Gorgias

A particularly amusing dialogue with lively characters and fine irony. Callicles is superb.

If leaders and politicians and all those other orators and sophists claim to be caretakers of men, and to cultivate justice and goodness in them, it is a hypocrisy then for those leaders to bemoan and decry how men act unjustly towards themselves, each other, or towards the leaders in questions; for this represents a failure on the part of the leaders, and indicates their own lack of justice. In truth, even the most powerful of leaders and politicians will be found to have only really fulfilled the immediate pleasures of men (if even that) through flowery rhetoric, bloody wars, and impressive projects; like pastry makers and fast food cooks appeasing the appetites of children, in contrast to the doctors that possess knowledge of what food is good for the body, what food is bad for the body, and of the medicines that improve the health of children.

Callicles is a great interlocuter to Socrates here, and gives what feels like a proto-Nietzschean argument regarding the natural right of the better to take a greater share of society and pursue pleasure, with its stifling in 'self-satisfaction' being nothing more than the life of a stone or a corpse, and a kind of moralising by the weak and many who create the artificial laws of the polis. But Socrates gets even Callicles to admit that there are good kinds of pleasure and bad kinds of pleasure, and so one might conclude that pleasure is subordinate to, or a means to, the good. This ties in with the important question of whether it is worse to inflict injustice or to suffer injustice, a question all the more pertinent if you really do have the power to inflict injustice. "For it is a difficult thing Callicles, and one that merits much praise, to live your whole live justly when you've found yourself having ample freedom to do what's unjust." All in all, a great dialogue.

I just re-read Plato’s Gorgias. This time, I read the translation done by James H Nichols, Jr. It was recommended by a friend.

Gorgias is a tremendously nuanced and layered dialogue. But it is also fair to say that it is the dialogue that presents Socrates' extended argument that it is worse to inflict an injustice than to suffer an injustice. (Spoiler: inflicting an injustice damages one’s soul. Suffering an injustice does not.)

I recommend Gorgias for readers of all stripes.

A Starker Dialogue

Gorgias is very similar in structure, content, focus and argument with the Republic. In fact, it comes across almost a half-formed version of it, and scholars argue that it is in many ways like an early sketch for Republic. But unlike the Republic, which forays into metaphysics and utopias, the argument in Gorgias is anchored very much in this world, and, again in contrast to Republic where everyone seems persuaded in the end, Gorgias leaves us in the dark as to whether Socrates has really persuaded his audience of what he values most.

Another significant difference with Republic is the absence of a narrator. Commentators argue that that the stark, uncompromising ‘frame’ this forces on the dialogue suggests that this absence of narrator may be an important factor in Plato's design; he may wish to avoid the softening effect of narrative mediation in dramatizing Socrates' lack of success in creating empathy with his interlocutors, his inability to teach them about goodness and justice, which, ironically enough, seems in danger of putting him in the same camp as all the failed statesmen he criticizes.

Gorgias concludes awkwardly and abruptly, almost painfully aware of the deficiencies in the method employed; and we just have Socrates' last words (527e): 'let us follow that way [practicing righteousness and virtue] and urge others to follow it, instead of the way which you in mistaken confidence are urging upon me; for that way is worthless, Callicles.'

What has Callicles (or the others, for that matter) to say in reply to the myth and the long argument that conclude the dialogue? We are not informed. The dialogue trails off inconclusively like one of the ‘aporetics’.

Another marked parallel with Republic is how Gorgias too concludes with an eschatological myth, affirming the soul’s survival after our death and its punishment or reward in the afterlife for a life lived unjustly or the reverse.

Just like in Republic, the trial and the execution is hinted at… but in Gorgias, they loom large and threatening, Plato callously converting hindsight into foresight and charging Socrates’ sentences with prophetic doom and an early condemnation of the system that precipitates his own death in the near future. Socrates is made to relive a prophetic version of the trial and speaks as though it was all but inevitable in such a corrupt system that a man like him has an ending like that. It remind’s one of Jesus’s early (or similarly hindsight-foresight inversion) exhortations to his disciples about how the cross was waiting at the end of the road.

A Deeper Glance

Event though Gorgias is an earlier work (allegedly) and is sketchy in comparison to republic, it also allows us a closer look at one aspect of Plato’s concern: on Oratory. The method employed to condemn Oratory, by using the distinction between ‘art’ and ‘knack’ gives important clues on why Plato goes on to condemn all of Poetry in Republic. The reason, I feel, is that Poetry, like Oratory was a public art in Plato’s time - both intended to pursued without ‘true knowledge’. Hence the same method when extended to Poetry would allow Plato to conclude that Poetry and storytelling too are ‘knacks’ developed from experience and hence less than the ‘genuine arts’.



Here is a dose of the brilliant exposition:

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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. If you have any quarrel with these claims, I’m willing to submit them for discussion.

So pastry baking, as I say, is the flattery that wears the mask of medicine. Cosmetics is the one that wears that of gymnastics in the same way; a mischievous, deceptive, disgraceful and ill-bred thing, one that perpetrates deception by means of shaping and coloring, smoothing out and dressing up, so as to make people assume an alien beauty and neglect their own, which comes through gymnastics. So that I won’t make a long-style speech, I’m willing to put it to you the way the geometers do—for perhaps you follow me now—that what cosmetics is to gymnastics, pastry baking is to medicine; or rather, like this: what cosmetics is to gymnastics, sophistry is to legislation, and what pastry baking is to medicine, oratory is to justice.

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While this (the argument-from-analogy with Doctors is a favorite of Socrates) may be true to an extent, Plato does not give consideration to the possibility that the story-tellers (or, substitute Chefs/Docs, if you really want to!) might actually have a greater understanding than the philosophers about the mysterious workings of the human soul. It is blasphemy to conclude on this note but it is an exciting thread to pursue further in the reading of Plato.

A Note on the Translation

This translation gets the right mix of ponderous phrasing, elegance and readability - conveying the ancient mystique and the modern relevance. Also, it is broken up well into small parts, each with an introductory passage always initiating the reader into what is about to transpire in the dialogue. This might be irritating to the seasoned reader but is a pleasant respite for the novice and functions like the small interludes that Plato himself likes to inject into his dialogues.

It is also true that this acts like a spoiler and takes away from the thrill of the argument being developed by Socrates. I personally started coming back to the introductory passage after reading the actual text so as to reinforce instead of foreshadow the argument. I would advice the same course for future readers as well.

Disclaimer



As is evident from the review itself, this reviewer is still too much under the influence of Republic and this reading was conducted almost entirely in its shadow. Hence, the review is a biased and incomplete one that does no justice to Gorgias. Gorgias is a complex and lengthy dialogue that deserves independent study and cannot be treated as a mere appendix to Republic as this review may seem to suggest. That was not the intent.

This reviewer found the parallels and contrasts with Republic very fascinating and spent most time debating that, but the ideas expressed in Gorgias are as stunning and intellectually engaging and forays into territory left unexplored in Republic. The elaboration on techne might just be one of the centerpieces of Platonic thought. Gorgias is a must read among the ‘later Early period’ dialogues of Plato - an important step towards the 'middle-period' dialogues such as Meno, almost a point of transition. In fact, Gorgias is necessary reading for any serious reader of Republic. No excuses.

Postscript: I would love a T-shirt like that. Anybody?

Plato on the virtuous life
7 August 2011 - Athens

tIt is difficult to put a date of composition to such a text, though internal comments can assist us with determining when it was written. While I do not consider myself an expert on Plato, I would consider this text to be one of his earlier writings as he seems to be recording an earlier conversation as opposed to using Socrates to be a mouthpiece for his own philosophy. A lot have been written on Plato's dialogues, which tend to be philosophical discussions with Socrates as the main speaker. However, Gorgias is a dialogue, as opposed to a single person sprouting philosophy, that is a discussion between a group of people. This, I find, works a lot better for a philosophical treatise as one tends to get a broader view of the argument, and one also gets the opportunity of hearing the other sides of the argument along with objections and counter-arguments. This is not what one tends to get with a single speaker (or even a text book).

tPlato's later works tended to be more of a diatribe, where he uses Socrates as a mouthpiece for his philosophy (as can be seen in the Republic) however, there is another text, the Timaeus and the Critias, which seem to fall into the later category, though because Socrates is not the main speaker in these texts, I am loathe to put them into Plato's later category, and consider these texts to be more like the earlier texts where Plato is reporting a conversation that took place years previously (though scholars tend to date them as being one of his much later texts since the Critias is actually incomplete – not that a part of it is lost but rather that Plato never finished it).

tAnyway, I am writing on the Gorgias, which is a more simpler text than some of his other writings. The main theme of the Gorgias is morality (which is the theme of a lot of Plato's writings) and explores the question of whether oratory is a useful skill or whether it is just used for harm. The closest that we would get to the Sophists of Ancient Athens (and it is a very close comparison) is that of a lawyer. The job of a lawyer is to argue the client's case to either the other side or an independent third party. The criticisms of lawyers are very similar to the criticisms that Plato lays down with the sophists. One example is that the find sounding speeches of the sophists can easily override the technical knowledge of a doctor (and this can also be seen in today's society).

tThen there is the question of injustice and doing wrong to people. The two conclusions that Socrates reaches with his arguments is that nobody willingly does wrong, and it is better be wronged than to do wrong (though his companions in this discussion object quite readily, particularly when they use the example of the Tyrant that does wrong to his subjects, but does not appear to be living a miserable life, though Socrates does manage to convince his audience that the Tyrant's life is in fact miserable, even if he might not know it).

tThe concept of nobody doing wrong intentionally (which is also something that I disagree with, though there are people that commit a wrong but justify the wrong that they are committing, for instance shop lifting. The store sells the products at outrageous prices, and also rip their customers off, therefore they are right in stealing the pen, or the sales assistant that takes money from the till with the intention of paying it back, but never doing so). The conclusion that Socrates reaches is that people who do wrong are ill (in the same sense of having a cold) and they need to be cured of this ill, and thus Socrates sees punishment as the purpose of curing the person of their wrongdoing.

tHowever, the discussion comes to a conclusion with the exploration of 'heaven and hell'. In the Greek text, Heaven is referred to as the Blessed Isles, and Hell is known as Tartarus. It is interesting that Tartarus was designed to imprison the rebellious Titans, and the Blessed Isles have been set aside for the heroic and the virtuous. However, it is also interesting to note that Odysseus does travel into the underworld in the Odyssey and there meets up with a number of heroes from the Trojan War. It seems like their heroic acts simply were not good enough for them to get to the Blessed Isles (though I suspect that Tartarus and the underworld are two different places). It is also interesting to see how our culture has adopted these ideas, not in the sense of the Jewish idea of Heaven and Hell (with Heaven being God's domain, and Sheol being the abode of the dead), but rather, to an extent, to have merged Greek and Christian Mythology (in that Hell has been set apart as a prison for the Devil and his Angels, which is almost a direct copy of Tartarus, and Heaven as being the destination of the good and virtuous). However, nothing is all that cut and dried, and it appears that this is explained by Socrates in the end. The conclusion, it is better to live the suffering and virtuous life and be rewarded in the afterlife than to live a wicked life committing wrong and thus facing eternal punishment. Ironically, this conclusion seems to have been lifted straight out of the Old Testament.

“what a bully you are socrates… argue with someone else”

One of the better dialogues in that it manages to raise most of the big issues of virtue and citizenship in way which does not feel to rushed or overly contrived. It's the first dialogue I've read which actually made me smirk when Socrates offered a witty retort or a brilliant condemnation of someone else's views. to someone. It's also a lot of fun to hate on Callicles

Is it better to commit evil or to have evil done to you?

Is temperance silly and hedonism sensible?

Does Socrates convince his listeners?

I was very intrigued by the idea of an afterlife. Socrates was close to the Christian view.

And much much more.