I read the book first my philosophy class. It helped me a lot to understand the concept of philosophy and made me think in depth a lot of
things like crime, punishment and freedom...

Did exactly what a philosophy book should do.

Also I'm kinda concerned that my ancestors were sitting around talking about stupid things but I guess they were just chill guys...

It’s hard to say exactly which of Plato’s dialogues is the most relevant to the modern reader, but I think Gorgias would be a major contender. This Platonic dialogue takes place between Socrates and a small group of sophists as well as some other guests at a dinner party. What starts off as a defining of what rhetoric is and what its purpose is turns into a philosophical discourse on the Socratic view of natural morality, absolute truth, and self-control as opposed to relative morality, relative truth, and the pursuit of pleasure and excess as the ultimate good as held by the Sophists.

Socrates begins by comparing the techne versus what he calls a knack in rhetoric. He uses the example of medicine versus cookery to demonstrate this idea. The doctor uses pleasant and unpleasant means to bring about health in a person. Surgery is generally unpleasant and painful but brings about health. It is not about the gratification of one’s desires, but rather about one’s health. The Baker on the other hand makes cakes and sweet breads to fulfill personal gratification and desire, but does nothing for the health of the person. Socrates in this Dialogue is the doctor. He is the true politician and philosopher who is ready to use both pleasant and unpleasant means to bring about a healthy soul.

Socrates denies that pleasure can be equated directly to good. He argues that this is demonstrated by the natural world. There are good and pleasant things that can kill us, and there are unpleasant and painful things that can save our lives. In saying so Socrates is claiming that there is a natural morality at play here. That when something is good and pleasurable there is a point when that good and pleasurable thing reaches an excessive point where it becomes bad or harmful. A little bit of alcohol once in a while for example, gladdens the heart and is pleasurable to the body, but the excess of alcohol intake leads to alcoholism and destroys our body, life, and soul. A little bit of sugar here and there is good and pleasurable for the body, but excess causes obesity and disease. Socrates says that the one who places pleasure and desire as the end all goal is harming his own soul and other souls around him. He likens the person to a man with a bucket that has holes in it. That the more the man fills the bucket the more he becomes a slave to keeping it full, and the more he fills it the more holes appear and the faster he has to fill it. This is like the soul of the carnal or hedonistic man.

These two views battling it out here in this seemingly inconspicuous platonic dialogue have massive philosophical implications in the real world. Especially in the political sphere. In many ways this argument has echoed through the ages and continues to be an argument of great importance to anyone and everyone whether they know which side of it they’re on or not. It portrays two views of freedom. One, being freedom as liberty, and the other freedom as autonomy. The sophist view is that of freedom as liberty, that any restriction whatsoever on a person creates repression and unhappiness because true happiness is found in the accumulation and satiation of desires, (this view is represented by many thinkers responsible for the modern mentality in the west, Freud, Nietzsche, etc.) and the Socratic view of freedom as autonomy that argues that true freedom is man’s ability to know restraint and govern himself based on man’s ability to reason and seek virtue.

It portrays two views of truth and ethics. That of the sophist’s relative idea of truth and morality. That you can make an argument for anything by appealing to human emotion and desire. That you can persuade people to whichever view you want as a rhetorician because no view has actual truth. All truth is only perspective. Or the Socratic view of a truth that is true apart from rhetoric, and a moral law that can be found in nature by use of man’s ability to reason.

Plato’s dialogue asks us to consider then, which side of this argument are we on?
Will we take the side of Socrates and pursue knowledge and virtue?
Or will we take the side of the Sophists and pursue the accumulation and satiation of our personal desires?

4.5*
I liked this one the best

An excellent example of philosophy justifying itself.

Everybody has heard the whole cranky, rather arrogant and patronizing remark made when someone who doesn't read very much or doesn't read for pleasure or instruction feels like scoffing a bit:

"Why are you reading this boring old stuff? Philosophy's good when you're younger, and you don't know anything, but once you become a real adult you should just let that stuff go..."

It's interesting that Socrates calls Gorgias out for basically making that case outright and putting Socrates in his place- or seeming to- by doing so.

Socrates asks him if he thinks a Catamite (the 'catcher' in the boudoir, if you please) is living a good life. Gorgias sputters and says 'no'....Well, says Socrates, if you think that constantly seeking pleasure and satisfaction is all you need, maybe those very desires you have aren't going to be fulfilled and so you're really just constantly, consistently being the butt-boy for your own endless, fruitless pursuit of gratification.

It's always amused me how Socrates gets away with laying the smack down like that...

Es peor cometer una injusticia que soportarla

Che dire? E' grandioso!
Mi è venuto leggendo, da subito, un parallelo profanissimo, perdonatemi, tra i retori bollati da Platone e, un esempio tra tanti, i vari avvocaticchi di Berlusconi che ci vogliono far credere che Gesù è morto di freddo... (Lui che era il padrone della legna!), e a volte ci riescono. Per non parlare dei "politici" e della classe politica nostrana (senza far nomi, per carità!) che sarebbero da accostare in parallelo a Pericle, Temistocle, Cimone, Milziade, fustigati sempre da Platone. Ma mi facci il piacere!
Termino questo mio sconclusionato commento al Gorgia citando Gaber:
"Io se fossi Dio,
dall'alto del mio trono
vedrei che la politica è un mestiere come un altro
e vorrei dire, mi pare Platone,
che il politico è sempre meno filosofo
e sempre più coglione".

The Greek edition with commentaries by E. R. Dodds is the must-have for any student of Plato who would like to take the dialogue to the sheer extreme, even though you are just a dilettante of the Attic Greek language.

Gorgias is another Sophist (after Protagoras) with who Socrates interacts along with Callicles. The dialogue is interesting in its premise: Plato essentially says that morality is greatly tied with afterlife - a reward for being 'good' in this life. This is essentially the root of the argument or what Socrates tries to qualify it as one while Callicles comes after him viciously.

While Protagoras retires from the argument (which goes nowhere), Gorgias simply doesn't participate. Gorgias being the seventh dialogue I've read, this is the first time when an interlocutor has abandoned the ship. Callicles however continues (as directed by Gorgias) the argument which I don't see Socrates really addressing it.

The good and evil, justice and morality make an appearance again with Socrates' well timed responses. It is still unclear if his answers really addressed Callicles' argument as Socrates deflects from the original question.

This dialogue requires a definite re-read just to ingest several metaphors that Callicles throws at Socrates. Socrates holds his ground for all its worth and I believe Plato is essentially telling the readers to get on with it and formulate a better response to Callicles' arguments.

A thorough enjoyable read and possibly one of my favorites of the dialogues till now.

Very painful to ready to dialogue technics used. But some good insight and view of the ancient GREC live.
Funny anecdote : got a conversation with an American woman working in Philadelphia about GREC philosophy in the airport

Socrates is pretty annoying in this. I don’t think he answers callicles well either, and this dialogue was too long.

I’m inspired again by Socrates’ clear pursuit of truth and ability to sustain a long train of thought. Great book.

Well, if one was to sum up, it would be hard to go past Plato’s own summary:

“And of all that has been said, nothing remains unshaken but the saying, that to do injustice is more to be avoided than to suffer injustice, and that the reality and not the appearance of virtue is to be followed above all things, as well in public as in private life; and that when any one has been wrong in anything, he is to be chastised, and that the next best thing to a man being just is that he should become just, and be chastised and punished; also that he should avoid all flattery of himself as well as of others, of the few or of the many: and rhetoric and any other art should be used by him, and all his actions should be done always, with a view to justice.”

I’ve read this book as someone who is an atheist and therefore someone who can place little concern on the rewards or punishments of the afterlife. Much of Plato’s argument is supported by the idea that we should be moral in this life to avoid punishment in the next life. I would like to think that his conclusions still stand for an atheist, even if his arguments do not.

I’m not sure how well Socrates answers Callicles’ arguments – or rather attack. Nietzsche later says much the same things about Socrates and his arguments – his denial of life and how ugly Socrates is and how lacking in taste and common sense. It seems clear for much of the text that Callicles is bored by Socrates’ arguments and only agrees to continue listening to Socrates because Gorgias asks to hear the rest of what Socrates has to say – he abandons participation in the argument, which is not the same as him being silenced by Socrates’ argument. I would very much doubt that Callicles came away from this encounter feeling that Socrates was right and that one should prefer to suffer harm than to do harm.

The myth at the end was all very Christian – and it is easy to see why Plato was so easy to be used by the Church. I found it very interesting that at least two of what are taken to be standard Christian messages are clearly put forward by Socrates – turn the other cheek (literally in those terms, too) and the problem the rich and powerful will have in getting into paradise. The import of this dialogue seem to me to be an even clearer statement of the golden rule than that contained in the Christian message – (surely the idea that we must avoid doing ill, even prefering bad things to be done to us, is more virtuous than merely treating others as we would like to be treated ourselves).

So, the question for me is whether it is possible to establish this as a conclusion an atheist could follow. And, to be honest, I don’t know. I can’t see what an atheist could base the ‘good’ that is necessary to sustain this argument on. Socrates is more than willing to be prepared to die for his truth because he knows there is an afterlife in which the pleasures and sufferings of this life are as nothing.

His argument is that doing wrong harms the wrong-doer’s soul – I think this is true, even if I don’t believe in a ‘soul’ as such. If we know we have done wrong there is nothing worse than feeling we have been ‘rewarded’ for it.

When I was a child my mother caught me cheating at patience (or solitaire for my American cousins). I must have been old enough for her merely saying, “Are you cheating?” to not really count for much. But what did count was when she said, “You are only cheating yourself.”

I’ve often wondered if that is a good lesson or not. I still don’t cheat and try to avoid situations where I can cheat myself or others – but it does often seem that those who do cheat (perhaps both themselves and others) do end up better off. And people do seem to have a near infinite capacity to rationalise away their actions so that they always do tend to see themselves in the end as entirely justified. Plato’s myth at the end of this dialogue where the wrong souls are being sent to the wrong places because they were being judged in their worldly finery just before they die seems relevant here.

Perhaps a means of attack on this is that the benefits of doing wrong are generally short lived – you cheat and the benefit is rather fleeting – but the knowledge that you cheated, that you are the sort of person who would cheat, that can be something that lasts with you all of your life. Perhaps then this is the ground to support Plato’s conclusions without resorting to his arguments – that in the end one needs to be able to live with one’s self – and that is easier to do if we have been wronged, than if we have wronged others. That the punishments we inflict upon ourselves for wronging others are often worse than the punishments others would give us if they were to punish us.

I enjoyed this more than the last time I read it – the last time I read it I was much more concerned that Socrates did not really answer Callicles’s argument – I still don’t think he answers it, but I’m not as concerned now.