



Produced by Sue Asscher





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