Gorgias

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GORGIAS

by Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION.

In several of the dialogues of Plato, doubts have arisen among his
interpreters as to which of the various subjects discussed in them is the
main thesis. The speakers have the freedom of conversation; no severe
rules of art restrict them, and sometimes we are inclined to think, with
one of the dramatis personae in the Theaetetus, that the digressions have
the greater interest. Yet in the most irregular of the dialogues there is
also a certain natural growth or unity; the beginning is not forgotten at
the end, and numerous allusions and references are interspersed, which form
the loose connecting links of the whole. We must not neglect this unity,
but neither must we attempt to confine the Platonic dialogue on the
Procrustean bed of a single idea. (Compare Introduction to the Phaedrus.)

Two tendencies seem to have beset the interpreters of Plato in this matter.
First, they have endeavoured to hang the dialogues upon one another by the
slightest threads; and have thus been led to opposite and contradictory
assertions respecting their order and sequence. The mantle of
Schleiermacher has descended upon his successors, who have applied his
method with the most various results. The value and use of the method has
been hardly, if at all, examined either by him or them. Secondly, they
have extended almost indefinitely the scope of each separate dialogue; in
this way they think that they have escaped all difficulties, not seeing
that what they have gained in generality they have lost in truth and
distinctness. Metaphysical conceptions easily pass into one another; and
the simpler notions of antiquity, which we can only realize by an effort,
imperceptibly blend with the more familiar theories of modern philosophers.
An eye for proportion is needed (his own art of measuring) in the study of
Plato, as well as of other great artists. We may hardly admit that the
moral antithesis of good and pleasure, or the intellectual antithesis of
knowledge and opinion, being and appearance, are never far off in a
Platonic discussion. But because they are in the background, we should not
bring them into the foreground, or expect to discern them equally in all
the dialogues.

There may be some advantage in drawing out a little the main outlines of
the building; but the use of this is limited, and may be easily
exaggerated. We may give Plato too much system, and alter the natural form
and connection of his thoughts. Under the idea that his dialogues are
finished works of art, we may find a reason for everything, and lose the
highest characteristic of art, which is simplicity. Most great works
receive a new light from a new and original mind. But whether these new
lights are true or only suggestive, will depend on their agreement with the
spirit of Plato, and the amount of direct evidence which can be urged in
support of them. When a theory is running away with us, criticism does a
friendly office in counselling moderation, and recalling us to the
indications of the text.

Like the Phaedrus, the Gorgias has puzzled students of Plato by the
appearance of two or more subjects. Under the cover of rhetoric higher
themes are introduced; the argument expands into a general view of the good
and evil of man. After making an ineffectual attempt to obtain a sound
definition of his art from Gorgias, Socrates assumes the existence of a
universal art of flattery or simulation having several branches:--this is
the genus of which rhetoric is only one, and not the highest species. To
flattery is opposed the true and noble art of life which he who possesses
seeks always to impart to others, and which at last triumphs, if not here,
at any rate in another world. These two aspects of life and knowledge
appear to be the two leading ideas of the dialogue. The true and the false
in individuals and states, in the treatment of the soul as well as of the
body, are conceived under the forms of true and false art. In the
development of this opposition there arise various other questions, such as
the two famous paradoxes of Socrates (paradoxes as they are to the world in
general, ideals as they may be more worthily called): (1) that to do is
worse than to suffer evil; and (2) that when a man has done evil he had
better be punished than unpunished; to which may be added (3) a third
Socratic paradox or ideal, that bad men do what they think best, but not
what they desire, for the desire of all is towards the good. That pleasure
is to be distinguished from good is proved by the simultaneousness of
pleasure and pain, and by the possibility of the bad having in certain
cases pleasures as great as those of the good, or even greater. Not merely
rhetoricians, but poets, musicians, and other artists, the whole tribe of
statesmen, past as well as present, are included in the class of
flatterers. The true and false finally appear before the judgment-seat of
the gods below.

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.
Socrates denies that they have any real power, and hence arise the three
paradoxes already mentioned. Although they are strange to him, Polus is at
last convinced of their truth; at least, they seem to him to follow
legitimately from the premises. Thus the second act of the dialogue
closes. Then Callicles appears on the scene, at first maintaining that
pleasure is good, and that might is right, and that law is nothing but the
combination of the many weak against the few strong. When he is confuted
he withdraws from the argument, and leaves Socrates to arrive at the
conclusion by himself. The conclusion is that there are two kinds of
statesmanship, a higher and a lower--that which makes the people better,
and that which only flatters them, and he exhorts Callicles to choose the
higher. The dialogue terminates with a mythus of a final judgment, in
which there will be no more flattery or disguise, and no further use for
the teaching of rhetoric.

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. Like
Protagoras, he is described as of a generous nature; he expresses his
approbation of Socrates' manner of approaching a question; he is quite 'one
of Socrates' sort, ready to be refuted as well as to refute,' and very
eager that Callicles and Socrates should have the game out. He knows by
experience that rhetoric exercises great influence over other men, but he
is unable to explain the puzzle how rhetoric can teach everything and know
nothing.

Polus is an impetuous youth, a runaway 'colt,' as Socrates describes him,
who wanted originally to have taken the place of Gorgias under the pretext
that the old man was tired, and now avails himself of the earliest
opportunity to enter the lists. He is said to be the author of a work on
rhetoric, and is again mentioned in the Phaedrus, as the inventor of
balanced or double forms of speech (compare Gorg.; Symp.). At first he is
violent and ill-mannered, and is angry at seeing his master overthrown.
But in the judicious hands of Socrates he is soon restored to good-humour,
and compelled to assent to the required conclusion. Like Gorgias, he is
overthrown because he compromises; he is unwilling to say that to do is
fairer or more honourable than to suffer injustice. Though he is
fascinated by the power of rhetoric, and dazzled by the splendour of
success, he is not insensible to higher arguments. Plato may have felt
that there would be an incongruity in a youth maintaining the cause of
injustice against the world. He has never heard the other side of the
question, and he listens to the paradoxes, as they appear to him, of
Socrates with evident astonishment. He can hardly understand the meaning
of Archelaus being miserable, or of rhetoric being only useful in self-
accusation. When the argument with him has fairly run out,

Callicles, in whose house they are assembled, is introduced on the stage:
he is with difficulty convinced that Socrates is in earnest; for if these
things are true, then, as he says with real emotion, the foundations of
society are upside down. In him another type of character is represented;
he is neither sophist nor philosopher, but man of the world, and an
accomplished Athenian gentleman. He might be described in modern language
as a cynic or materialist, a lover of power and also of pleasure, and
unscrupulous in his means of attaining both. There is no desire on his
part to offer any compromise in the interests of morality; nor is any
concession made by him. Like Thrasymachus in the Republic, though he is
not of the same weak and vulgar class, he consistently maintains that might
is right. His great motive of action is political ambition; in this he is
characteristically Greek. Like Anytus in the Meno, he is the enemy of the
Sophists; but favours the new art of rhetoric, which he regards as an
excellent weapon of attack and defence. He is a despiser of mankind as he
is of philosophy, and sees in the laws of the state only a violation of the
order of nature, which intended that the stronger should govern the weaker
(compare Republic). Like other men of the world who are of a speculative
turn of mind, he generalizes the bad side of human nature, and has easily
brought down his principles to his practice. Philosophy and poetry alike
supply him with distinctions suited to his view of human life. He has a
good will to Socrates, whose talents he evidently admires, while he
censures the puerile use which he makes of them. He expresses a keen
intellectual interest in the argument. Like Anytus, again, he has a
sympathy with other men of the world; the Athenian statesmen of a former
generation, who showed no weakness and made no mistakes, such as Miltiades,
Themistocles, Pericles, are his favourites. His ideal of human character
is a man of great passions and great powers, which he has developed to the
utmost, and which he uses in his own enjoyment and in the government of
others. Had Critias been the name instead of Callicles, about whom we know
nothing from other sources, the opinions of the man would have seemed to
reflect the history of his life.

And now the combat deepens. In Callicles, far more than in any sophist or
rhetorician, is concentrated the spirit of evil against which Socrates is
contending, the spirit of the world, the spirit of the many contending
against the one wise man, of which the Sophists, as he describes them in
the Republic, are the imitators rather than the authors, being themselves
carried away by the great tide of public opinion. Socrates approaches his
antagonist warily from a distance, with a sort of irony which touches with
a light hand both his personal vices (probably in allusion to some scandal
of the day) and his servility to the populace. At the same time, he is in
most profound earnest, as Chaerephon remarks. Callicles soon loses his
temper, but the more he is irritated, the more provoking and matter of fact
does Socrates become. A repartee of his which appears to have been really
made to the 'omniscient' Hippias, according to the testimony of Xenophon
(Mem.), is introduced. He is called by Callicles a popular declaimer, and
certainly shows that he has the power, in the words of Gorgias, of being
'as long as he pleases,' or 'as short as he pleases' (compare Protag.).
Callicles exhibits great ability in defending himself and attacking
Socrates, whom he accuses of trifling and word-splitting; he is scandalized
that the legitimate consequences of his own argument should be stated in
plain terms; after the manner of men of the world, he wishes to preserve
the decencies of life. But he cannot consistently maintain the bad sense
of words; and getting confused between the abstract notions of better,
superior, stronger, he is easily turned round by Socrates, and only induced
to continue the argument by the authority of Gorgias. Once, when Socrates
is describing the manner in which the ambitious citizen has to identify
himself with the people, he partially recognizes the truth of his words.

The Socrates of the Gorgias may be compared with the Socrates of the
Protagoras and Meno. As in other dialogues, he is the enemy of the
Sophists and rhetoricians; and also of the statesmen, whom he regards as
another variety of the same species. His behaviour is governed by that of
his opponents; the least forwardness or egotism on their part is met by a
corresponding irony on the part of Socrates. He must speak, for philosophy
will not allow him to be silent. He is indeed more ironical and provoking
than in any other of Plato's writings: for he is 'fooled to the top of his
bent' by the worldliness of Callicles. But he is also more deeply in
earnest. He rises higher than even in the Phaedo and Crito: at first
enveloping his moral convictions in a cloud of dust and dialectics, he ends
by losing his method, his life, himself, in them. As in the Protagoras and
Phaedrus, throwing aside the veil of irony, he makes a speech, but, true to
his character, not until his adversary has refused to answer any more
questions. The presentiment of his own fate is hanging over him. He is
aware that Socrates, the single real teacher of politics, as he ventures to
call himself, cannot safely go to war with the whole world, and that in the
courts of earth he will be condemned. But he will be justified in the
world below. Then the position of Socrates and Callicles will be reversed;
all those things 'unfit for ears polite' which Callicles has prophesied as
likely to happen to him in this life, the insulting language, the box on
the ears, will recoil upon his assailant. (Compare Republic, and the
similar reversal of the position of the lawyer and the philosopher in the
Theaetetus).

There is an interesting allusion to his own behaviour at the trial of the
generals after the battle of Arginusae, which he ironically attributes to
his ignorance of the manner in which a vote of the assembly should be
taken. This is said to have happened 'last year' (B.C. 406), and therefore
the assumed date of the dialogue has been fixed at 405 B.C., when Socrates
would already have been an old man. The date is clearly marked, but is
scarcely reconcilable with another indication of time, viz. the 'recent'
usurpation of Archelaus, which occurred in the year 413; and still less
with the 'recent' death of Pericles, who really died twenty-four years
previously (429 B.C.) and is afterwards reckoned among the statesmen of a
past age; or with the mention of Nicias, who died in 413, and is
nevertheless spoken of as a living witness. But we shall hereafter have
reason to observe, that although there is a general consistency of times
and persons in the Dialogues of Plato, a precise dramatic date is an
invention of his commentators (Preface to Republic).

The conclusion of the Dialogue is remarkable, (1) for the truly
characteristic declaration of Socrates that he is ignorant of the true
nature and bearing of these things, while he affirms at the same time that
no one can maintain any other view without being ridiculous. The
profession of ignorance reminds us of the earlier and more exclusively
Socratic Dialogues. But neither in them, nor in the Apology, nor in the
Memorabilia of Xenophon, does Socrates express any doubt of the fundamental
truths of morality. He evidently regards this 'among the multitude of
questions' which agitate human life 'as the principle which alone remains
unshaken.' He does not insist here, any more than in the Phaedo, on the
literal truth of the myth, but only on the soundness of the doctrine which
is contained in it, that doing wrong is worse than suffering, and that a
man should be rather than seem; for the next best thing to a man's being
just is that he should be corrected and become just; also that he should
avoid all flattery, whether of himself or of others; and that rhetoric
should be employed for the maintenance of the right only. The revelation
of another life is a recapitulation of the argument in a figure.

(2) Socrates makes the singular remark, that he is himself the only true
politician of his age. In other passages, especially in the Apology, he
disclaims being a politician at all. There he is convinced that he or any
other good man who attempted to resist the popular will would be put to
death before he had done any good to himself or others. Here he
anticipates such a fate for himself, from the fact that he is 'the only man
of the present day who performs his public duties at all.' The two points
of view are not really inconsistent, but the difference between them is
worth noticing: Socrates is and is not a public man. Not in the ordinary
sense, like Alcibiades or Pericles, but in a higher one; and this will
sooner or later entail the same consequences on him. He cannot be a
private man if he would; neither can he separate morals from politics. Nor
is he unwilling to be a politician, although he foresees the dangers which
await him; but he must first become a better and wiser man, for he as well
as Callicles is in a state of perplexity and uncertainty. And yet there is
an inconsistency: for should not Socrates too have taught the citizens
better than to put him to death?

And now, as he himself says, we will 'resume the argument from the
beginning.'

Socrates, who is attended by his inseparable disciple, Chaerephon, meets
Callicles in the streets of Athens. He is informed that he has just missed
an exhibition of Gorgias, which he regrets, because he was desirous, not of
hearing Gorgias display his rhetoric, but of interrogating him concerning
the nature of his art. Callicles proposes that they shall go with him to
his own house, where Gorgias is staying. There they find the great
rhetorician and his younger friend and disciple Polus.

SOCRATES: Put the question to him, Chaerephon.

CHAEREPHON: What question?

SOCRATES: Who is he?--such a question as would elicit from a man the
answer, 'I am a cobbler.'

Polus suggests that Gorgias may be tired, and desires to answer for him.
'Who is Gorgias?' asks Chaerephon, imitating the manner of his master
Socrates. 'One of the best of men, and a proficient in the best and
noblest of experimental arts,' etc., replies Polus, in rhetorical and
balanced phrases. Socrates is dissatisfied at the length and unmeaningness
of the answer; he tells the disconcerted volunteer that he has mistaken the
quality for the nature of the art, and remarks to Gorgias, that Polus has
learnt how to make a speech, but not how to answer a question. He wishes
that Gorgias would answer him. Gorgias is willing enough, and replies to
the question asked by Chaerephon,--that he is a rhetorician, and in Homeric
language, 'boasts himself to be a good one.' At the request of Socrates he
promises to be brief; for 'he can be as long as he pleases, and as short as
he pleases.' Socrates would have him bestow his length on others, and
proceeds to ask him a number of questions, which are answered by him to his
own great satisfaction, and with a brevity which excites the admiration of
Socrates. The result of the discussion may be summed up as follows:--

Rhetoric treats of discourse; but music and medicine, and other particular
arts, are also concerned with discourse; in what way then does rhetoric
differ from them? Gorgias draws a distinction between the arts which deal
with words, and the arts which have to do with external actions. Socrates
extends this distinction further, and divides all productive arts into two
classes: (1) arts which may be carried on in silence; and (2) arts which
have to do with words, or in which words are coextensive with action, such
as arithmetic, geometry, rhetoric. But still Gorgias could hardly have
meant to say that arithmetic was the same as rhetoric. Even in the arts
which are concerned with words there are differences. What then
distinguishes rhetoric from the other arts which have to do with words?
'The words which rhetoric uses relate to the best and greatest of human
things.' But tell me, Gorgias, what are the best? 'Health first, beauty
next, wealth third,' in the words of the old song, or how would you rank
them? The arts will come to you in a body, each claiming precedence and
saying that her own good is superior to that of the rest--How will you
choose between them? 'I should say, Socrates, that the art of persuasion,
which gives freedom to all men, and to individuals power in the state, is
the greatest good.' But what is the exact nature of this persuasion?--is
the persevering retort: You could not describe Zeuxis as a painter, or
even as a painter of figures, if there were other painters of figures;
neither can you define rhetoric simply as an art of persuasion, because
there are other arts which persuade, such as arithmetic, which is an art of
persuasion about odd and even numbers. Gorgias is made to see the
necessity of a further limitation, and he now defines rhetoric as the art
of persuading in the law courts, and in the assembly, about the just and
unjust. But still there are two sorts of persuasion: one which gives
knowledge, and another which gives belief without knowledge; and knowledge
is always true, but belief may be either true or false,--there is therefore
a further question: which of the two sorts of persuasion does rhetoric
effect in courts of law and assemblies? Plainly that which gives belief
and not that which gives knowledge; for no one can impart a real knowledge
of such matters to a crowd of persons in a few minutes. And there is
another point to be considered:--when the assembly meets to advise about
walls or docks or military expeditions, the rhetorician is not taken into
counsel, but the architect, or the general. How would Gorgias explain this
phenomenon? All who intend to become disciples, of whom there are several
in the company, and not Socrates only, are eagerly asking:--About what then
will rhetoric teach us to persuade or advise the state?

Gorgias illustrates the nature of rhetoric by adducing the example of
Themistocles, who persuaded the Athenians to build their docks and walls,
and of Pericles, whom Socrates himself has heard speaking about the middle
wall of the Piraeus. He adds that he has exercised a similar power over
the patients of his brother Herodicus. He could be chosen a physician by
the assembly if he pleased, for no physician could compete with a
rhetorician in popularity and influence. He could persuade the multitude
of anything by the power of his rhetoric; not that the rhetorician ought to
abuse this power any more than a boxer should abuse the art of self-
defence. Rhetoric is a good thing, but, like all good things, may be
unlawfully used. Neither is the teacher of the art to be deemed unjust
because his pupils are unjust and make a bad use of the lessons which they
have learned from him.

Socrates would like to know before he replies, whether Gorgias will quarrel
with him if he points out a slight inconsistency into which he has fallen,
or whether he, like himself, is one who loves to be refuted. Gorgias
declares that he is quite one of his sort, but fears that the argument may
be tedious to the company. The company cheer, and Chaerephon and Callicles
exhort them to proceed. Socrates gently points out the supposed
inconsistency into which Gorgias appears to have fallen, and which he is
inclined to think may arise out of a misapprehension of his own. The
rhetorician has been declared by Gorgias to be more persuasive to the
ignorant than the physician, or any other expert. And he is said to be
ignorant, and this ignorance of his is regarded by Gorgias as a happy
condition, for he has escaped the trouble of learning. But is he as
ignorant of just and unjust as he is of medicine or building? Gorgias is
compelled to admit that if he did not know them previously he must learn
them from his teacher as a part of the art of rhetoric. But he who has
learned carpentry is a carpenter, and he who has learned music is a
musician, and he who has learned justice is just. The rhetorician then
must be a just man, and rhetoric is a just thing. But Gorgias has already
admitted the opposite of this, viz. that rhetoric may be abused, and that
the rhetorician may act unjustly. How is the inconsistency to be
explained?

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