Gorgias

The dialogue, which is in direct speech and contains only a minimal introduction, is set in a building where the famous orator Gorgias has been lecturing before an audience. The dialogue begins as Socrates arrives with his friend Chaerephon. The two are greeted by Callicles, an aspiring politician who has been hosting Gorgias at his home. Gorgias is finishing his lecture, but Callicles offers to have him deliver another lecture or epideixis—a “display” speech showcasing his oratorical skill—for Socrates and Chaerephon. Socrates, however, explains that he prefers to have a dialogue (dialegesthai) with Gorgias and begins to interrogate the man.

Socrates (initially backed up by Chaerephon) begins by asking Gorgias what his art (techne) is. Polus, a young pupil of Gorgias, answers for his teacher, praising the art practiced by Gorgias. Socrates, however, does not want praise or a description of Gorgias’s art, but rather to know what exactly it is. Gorgias and Socrates agree that Gorgias’s art is oratory (rhetorike) and that Gorgias is therefore an orator (rhetor). Having established this, Socrates asks Gorgias to converse with him in concise question-and-answer format (rather than in extended speeches), and Gorgias agrees to do so.

First, Socrates questions Gorgias about what exactly oratory consists of. It is established that oratory is entirely concerned with speech, in contrast to arts such as medicine or physical training, in which speech merely plays a part. Socrates then seeks to understand how oratory is to be distinguished from arts such as arithmetic and astronomy, which are conducted almost entirely through speech and have specified objects of knowledge (number for arithmetic, movements of celestial bodies for astronomy).

Socrates presses Gorgias to say what the object of oratory is, but Gorgias responds by praising oratory without answering this question. Socrates tries a different tack: If faced with competition from other professionals, such as doctors and physical trainers, each of whom claim that their art has as its object the greatest good, what object would Gorgias claim for oratory to maintain its value in the face of its competition? Gorgias replies that the object of oratory is to persuade people, meaning that oratory is to be understood—as Socrates says—as a “maker of conviction” (453a). Socrates then presses Gorgias further, asking Gorgias to tell him what oratory produces conviction about, since other arts produce conviction too, after all, about various other subjects. Gorgias responds that the object of oratory is to produce conviction on the subject of right and wrong before large masses of people.

Socrates now posits that there is a distinction to be made between conviction based on knowledge (episteme), which must be true, and conviction based on belief (doxa), which can be true or false. Gorgias agrees that this distinction is valid. Questioned about what kind of conviction is produced by oratory, Gorgias responds that it produces conviction based on belief, not knowledge.

Socrates then asks Gorgias about which subjects the orator can advise his listeners, and Gorgias boastfully expounds on the scope of oratory: The orator can advise the masses on virtually all subjects, including expert matters such as shipbuilding, wall building, and the appointing of generals. On such expert matters, Gorgias goes on to claim, it is generally orators rather than experts who are able to convince people, even though experts have knowledge of their subject while orators have only opinion. Gorgias also introduces a key caveat: The orator should not abuse his art, though he cannot be blamed if his pupils should choose to do so.

After a brief interlude, in which Socrates emphasizes his goal of working with his interlocutor for the sake of reaching mutual enlightenment rather than to score points, the dialogue continues. Socrates at last exposes the fatal inconsistencies in Gorgias’s definition of oratory. Gorgias’s claim that the orator is more capable of producing conviction in a mass audience than an expert is tantamount, Socrates points out, to claiming that an ignorant person is more convincing than an expert to an audience that is as ignorant as he is—a statement that Gorgias agrees must be true.

Socrates then returns to the question of right and wrong: Does the orator really have no knowledge of right and wrong, as Gorgias suggested before, or must an aspiring pupil already have such knowledge before embarking on a study of oratory? Furthermore, if a pupil does not have such knowledge, would the orator then teach him? Gorgias responds that he could teach a pupil right and wrong if the pupil does not already have the knowledge in question. Socrates understands this to mean, as Gorgias concedes, that for a man to become an orator he must have knowledge of right and wrong, having acquired this knowledge either before or after beginning to study oratory.

Socrates then proceeds to reason, by analogy with other arts, that somebody who has knowledge of right and wrong should be called righteous, further positing that a righteous man “will never want to do wrong” (460c), meaning that an orator, who according to Gorgias must have knowledge of right and wrong, must be righteous and as a righteous man will not want to do wrong. This means that it would be impossible for an orator to make wrong use of their art—something that Gorgias had earlier claimed an orator would be able to do. Having exposed this inconsistency in Gorgias’s claims, Socrates wonders how they are to proceed.