nunca he sufrido más con un libro

I read this twenty years ago and participated in my first weekend retreat sponsored by the Basic Program of Liberal Education of The University of Chicago. It was an exciting weekend as we sat up past midnight discussing Plato's arguments for education and the power of the sophists represented by Gorgias. As part of the weekend we watched the film, Educating Rita, and it has become one of my favorites always bringing memories of that weekend and Plato's Gorgias.
The familiar saying of Socrates is that he only knows that he does not know anything. And he spends his time refuting his dialectical partners who claim to know something. This usually leads to the result that they admit they do not know what they claimed to, but also usually leaves the reader in the dark as the dialogue ends without any resolution or answer to the questions posed by Socrates. This occurs repeatedly with unsuccessful attempts to define temperance (Charmides), courage (Laches), or friendship (Lysis). It is surprising when, in a reading of the Gorgias, the reader finds a different Socrates who does claim to know several things. It is here, in the Gorgias, that we see Plato's own dramatic art at work, molding a new and improved Socrates to perform in a way that will display, perhaps, the views of Plato himself.
Plato's dramatic art is not unlike that of a playwright and several dialogues, including the Gorgias, have a dramatic progression and contain crises as plays do. The Gorgias as a whole can be seen as a fine example of Plato's art in the form of a dramatic progression. There are three perfectly connected episodes: Socrates' three conversations with Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles. Gorgias, the famous sophist, seeing only the technical side of the orators' training, is incapable of giving his art any moral purpose. Polus will not use rhetoric for an evil end but only because he is timid and respects prejudices. But let a violent person like Callicles come along: he will find in the school of Gorgias not a restraint, but an instrument for the expression of his violence. In this fashion all consequences of the intellectual attitude of Gorgias are developed in a living and dramatic manner. Interestingly, Plato ends the Gorgias with one of the famous myths that appear and reappear throughout the dialogues (Symposium, Phaedo, Phaedrus, and Republic to name a few). They do not always appear in the mouth of Socrates, but at the end of the Gorgias it is Socrates himself who says to Callicles:
"Give an ear then, as they say, to a right fine story, which you will regard as a fable, I fancy, but I as an actual account; for what I am about to tell you I mean to offer as the truth." (523a)
Socrates goes on to present a treatise of a sort that comments on the destiny of the soul, giving the dialogue a foundation that in retrospect it seemed to be aiming at the whole time.

First time reading something for a university discussion! (Meaning my first university discussion, not my first time reading something for that purpose

The aristocrat Callicles is not at all impressed or convinced by Socrates's sophistry; and this is probably a first in Plato's dialogues. Socrates ends his arguments and the dialogue by threatening Callicles with the eternal judgment and hell. I suspect that Nietzsche loved this dialogue – as Callicles is prefiguring his philosophy and moreover directly dismisses Socrates and everything that the Corrupter of the Greek's Youth stood for.

Great.
A superb and entertaining crash course on rhetoric. One can only dream of having the swift and skillful rhetoric of Socrates.

This book is a masterpiece. It includes a critical text, and a line-by-line philological commentary. But even the reader without Greek will learn an enormous amount about Plato and related topics by reading it alongside a translation -- just skip all the entries dealing with purely philological matters.

It is often said that the best commentary on Aristotle is Aristotle. Hence, important commentaries on Aristotle spend most of their time quoting (in Greek) other passages from Aristotle. The same is true for Plato - and probably for all philosophers. So keep a copy of the translated works handy and whenever Dodds or anyone cites a passage or refers to a passage, follow up the reference.

The best translation of the collected works remains E. Hamilton, Cairns Lord -- not Cooper. By a mile.

If you need a good dialogue about rhetoric, morality, duty and philosophy this is it. If The Republic was your jam, don’t miss this prequel!

Gorgiasdialogen är en av de underbara dialoger där båda sidor kan ges rätt. Callicles (en av gorgias lärjungar) argumenterar för att friheten att välja, som är störst hos makthavare, är den största glädjen; Sokrates att den största glädjen är att veta att man gör rätt, vilket inte makthavare kan, eftersom de är fångade av massan.

Formellt sett, är målet med dialogen att förstå retorikerns roll i relation till sitt värv - Sokrates ser det som den professionella lögnarens, eftersom det bygger på att förändra bilden av verkligheten. Callicles som den professionella väljarens. Båda dessa kan kokas ned till hur man bör hantera de som står ivägen för ens visioner. Sokrates idé (att undvika dem) förkastas av Callicles som världsfrånvänd och barnslig - bara handlingen räknas, och handlingen involverar personer som påverkas utan att begripa vad som pågår, vilket gör att deras reaktioner räknas. Callicles idé (att dominera massan genom att förstå den) förkastas av Sokrates som ett slags fängelse och som en självförminskning, rent bortsett från att det hindrar människor från att växa, genom att undanhålla det nyttiga från dem.

Jag läste utgåvan i platons samlade verk, och alltså inte peguinöversättningen denna gång. I mitt tycke är den version jag läste nu bättre vad gäller översättningsflöde och tydlighet.

Jag rekommenderar den som en tankeställare åt alla som fascineras av makt eller samhällsliv.

I can't believe I've had like eight years (or more) of consistent philosophical reading and never read this dialogue lmao.

On one hand, I can see why they executed Socrates. Moreso than in dialogues like The Republic and Meno, he really tears into people here.

On the other, he's so based. Like Oh My God, I'm not a fan of the whole like "watch this educated person DESTROY this guy who has no idea what they're talking about" content, but this Platonic dialogue is like the Platonic ideal exemplar of that type of content.

I really like Plato/Socrates' ability to have a completely bonkers theory that's also perfectly consistent. Very few philosophers due it like the OG.*

*He's not quite the OG, but the Western tradition treats him as such so allow me to call him so for rhetorical effect.

Frankly I did not expect to be so pleasantly surprised by Plato. Despite my initial apprehension, Gorgias is a fascinating and accessible introduction to idealism in which Plato considers a multitude of notions, including rhetoric, politics, art, and justice to name a few.

As any beginner in philosophy such as myself might remark, it is quite astounding how Plato’s texts seem to transcend all historical eras and remain so pertinent even today.

Besides the philosophy, which has been much discussed, I also found interesting Socrates's unusual tone in this dialogue. He is much fiercer and more opinionated than in others, and the whole discussion itself seems more like a heated argument than the typical philosophical debate. Callicles even goes as far as to say Socrates is on the level of an annoying child for studying philosophy at his age.

It's Plato so it's obviously going to be remarkable from a literary standpoint. Plato idolizes his deceased mentor Socrates in this absolutely profound dialogue which is centered around rhetoric: its meaning, its use, its significance, and most importantly its moral implications. Socrates, throughout the dialogue, delves deep into the world of moral truth and eternal goodness. This dialogue, as its own unique genre of literature, explores how temporary pleasures contrasts heavily with actual goodness produced usually through pain or hardship. Temperance, evil, power, and corruption explode off of this central contrast and manifest specifically through Gorgias' and Socrate's view on the morality of persuasion in rhetoric. These themes are both universal and heavily thought provoking, providing the reading with philosophical inquiries that might have been overlooked before. It is an absolutely fantastic dialogue that CLEARLY influences philosophy and literature through the entire span of history. The parallels between Dante's the Divine Comedy in the 1300s and Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray in terms of the soul's physical manifestation of sin and vice (as presented throughout the dialogue) are uncanny. Plato's brilliance ought to be much appreciated through this rich dialogue.