After Socrates questions Gorgias about the practice of oratory, debunking some of Gorgias’s claims about it, a man named Polus who has been following the conversation indignantly questions Socrates. If Socrates doesn’t think Gorgias understands oratory properly, then what does Socrates say it is—what sort of a craft is it? To Polus’s surprise, Socrates replies that he doesn’t think oratory is a craft at all. A craft, like medicine, is concerned with bringing about some greater benefit. Oratory, in contrast, is merely a knack—specifically, it’s a knack “for producing a certain gratification and pleasure,” much like flattery. Although Gorgias had stated earlier that oratory is concerned with what’s just and unjust, Socrates now argues that oratory—with its flattering tendency—isn’t up to the task, especially since injustice, in Socrates’s view, is the greatest evil a soul can suffer. Through an examination of what happens to a soul when it’s marred by injustice, Plato argues that oratory, as a preoccupation with pleasure, is unsuited to deal with humanity’s most serious problem.
Socrates argues that oratory is a knack, not a craft, because it only seeks to give pleasure. According to Socrates, both the body and the soul have “crafts” that correspond to them. The body has a craft in two parts: gymnastics and medicine. The craft for the soul is called politics, which further divides into legislation (corresponding to gymnastics), and justice (corresponding to medicine). Both body and soul have a state of fitness which those crafts work to create and maintain, and an “apparent state of fitness” that’s just an illusion. One can merely look physically fit, for example, and only a doctor or a trainer could easily determine otherwise. Contrary to expectations, Socrates argues that oratory doesn’t actually fit the description of any of the crafts. In fact, oratory, because it flatters, is actually a “knack,” not a craft. In other words, it doesn’t promote the genuine fitness of body or soul, but merely the appearance of fitness. To illustrate flattery, Socrates describes a pastry baker who pretends to be an expert in nutrition. If the pastry baker and a doctor had to compete in front of a group of children to determine which of them is the real nutritional expert, the pastry baker would definitely win. Flattery, then, “guesses at what’s pleasant with no consideration for what’s best.” Unlike a craft, which has a beneficial goal, a knack like oratory doesn’t really understand the nature of the things it’s dealing with (such as the soul), because it simply doesn’t need to.
Socrates explains that having injustice in one’s soul is the worst possible evil and requires treatment, not flattery. Committing injustice is worse than suffering injustice. From Socrates’s perspective, someone who puts another to death unjustly, for example, should be pitied more than the person who is unjustly put to death. This is because, according to Socrates, doing what’s unjust is the greatest of evils. Dealing with injustice requires the long-term treatment of a craft, not just the “knack” of oratorical flattery. Justice is inherently admirable, so if a person is being justly disciplined (meaning that the injustice in the soul is being rooted out), then an admirable thing is happening to that person—a good thing not in the sense of being pleasant but of being beneficial. Because having injustice in the soul is such an evil, a person who purges this evil through unpleasant discipline is actually happier than one who manages to avoid discipline. Just as a child is fearful of the pain of medical treatment because he doesn’t understand the nature of health, so someone who avoids facing discipline is “blind to [the] benefit” of discipline and “ignorant of how much more miserable it is to live with an unhealthy soul than with an unhealthy body.” So while suffering injustice is an evil, the most serious evil is letting the injustice in one’s soul go untreated; such a person is miserable, despite what they might think at the time.
Because proper treatment for the soul is as crucial as proper treatment of the body, listening to a flattering orator is worse than useless—much like taking a pastry baker’s advice about nutrition. If someone cares about having acted unjustly, Plato argues through Socrates that such a person should go to the place where the evil in their soul can be treated, “anxious that the disease of injustice shouldn’t […] cause his soul to fester incurably.” Oratory, then, is not suited to dealing with life’s most pressing problem.
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Justice, Injustice, and the Treatment of the Soul ThemeTracker
Justice, Injustice, and the Treatment of the Soul Quotes in Gorgias
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.
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.
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.
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.
SOCRATES: If these things are true then, Polus, what is the great use of oratory? For on the basis of what we’re agreed on now, what a man should guard himself against most of all is doing what’s unjust, knowing that he will have trouble enough if he does. Isn’t that so?
POLUS: Yes, that’s right.
SOCRATES: And if he or anyone else he cares about acts unjustly, he should voluntarily go to the place where he’ll pay his due as soon as possible; he should go to the judge as though he were going to a doctor, anxious that the disease of injustice shouldn’t be protracted and cause his soul to fester incurably.
Philosophy is no doubt a delightful thing, Socrates, as long as one is exposed to it in moderation at the appropriate time of life. But if one spends more time with it than he should, it’s the undoing of mankind. For even if one is naturally well favored but engages in philosophy far beyond that appropriate time of life, he can’t help but turn out to be inexperienced in everything a man who’s to be admirable and good and well thought of is supposed to be experienced in. Such people turn out to be inexperienced in the laws of their city or in the kind of speech one must use to deal with people on matters of business, whether in public or private, inexperienced also in human pleasures and appetites and, in short, inexperienced in the ways of human beings altogether.
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.
SOCRATES: Now, isn’t it also true that doctors generally allow a person to fill up his appetites, to eat when he’s hungry, for example, or drink when he’s thirsty as much as he wants to when he’s in good health, but when he’s sick they practically never allow him to fill himself with what he has an appetite for? […] And isn’t it just the same way with the soul, my excellent friend? As long as it’s corrupt, in that it’s foolish, undisciplined, unjust and impious, it should be kept away from its appetites and not be permitted to do anything other than what will make it better.
For I’ll be judged the way a doctor would be judged by a jury of children if a pastry chef were to bring accusations against him. Think about what a man like that, taken captive among these people, could say in his defense, if somebody were to accuse him and say, “Children, this man has worked many great evils on you, yes, on you. He destroys the youngest among you by cutting and burning them, and by slimming them down and choking them he confuses them. He gives them the most bitter potions to drink and forces hunger and thirst on them. He doesn’t feast you on a great variety of sweets the way I do!” What do you think a doctor, caught in such an evil predicament, could say?
But if I came to my end because of a deficiency in flattering oratory, I know that you’d see me bear my death with ease. For no one who isn’t totally bereft of reason and courage is afraid to die; doing what’s unjust is what he’s afraid of. For of all evils, the ultimate is that of arriving in Hades with one’s soul stuffed full of unjust actions.
So I disregard the things held in honor by the majority of people, and by practicing truth I really try, to the best of my ability, to be and to live as a very good man, and when I die, to die like that. And I call on all other people as well, as far as I can—and you especially I call on in response to your call—to this way of life, this contest, that I hold to be worth all the other contests in this life. And I take you to task, because you won’t be able to come to protect yourself when you appear at the trial and judgment I was talking about just now. When you come before that judge, […] and he takes hold of you and brings you to trial, your mouth will hang open and you’ll get dizzy there just as much as I will here, and maybe somebody’ll give you a demeaning knock on the jaw and throw all sorts of dirt at you.
