Gorgias

by

Plato

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Themes and Colors
The Practice and Goal of Oratory Theme Icon
Justice, Injustice, and the Treatment of the Soul Theme Icon
The Pleasant Life vs. the Good Life Theme Icon
Philosophy vs. Politics Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Gorgias, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Practice and Goal of Oratory Theme Icon

Gorgias, a dialogue by Plato written around 380 B.C.E., primarily explores the nature of oratory, or the art of public speaking. In Ancient Greece, oratory, or rhetoric, was central to social and political life. Particularly in Athens, any free citizen could speak before political bodies such as the Assembly, Council, or law courts, using their persuasive skills to influence important decisions. Oratory, then, was an important tool for realizing one’s political ambitions. Traveling orators called sophists even earned popular acclaim for their rhetorical talents. In Gorgias, however, the philosopher Socrates questions whether oratory is truly beneficial to society. The dialogue is set in Athens, where a wealthy, sought-after orator named Gorgias has just given a flashy oratorical performance. Socrates didn’t attend the speech, so he questions Gorgias about it directly—a discussion that delves into the nature and goal of oratory. By having Socrates point out the inconsistencies between Gorgias’s views of the practice and the goal of oratory, Plato argues that oratory, as practiced in his day, doesn’t truly benefit society.

Both Socrates and Gorgias agree that the goal of oratory is to persuade listeners about what is just and unjust. According to Socrates, oratory, as a craft (or art), must have a goal—it must produce something. For example, weaving produces clothes, and composition creates music. According to Gorgias, the product of oratory is persuasion. He even asserts that oratory is “the source of freedom for mankind itself and […] the source of rule over others in one’s own city.” In other words, oratory is the ability to persuade crowds, especially political bodies that meet in public. As Socrates restates Gorgias’s point, “oratory is a producer of persuasion.” With the overarching purpose of oratory firmly established, Socrates then asks what oratory produces persuasion about. After all, one distinguishes a painter from other painters by asking what his paintings are about. And there are other crafts that produce persuasion about their particular subjects (for instance, mathematics). Gorgias replies that oratory produces persuasion about what is just and unjust, thus establishing a clear goal.

But because oratory’s goal is persuasion, an orator doesn’t actually have to be an expert in his subject matter—an orator only needs to appear to be an expert. Socrates proposes that there are two types of persuasion: “one providing conviction without knowledge, the other providing knowledge.” He and Gorgias agree that oratory produces conviction without knowledge. It’s not the same as teaching, in other words, which is concerned with instilling specific information. Through persuasive skill, an orator can merely appear to be an expert. After all, Gorgias explains, “if an orator and a doctor came to any city anywhere you like and had to compete in speaking […] 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. […] That’s how great the accomplishment of this craft is, and the sort of accomplishment it is!” Essentially, an orator has the skill to be more persuasive in a gathering (of others who aren’t experts, presumably) than one who actually has knowledge about the subject at hand. So, in short, oratory is basically just a persuasive tool. As Socrates sums it up, “Oratory doesn’t need to have any knowledge of the state of [a subject]; it only needs to have discovered a persuasion device in order to make itself appear to those who don’t have knowledge that it knows more than those who actually do have it.” Given that he has already explained that the purpose of oratory is to persuade people about what is just versus unjust, Gorgias is implicitly saying that an orator doesn’t actually have to have any real knowledge surrounding justice and injustice; they only need to look like they do.

Countering Gorgias, Socrates argues that oratory cannot really serve justice unless orators are experts in what is just—and orators can only be experts in justice if they are just themselves. Socrates asks how it can be that oratory is concerned with what’s just unless orators actually know that themselves: “Does he devise persuasion about [justice and injustice], so that—even though he doesn’t know—he seems […] to know more than someone who actually does know? Or is it necessary for him to know, and must the prospective student of oratory already possess this expertise before coming to you?” In other words, a student of oratory has to know what is just in order to become persuasive on the subject. Socrates further argues that “a man who has learned a particular subject [is] the sort of man his expertise makes him.” In other words, a person who has learned what is just does just things. And it follows that an orator who’s speaking about what’s just would also be just. Ultimately, then, Socrates argues that an orator cannot both be concerned with persuading others regarding what is just and unjust and merely give the appearance of expertise in this matter. Unless an orator is himself just, he cannot persuade others regarding justice.

Ironically, it takes a philosopher (Socrates) to explain the practice of oratory, not an orator (Gorgias) himself. This turns out to be significant for the arguments Plato will offer in the remainder of the dialogue about the nature of justice, the nature of a good life, and the relative value of orators and philosophers in commending that life to others. Already, though, it’s evident that Plato’s opinion of the practice of oratory in his day was not very high.

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The Practice and Goal of Oratory Quotes in Gorgias

Below you will find the important quotes in Gorgias related to the theme of The Practice and Goal of Oratory.
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:

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.

Related Characters: Socrates (speaker), Polus (speaker)
Related Symbols: Medicine
Page Number: 49
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: