Her ne kadar zaman aşımına uğramış bir sonuca bağlansa da Platon'un "Gorgias Ya Da Retorik Üstüne" eseri iyi ile kötünün ne olduğunu derin bir şekilde inceleyen, bunu yaparken de sanatın ne olduğunu açıklamaya çalışarak okuyucunun ufkunu açmayı başaran bir kitap. Sanatı daha çok politikanın vazgeçilmez aracı retorikle yani sözle etkileme sanatı üzerinden açıklamaya çalışan kitabın günümüzde bile hala devam eden sanat tartışmalarına ön ayak olduğu bir gerçek. Buradan kitabın politikaya da el attığını anlamak çok zor değil. Kısaca, bir nevi "Devlet"e hazırlık niteliğindeki eser, zaman aşımına uğramış yerlerine rağmen kesinlikle okunması gereken temel felsefe eserleri arasında.

03.02.2015
İstanbul, Türkiye

Alp Turgut

http://www.filmdoktoru.com/kitap-labo...

This is one of Plato's more interesting dialogues, if only because in this case the dialogue breaks down. Callicles just cannot seem to accept Socrates's notion that it is better to have evil done to oneself than to commit evil. He agrees with the questions which are put to him, but then he keeps going back to the notion that hedonism is really preferable to morality.

Socrates even looks forward to his own trial and death. At one point, he says:

You've already told me often enough that anyone who wants to have me executed will do so. Don't make me repeat my reply that it would be a bad man killing a good man, And don't go on about how he'll confiscate all my property, because otherwise I'll have to repeat myself and say: "He may take it, but it'll do him no good. He was wrong to take it, so he'll only put it to wrong use, which is contemptible -- or, in other words, bad for him."

Actually, besides Callicles, here are two other participants in the dialogue, namely the eponymous Gorgias and Polus, especially at the beginning.

It is curious that a dialogue that begins on the subject of rhetoric turns into one on the importance of being a good and moral person and encouraging others to be so.

"Who do you think would deny that he himself knows what's just?"

This is Polus' question, not Socrates'. And it's a great question! One of a few questions put forth by him and Callicles that Socrates never really answers. One of the most notable things here is that Socrates does not ask any questions pertaining to the veracity of any of his interlocutors conceptions of justice, and nobody questions Socrates' conception of soul. This dialogue is Plato himself emphatically learning how to write effectively with what is also unsaid, and putting his own theories and ethics into a form of writing that shares more similarities to drama than it does to philosophy.

At the beginning of the Republic, Thrasymachus storms away angry after Socrates' relentless probing proves that he has no idea what justice is (he starts with "Justice is the advantage of the stronger", and furiously gives up after he's reduced to "Justice is minding one's own business", hahaha!). This is perhaps only the most famous encounter with Socrates blatantly coming forth with the question "What is justice?" But here, that question is nearly irrelevant, at least to the interlocutors. Justice is spoken of by all as an understood concept, that there is indeed an inherent good and bad. This is almost never the case outright for Socrates!

What Plato is trying to do here is something completely different, he is caught leading with faith. The other moment where faith enters Plato's Socrates is in the Phaedo, during Socrates' soothsaying to his disciples present at his execution, when he talks about the immortality of the soul. What interests me about both of these moments, in the Phaedo and at the end of the Gorgias (which is essentially implying the immortality of the soul through heaven), is the incongruity of faith and untruth (or, maybe more agnostically and realistically, the unknowable), and how they are and are not at odds with Socrates', and likely Plato's, thought. It's the tendency to condemn writing and poets, yet have the most major and extensive parts of your intercourse deal with their written words and myths.

There are a lot of analogues with the Republic here, but there are so many equally interesting comparisons to be made with Phaedo, too! An example I've considered most is the constant invocation of pleasure and pain here. It's almost as if the Phaedo was specifically referencing the Gorgias when Socrates talks about his final moments in the former--here, in the Gorgias, this is explained at length. It's the feeling of satiating a great hunger, where you feel the pain of the emptiness while you feel the pleasure of filling it simultaneously. This can have analogues in the physical realm, appetites, sex, medicine, but most importantly, in the mind. Its what happens when we learn, or when we learn we are wrong.

I treat my Plato reviews more like journal entries, more self-interested than convincing or appealing to read, but one thing I do hope that I can persuade people to ponder are the dialogues first words:

CALLICLES: This, they say, is how you're supposed to do your part in battle, Socrates

WHAT? Just like so many other dialogues we are introduced to the scene at the very end of a conversation, with Callicles, of all people, exampling Socrates with some military advice. The irony is palpable.

In the Jowett translation (the former was Zeyl):

CALLICLES: The wise man, as the proverb says, is late for a fray, but not for a feast.

While Jowett is, as usual, more poetic, I am willing to think Zeyl's is the more accurate here. I think the minor ironic detail adds a lot to how we consider the rest of the piece. However, as the dialogue proves, no one really comes out of here wise, as the feast on Gorgias' words led to a fray--but perhaps it was the fray that provided wisdom, afterall.