Gorgias

Gorgias by Plato

This is, perhaps, my favorite Socratic dialogue. It is sharp, insightful and funny, really funny.

It is also completely timely. If you've spent any time on the internet dialoguing with modern relativists, you will have heard arguments similar to Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles, all of whom channel self-serving arguments based on their own concepts of self-fulfillment.

The dialogue develops by facing Socrates against a series of opponents. First, he deals with the sophist Gorgias on the issue of what Gorgias does as an orator. This leads Gorgias to boast about the power of oratory, which can convince people to do things that they would not ordinarily do. Gorgias lauds oratory as the best skill. To Socrates, this is an empty skill, lacking any core of skill. Sure, Gorgias flatters himself that he can persuade someone to take the medicine that his doctor prescribes, but Gorgias does not know medicine or any other subject. Worse, the craft of oratory comes down to persuasion not oriented toward justice:

“SOCRATES: So evidently oratory produces the persuasion that comes from being convinced, and not the persuasion that comes from teaching, concerning [455] what's just and unjust.”

Gorgias's student, Polus, steps in, which results in Socrates clipping his young wings in short order. This section is particularly funny as Socrates squashes Polus's sophomoric efforts and gives him a lesson in dialogue. I like this dialogue:

“POLUS: Very well, I shall. Tell me, Socrates, since you think Gorgias is confused about oratory, what do you say it is?
SOCRATES: Are you asking me what craft I say it is?
POLUS: Yes, I am.
SOCRATES: To tell you the truth, Polus, I don't think it's a craft at all.
POLUS: Well then, what do you think oratory is?
SOCRATES: In the treatise that I read recently, it's the thing that you say has produced craft.
POLUS: What do you mean?
SOCRATES: I mean a knack.”

And:

“SOCRATES: Since you value gratification, would you like to gratify me on a small matter?
POLUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Ask me now what craft I think pastry baking is.
POLUS: All right, I will. What craft is pastry baking?
SOCRATES: It isn't one at all, Polus. Now say, “What is it then?”
POLUS: All right.
SOCRATES: It's a knack. Say, “A knack for what?”
POLUS: All right.
SOCRATES: For producing gratification.”

It was a knack rather than a craft because a craft actually serves to perfect a human end. A knack is something done for pleasure, a kind of flattery, an imitation of a true craft.

Polus makes a pitch for the desirability of being a tyrant. Socrates argues for the proposition that it is better to suffer injustice than do it:

“SOCRATES: Less so than the one putting him to death, Polus, and less than the one who's justly put to death. POLUS: How can that be, Socrates?
SOCRATES: It's because doing what's unjust is actually the worst thing there is.
POLUS: Really? Is that the worst? Isn't suffering what's unjust still worse?
SOCRATES: No, not in the least.
POLUS: So you'd rather want to suffer what's unjust than do it?
SOCRATES: For my part, I wouldn't want either, but if it had to be one [c] or the other, I would choose suffering over doing what's unjust.”

Socrates reasons that performing injustice deforms the soul, which is the most important part of a man.

Polus is replaced by the immoralist Callicles. Like Polus before him, Callicles derides the prior opponents for being coerced to give ground to Socrates rather than be ashamed by speaking an unpopular truth. Even Callicles goes down when Socrates holds him to his principles. For example, Callicles derides those who follow the law when they have the strength to seize what they want, which leads Socrates to ask about whether a multitude who make the laws are not stronger than a single person, which makes them right. Then Socrates zeroes in on Callicles claim that pleasure is the summum bonum:

//[e] SOCRATES: What if he scratches only his head—or what am I to ask you further? See what you'll answer if somebody asked you one after the other every question that comes next. And isn't the climax of this sort of thing, the life of a catamite,14 a frightfully shameful and miserable one? Or will you have the nerve to say that they are happy as long as they have what they need to their hearts' content?
CALLICLES: Aren't you ashamed, Socrates, to bring our discussion to such matters?
SOCRATES: Is it I who bring them there, my splendid fellow, or is it the man who claims, just like that, that those who enjoy themselves, however [495] they may be doing it, are happy, and doesn't discriminate between good kinds of pleasures and bad? Tell me now too whether you say that the pleasant and the good are the same or whether there is some pleasure that isn't good.
CALLICLES: Well, to keep my argument from being inconsistent if I say that they're different, I say they're the same.”

Eventually, Callicles is forced to agree that there are different kinds of pleasure and that pleasure is not the same thing as good.

The dialogue ends with Socrates telling a story about how humans are judged after death, which is why it is better to suffer injustice than do injustice.

We can see why the philosophies of Socrates and Plato were eventually adopted by the early Christians.

Read the Gorgias. It is entertaining and edifying.