds of examples Socrates presents; issue of whether rhetoric is a techne; analogies)
  4. Behavior of disciples: Alcibiades; Polus; Chaerephon
  5. Notion of antillagies
  6. Relation of doxa and Truth (see also Gadamer’s comments on Phaedrus; similar to arguments in Phaedrus re horse and donkey?)
  7. Meaning of Socrates’ “errors” (see especially Vlastos)
    1. Odd analogies; arguments regarding cause-effect; failure to follow modern notions of formal logic
    2. Foreshadowings? (see esp. 486b, comment re Alcibiades 519a) Irony? Generals are the experts in regard to how to conduct warfare; expert knowledge is more reliable
    3. His use of allegories (story that Socrates tells is a “logos” not a “muthos”)

II. Trad reading of Gorgias

  1. Plato (for whom Socrates is a mouthpiece [“As the conversation proceeds, it becomes increasingly evident that Plato is speaking through the mouth of Socrates to the world at large” Loeb 255]) condemns rhetoric because
    1. Rhetoric uses long speeches, whereas dialectic (his preferred method of communication) is question and answer
      1. From Donald Zeyl’s “Introduction” to the Hackett edition: “The orator has a penchant for long, uninterrupted, stylistically polished speeches; the philosopher has no patience for the long style of speech, insisting instead on discussion, a dialogue in which the participants join together to seek the truth by critically examining one another’s views (e.g., 449b-c). As Plato draws the contrast, this external difference is symptomatic of a much more fundamental difference in aims, values, and methods” (x).
    2. rhetoric has no clearly delineated field of knowledge (what does one know if one knows rhetoric) Plato 453a: “If I follow you souls of an audience.” Plato 454a “In that case, since it’s not the only about?”
    3. rhetoric achieves its ends through pleasing large groups of people (and pleasure has a problematic relation to the good); rhetoric is a kind of flattery
      1. From G.M.A. Grube’s Plato’s Thought: “We have here the main points of Plato’s aversion to rhetoric as taught and practiced. It does not impart knowledge, nor require it in the speaker. It has therefore no firm foundation and, as he goes on to prove to Polus, who has admitted that rhetoric aims at pleasure (462c), it is only a form of flattery” (209).
    4. rhetoric, unlike dialectic, is not concerned with the Truth
  2. Thus, neither Socrates nor Plato use rhetoric
    1. Kinneavy: “Yet persuasive discourse is generically different from reference discourse (and literary and expressive discourse as well). Otherwise everything is rhetoric; even Plato’s dialogues and Aristotle’s treatises and Baudelaire’s poems are rhetorical thought which would cause all three of these gentlemen to turn over in their graves.” (217)
    2. At the same time, however, often seen as an attempt to persuade young men to become philosophers rather than politicians, to study with Plato rather than with his competitors (Loeb intro)
  3. Problems with trad interpretation (heavily influenced by Martha Nussbaums’ Fragility of Goodness, Derrida’s Plato’s Pharmacon, James Kastely’s Rethinking the Rhetorical Tradition)
    1. Socrates gives long speeches (e.g., 451a-d; 452a-d; 455b-d); the dialogues fit the definition of rhetoric
    2. What is the content knowledge of dialectic? Of elenchi?
    3. Fowler (intro to Loeb edition) says that Plato persuaded large groups of people to study with him
    4. Socrates does not claim to know Truth; Plato may have (see quotes from letters)

III. Some interesting interpretive issues regarding historical situation

  1. Is Plato fair to Gorgias (either the person or the character)?
    1. Would he claim to give brief answers (449a) something which more or less gives the field to Socrates?
    2. Would he distinguish between learning and being persuaded? (454d, 455) (Fragments, including criticisms made by enemies indicate he would not)
    3. Would he agree that the rhetor can’t be more persuasive than an expert to a knowledgeable audience? (459a)
    4. Still an issue in r/c: role of “writing experts” in WAC programs, tech writing.
    5. Would he agree that a teacher of rhetoric must teach justice? (459d-461a).
  2. Relationship of Callicles to contemporary politicians
  3. Attitude toward Pericles (Pelopponnesian Wars)
  4. Plato’s dates: c 428-348; Gorgias envoy: 427
  5. Callicles is the erastes of Demos; note argument regarding similarity of temperament between lovers (510c); see also 513a-b
  6. Death of Socrates after a trial with a close verdict (failure of rhetoric?)

IV. Questions regarding method (Plato’s? Socrate’s?)

  1. Strategic action versus dialectic
    1. Distinction on the grounds of the goals of the participants; recriprocity of rules; length of speeches irrelevant
    2. Conflict good, people like Callicles are useful (one pursues the Truth through finding agreement in the midst of deep conflict) [487a, b], but only if they live up to their words (which Callicles doesn’t, see 499c)
    3. so, there might be a dialectic form of rhetoric (catechizing the reader; “self-consuming artifacts” [Fish])
    4. Relationship of Truth and doxa (convention):
    5. Socrates versus Plato? (Socrates grabbed anyone; Plato seems to have insisted on the need for formal and almost religious training)
    6. Similar to role of shame; shame traps Gorgias and Polus (see also Phaedrus); Callicles is without shame (482c-484c), yet very concerned with issues of class and propriety (argument regarding philosophy, “might” (and hence right) of slaves, catamite, cowards 498a-d)
    7. Relationship of argument regarding pleasure to similar arguments in Symposium and Phaedrus
    8. What are the consequences of the kinds of power that rhetoric confers? Is it inherently corrupting? Is it the power to control the mob, or be controlled by the mob (e.g., 466e)? Is there a good kind of rhetoric (that practiced by Plato) which is opposed to the bad kinds (Gorgias’ is unreflective and sloppy; Polus’ is damaging to the traditional values of the community; Callicles’ is shameless [and Callicles doesn’t know Pindar 484b])
    9. Relationship of this view of rhetoric to Aristotle’s (since Aristotle makes a very, very similar defence of rhetoric [morally neutral, similar to teaching boxing [456d-457c]).