Gorgias

by

Plato

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According to Socrates, a craft, or techne, is a procedure which is moving toward some specific end, and something which its practitioner intends to produce a specific good. It aims to bring about some greater benefit, and it must have an account of the nature of the thing it’s dealing with. Socrates distinguishes a craft from a knack, in that a knack lacks such an account of something’s nature and doesn’t aim at a greater benefit.

Craft Quotes in Gorgias

The Gorgias quotes below are all either spoken by Craft or refer to Craft. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Practice and Goal of Oratory Theme Icon
).
449a-461b Quotes

GORGIAS: I’m referring to the ability to persuade by speeches judges in a law court, councillors in a council meeting, and assemblymen in an assembly or in any other political gathering that might take place. […]

SOCRATES: Now I think you’ve come closest to making clear what craft you take oratory to be, Gorgias. If I follow you at all, you’re saying that oratory is a producer of persuasion. Its whole business comes to that, and that’s the long and short of it.

Related Characters: Socrates (speaker), Gorgias of Leontini (speaker)
Related Symbols: Medicine
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

GORGIAS: Oh yes, Socrates, if only you knew all of it, that it encompasses and subordinates to itself just about everything that can be accomplished. […] And I maintain too that if an orator and a doctor came to any city anywhere you like and had to compete in speaking in the assembly or some other gathering over which of them should be appointed doctor, the doctor wouldn’t make any showing at all, but the one who had the ability to speak would be appointed, if he so wished. And if he were to compete with any other craftsman whatever, the orator more than anyone else would persuade them that they should appoint him, for there isn’t anything that the orator couldn’t speak more persuasively about to a gathering than could any other craftsman whatever. That’s how great the accomplishment of this craft is, and the sort of accomplishment it is!

Related Characters: Gorgias of Leontini (speaker), Socrates
Related Symbols: Medicine
Page Number: 14
Explanation and Analysis:

Imagine someone who after attending wrestling school, getting his body into good shape and becoming a boxer, went on to strike his father and mother or any other family member or friend. By Zeus, that’s no reason to hate physical trainers and people who teach fighting in armor, and to exile them from their cities! […] So it’s not their teachers who are wicked, nor is this a reason why the craft should be a cause of wickedness; the ones who misuse it are supposedly the wicked ones. […] And I suppose that if a person who has become an orator goes on with this ability and this craft to commit wrongdoing, we shouldn’t hate his teacher and exile him from our cities. For while the teacher imparted it to be used justly, the pupil is making the opposite use of it. So it’s the misuser whom it’s just to hate and exile or put to death, not the teacher.

Related Characters: Gorgias of Leontini (speaker), Socrates
Page Number: 15
Explanation and Analysis:
461b-481b Quotes

Pastry baking has put on the mask of medicine, and pretends to know the foods that are best for the body, so that if a pastry baker and a doctor had to compete in front of children, or in front of men just as foolish as children, to determine which of the two, the doctor or the pastry baker, had expert knowledge of good food and bad, the doctor would die of starvation. I call this flattery, and I say that such a thing is shameful, Polus—it’s you I’m saying this to—because it guesses at what’s pleasant with no consideration for what’s best. And I say that it isn’t a craft, but a knack, because it has no account of the nature of whatever things it applies by which it applies them, so that it’s unable to state the cause of each thing. And I refuse to call anything that lacks such an account a craft.

Related Characters: Socrates (speaker), Polus
Related Symbols: Medicine
Page Number: 25
Explanation and Analysis:

SOCRATES: I take it that these people have managed to accomplish pretty much the same thing as a person who has contracted very serious illnesses, but, by avoiding treatment manages to avoid paying what’s due to the doctors for his bodily faults, fearing, as would a child, cauterization or surgery because they’re painful. Don’t you think so, too?

POLUS: Yes, I do.

SOCRATES: It’s because he evidently doesn’t know what health and bodily excellence are like. For on the basis of what we’re now agreed on, it looks as though those who avoid paying what is due also do the same sort of thing, Polus. They focus on its painfulness, but are blind to its benefit and are ignorant of how much more miserable it is to live with an unhealthy soul than with an unhealthy body, a soul that’s rotten with injustice and impiety.

Related Characters: Socrates (speaker), Polus (speaker)
Related Symbols: Medicine
Page Number: 48
Explanation and Analysis:
481b-491d Quotes

And so then, my dear Socrates […] don’t you think it’s shameful to be the way I take you to be, you and others who ever press on too far in philosophy? As it is, if someone got hold of you or of anyone else like you and took you off to prison on the charge that you’re doing something unjust when in fact you aren’t, you can know that you wouldn’t have any use for yourself. You’d get dizzy, your mouth would hang open and you wouldn’t know what to say. […] And yet, Socrates, “how can this be a wise thing, the craft which took a well-favored man and made him worse[?]” […] “Practice the sweet music of an active life[.]”

Related Characters: Callicles (speaker), Socrates
Page Number: 57
Explanation and Analysis:
491d-509c Quotes

For you see, don’t you, that our discussion’s about this […] about the way we’re supposed to live. Is it the way you urge me toward, to engage in these manly activities, to make speeches among the people, to practice oratory, and to be active in the sort of politics you people engage in these days? Or is it the life spent in philosophy? And in what way does this latter way of life differ from the former?

Related Characters: Socrates (speaker), Callicles
Page Number: 77
Explanation and Analysis:

SOCRATES: What about the oratory addressed to the Athenian people and to those in other cities composed of free men? What is our view of this kind? Do you think that orators always speak with regard to what’s best? Do they always set their sights on making the citizens as good as possible through their speeches? Or are they, too, bent upon the gratification of the citizens and, slighting the common good for the sake of their own private good, do they treat the people like children, their sole attempt being to gratify them?

Related Characters: Socrates (speaker), Callicles
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:

SOCRATES: And the name for the states of organization and order of the soul is “lawful” and “law,” which lead people to become law-abiding and orderly, and these are justice and self-control. […] So this is what that skilled and good orator will look to when he applies to people’s souls whatever speeches he makes as well as all of his actions […] He will always give his attention to how justice may come to exist in the souls of his fellow citizens and injustice be gotten rid of, how self-control may come to exist there and lack of discipline be gotten rid of, and how the rest of excellence may come into being there and evil may depart.

Related Characters: Socrates (speaker), Callicles
Related Symbols: Medicine
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
509c-522e Quotes

But if “better” does not mean what I take it to mean, and if instead to preserve yourself and what belongs to you, no matter what sort of person you happen to be, is what excellence is, then your reproach against engineer, doctor, and all the other crafts which have been devised to preserve us will prove to be ridiculous. But, my blessed man, please see whether what’s noble and what’s good isn’t something other than preserving and being preserved. Perhaps one who is truly a man should stop thinking about how long he will live. He should not be attached to life but should commit these concerns to the god[.] He should thereupon give consideration to how he might live the part of his life still before him as well as possible.

Related Characters: Socrates (speaker), Callicles
Page Number: 94
Explanation and Analysis:

I believe that I’m one of a few Athenians—so as not to say I’m the only one, but the only one among our contemporaries—to take up the true political craft and practice the true politics. This is because the speeches I make on each occasion do not aim at gratification but at what’s best. They don’t aim at what’s most pleasant.

Related Characters: Socrates (speaker), Callicles
Page Number: 105
Explanation and Analysis:
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Craft Term Timeline in Gorgias

The timeline below shows where the term Craft appears in Gorgias. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
447a-449a
The Practice and Goal of Oratory Theme Icon
Socrates wants to learn from Gorgias what his craft accomplishes—what it makes claims about and what it teaches. Callicles says that Gorgias is happy... (full context)
The Practice and Goal of Oratory Theme Icon
...seems more interested in oratory than in discussion. After all, Socrates didn’t ask what Gorgias’s craft is like, but what it is, and what Gorgias would be called. He redirects these... (full context)
449a-461b
The Practice and Goal of Oratory Theme Icon
Gorgias says that his craft is oratory. He also confirms that this makes him an orator. He agrees with Socrates... (full context)
The Practice and Goal of Oratory Theme Icon
Socrates continues his questioning. Doesn’t the medical craft, for example, also make others able to both have wisdom and to speak about those... (full context)
The Practice and Goal of Oratory Theme Icon
Socrates presses Gorgias further. Precisely what is it that distinguishes oratory from other crafts—such as arithmetic—that exercise influence through speech? For example, the speeches of arithmetic are about numbers,... (full context)
The Practice and Goal of Oratory Theme Icon
Justice, Injustice, and the Treatment of the Soul Theme Icon
...persuasion, or do people who teach various subjects also persuade people? Gorgias grants that other crafts, like arithmetic, do persuade people about their subjects.  What then, Socrates asks, is oratory’s persuasion... (full context)
461b-481b
The Practice and Goal of Oratory Theme Icon
Socrates clarifies that Polus wants to know what sort of craft oratory is. Polus agrees, so Socrates says that he doesn’t think oratory is a craft... (full context)
The Practice and Goal of Oratory Theme Icon
Justice, Injustice, and the Treatment of the Soul Theme Icon
...a doctor or a fitness expert could determine otherwise. Both body and soul also have crafts which apply to them. The craft for the soul is called politics, which can be... (full context)
The Practice and Goal of Oratory Theme Icon
Justice, Injustice, and the Treatment of the Soul Theme Icon
...of its subject. Anything which lacks such an account, in Socrates’s view, cannot be a craft. (full context)
The Practice and Goal of Oratory Theme Icon
Justice, Injustice, and the Treatment of the Soul Theme Icon
...to him. If Polus can prove that orators have intelligence and that oratory is a craft, not flattery, then perhaps it’s true that orators have great power. Polus is baffled, so... (full context)
491d-509c
Justice, Injustice, and the Treatment of the Soul Theme Icon
The Pleasant Life vs. the Good Life Theme Icon
Philosophy vs. Politics Theme Icon
...on, can everyone decide what pleasures are good and which are bad, or is a craftsman needed to discern this? Callicles agrees that a craftsman is required. Socrates then reminds him... (full context)
Justice, Injustice, and the Treatment of the Soul Theme Icon
The Pleasant Life vs. the Good Life Theme Icon
...and the good, respectively. Socrates then returns to the knack of pastry baking and the craft of medicine—the former is irrational, not needing to consider the nature or cause of pleasure,... (full context)
509c-522e
Justice, Injustice, and the Treatment of the Soul Theme Icon
The Pleasant Life vs. the Good Life Theme Icon
Philosophy vs. Politics Theme Icon
...protect himself from both of these? Callicles says that someone should acquire a power or craft against both. To avoid suffering anything unjust, Socrates argues that one ought to be a... (full context)
The Practice and Goal of Oratory Theme Icon
Justice, Injustice, and the Treatment of the Soul Theme Icon
Philosophy vs. Politics Theme Icon
...Does Callicles think that a person should seek long life at all costs and practice crafts which will prevent against dangers, like oratory? Callicles heartily agrees. (full context)
The Practice and Goal of Oratory Theme Icon
The Pleasant Life vs. the Good Life Theme Icon
Philosophy vs. Politics Theme Icon
Callicles is unconvinced. Socrates recalls the distinction between flattery and craft, the latter aiming to make its subject as good as possible. Isn’t it the case... (full context)
The Practice and Goal of Oratory Theme Icon
Justice, Injustice, and the Treatment of the Soul Theme Icon
Philosophy vs. Politics Theme Icon
Socrates observes that even though they’ve established that there are crafts which apply to both the body and soul, and that the former are subservient to... (full context)