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Benjamin Jowett
Plato · Benjamin Jowett
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Scene: outside a public building where Gorgias has given a display and taken questions
The Gorgias pits Socrates against teachers and admirers of rhetoric, and rises into a passionate debate about how one ought to live. Socrates argues the great Platonic paradoxes: that doing injustice is worse than suffering it, that the wrongdoer is better off being punished, and that a life of unchecked pleasure and power is in truth the most wretched.
Rhetoric, he contends, is no true art but a 'knack' of flattery, as cookery is to medicine — persuasion without knowledge of the good. The dialogue closes with a myth of the judgment of souls after death.
From the Plato Scroll Encyclopedia · open this entry in the reader
Callicles: The wise man, as the proverb says, is late for a fray, but not for a feast.
Socrates: And are we late for a feast?
Callicles: Yes, and a delightful feast; for Gorgias has just been exhibiting to us many fine things.
Socrates: It is not my fault, Callicles; our friend Chaerephon is to blame; for he would keep us loitering in the Agora.
Chaerephon: Never mind, Socrates; the misfortune of which I have been the cause I will also repair; for Gorgias is a friend of mine, and I will make him give the exhibition again either now, or, if you prefer, at some other time.
Callicles: What is the matter, Chaerephon — does Socrates want to hear Gorgias?
Chaerephon: Yes, that was our intention in coming.
Callicles: Come into my house, then; for Gorgias is staying with me, and he shall exhibit to you.
Socrates: Very good, Callicles; but will he answer our questions? for I want to hear from him what is the nature of his art, and what it is which he professes and teaches; he may, as you (Chaerephon) suggest, defer the exhibition to some other time.
Callicles: There is nothing like asking him, Socrates; and indeed to answer questions is a part of his exhibition, for he was saying only just now, that any one in my house might put any question to him, and that he would answer.
Socrates: How fortunate! will you ask him, Chaerephon — ?
Chaerephon: What shall I ask him?
Socrates: Ask him who he is.
Chaerephon: What do you mean?
Socrates: I mean such a question as would elicit from him, if he had been a maker of shoes, the answer that he is a cobbler. Do you understand?
Chaerephon: I understand, and will ask him: Tell me, Gorgias, is our friend Callicles right in saying that you undertake to answer any questions which you are asked?
Gorgias: Quite right, Chaerephon: I was saying as much only just now; and I may add, that many years have elapsed since any one has asked me a new one.
Chaerephon: Then you must be very ready, Gorgias.
Gorgias: Of that, Chaerephon, you can make trial.
Polus: Yes, indeed, and if you like, Chaerephon, you may make trial of me too, for I think that Gorgias, who has been talking a long time, is tired.
Chaerephon: And do you, Polus, think that you can answer better than Gorgias?
Polus: What does that matter if I answer well enough for you?
Chaerephon: Not at all: — and you shall answer if you like.
Polus: Ask: —
Chaerephon: My question is this: If Gorgias had the skill of his brother Herodicus, what ought we to call him? Ought he not to have the name which is given to his brother?
Polus: Certainly.
Chaerephon: Then we should be right in calling him a physician?
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The Athenian who turned Socratic conversation into a written philosophy and founded the Academy.
Plato was born around 428 BCE into a wealthy and politically prominent Athenian family; through his mother Perictione the family traced kinship to the lawgiver Solon, and his relatives Critias and Charmides were among the oligarchs of the Thirty. A late tradition says his given name was Aristocles and that 'Plato' — from the word for 'broad' — was a nickname. He grew up during the long agony of the Peloponnesian War and came of age amid the violence and disillusion that followed Athens' defeat.
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