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.

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.

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

Gorgias by Plato
Gorgeous Gorgias in some parts, but not overwhelming in others

Plato and Socrates are two titans of human thought, thinkers that have had an enormous impact and contribution to the development of mankind, with brilliant ideas that have shaped the Western democracy.

Nevertheless, I was not all that happy with Gorgias.

First of all, I have been on the wrong side of the arguments, if not throughout, at least to begin with and for large parts.
Socrates appeared to be too belligerent, maybe in the audio version that I heard he appears more violent.
Granted, his interlocutors made me think that dialectical dialogue as I knew it may have given way to a locker room exchange of rude words.

Of course this is just the view of a dilettante, with inclination to sophism that actually proves that Socrates is right.

The vehement crucifixion of the rhetoric and then sophist occupations are too virulent for my taste and ultimately wrong

-tYes I get the picture
-tRhetoric can be and is used by malevolent men to evil purpose
-tTrump comes to mind

But still, even if that can be the case, to dismiss a useful skill is not worthy of the wisest man of the ancient world...

-tSure, the argument that philosophy is worthier than rhetoric is powerful, but to annihilate the latter is wrong


The ethics and morality of Socrates are impeccable

-tHe argues that it is better to suffer injustice than to inflict it
-tBetter die than do something wrong

Many years ago, I have first read some of the ideas of Plato, once in a while as presented by Socrates in the dialogues.
The issue of death stayed in my mind

-tYou are not afraid of death Socrates?
-tNo
-tWhat is the reason
-tI do not know about it
-tSo
-tNobody has come back from the other side to inform us about it
-tYes, it is true
-tTherefore, to be afraid of it would be to pretend to know something about death
-tContinue…
-tAnd I never say that I know something that I do not know

And indeed, Socrates came to the conclusion that he was declared the wisest man of the Ancient world because he never claimed to know anything

-t“I know that I know nothing”

Taking his quote, I know nothing about Gorgias.
At least I did not take it the “right, good” way and I have sided with the bad, ugly aspect of the heated argument.

If you've never read Plato, start with n  Gorgiasn. This extended dialogue lays out many of the foundational principles of democracy (and Socrates' fiercest critiques of its Athenian implementation) and its arguments maintain their relevance today, even as the democratic ideal lists ever more drunkenly toward a capitalist bastardization that suppresses more and more citizens, not least in these United States. Walter Hamilton's canonical English translation serves the material well, rendering among my favorite of Socrates' declarative statements: "...we should embrace pleasure among other things as a means to good, and not good as a means to pleasure." (Quoted from n  #SmallBooksMonthn)

One of the more straightforward Platonic dialogues about the good life and how it is essentially different from and incomparably superior to the 'merely' pleasurable life--the life of a tyrant, for example. However, the point in the dialogue where Callicles capitulates and gets on board with Socrates' rather swift identification of "better" pleasures with "good" pleasures and lesser pleasures with "bad" pleasures got me scratching my head for a bit. It seems to me that Callicles as a hedonist was in a position to claim that lesser pleasures are not strictly speaking 'bad' (contra Socrates), even if they are liable to cause harmful viz painful consequences in the long run. This is because the removal of or cessation of such harms could very well bring relief or pleasure to the subject. In my opinion, the last of the three objections to hedonism, i.e. that since pain and pleasure as contraries can co-exist in one body but not good and bad contraries, therefore pleasure cannot be identified with the good--is the most convincing.
Socratic eschatology leaves one to wonder--perhaps it requires an inhumanly magnanimous soul to not only be able to indulge all 'wrongdoing' to their hearts' content without a shred of remorse, but also to openly embrace the consequences of their actions in this life and beyond?

Cuvintele nu-și au însemnătatea acum, tocmai fiindcă rostul lor nu va veni și nu este dat doar din rostire, ori de rostirea dată de ce zic eu aici, acum, fără a sta să mi-o expun alăturea argumentelor. Dar nu mă pot abține și cred că e de ajuns să citim și să vedem; și pe dreptate că, cel puțin aici, Platon își merită pe deplin înțelegerea în temeiul dreptății, odată cu sensul dat de natură și legea ei, și nu numai, după mine.

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.

n  "Çünkü, emin ol ki, az ya da çok yaşamak, gerçek anlamıyla insan olan birisinin kurtulması gereken bir kaygıdır. Yaşama bağlanmak yerine [...] yaşanılan süre içinde de iyi yaşamaya bakmalıdır."n (s. 108)

I am giving this long-winded and dim-witted work three stars on the Platonic scale because it is vastly inferior to the six other works that I have read by Plato (i.e. "The Republic", "The Symposium" and the four dialogues on the death of Socrates.) As part of the overall Platonic corpus, "Gorgias" would be worth five stars.
The nominal subject of "Gorgias" is rhetoric which Gorgias makes a living teaching. Plato spends the two-thirds of the work pages making two points: (1) rhetoric is not a science having a concrete subject (such as physics or medicine) but it is simply a group of techniques for persuasion; and (2) in practice rhetoric reduces to flattering the audience and as such is fundamentally dishonest. The problem is not that Plato is wrong that he takes too long to make his case.
The final third of "Gorgias" is devoted to the thesis that it is worse to the perpetrator of an injustice than it is to be the victim of an injustice. I am in agreement with this idea which is central to both Platonism and to Christianity. My complaint is that Plato presents this idea better elsewhere.

I remember reading this a few years ago, but somehow I decided to rent and read it again and I have to say that I'm so freaking happy that I did. Now that I'm older and perhaps a little bit more mature, I now can digest the content and wisdom Gorgias (the book itself, duuuh) has to offer and I even enjoyed it more than I did back then. In the whole dialogue it's seems to me that it's pretty clear where I find myself, and sure some arguments took thinking as you go on(how could it not?), but it was so fascinating to see(or should I say read) how Kallikles turned the whole setting around with some here and there thought provoking and the kind of funny/bully way he puts it, in respond to Socrates way of thinking. I also think that Socrates shows a lot of his stoic thinking on this one and would not be surprised if he had influenced stoicism. Overall, this was a very good one and I sure have taken a lot more from it than I did a few years ago. I loved it!

Five stars due to the number of times I said WOW out loud while reading this dialogue.