The Unity of Plato's 'Gorgias': Rhetoric, Justice, and the by Devin Stauffer

By Devin Stauffer

Devin Stauffer demonstrates the complicated solidarity of Plato's Gorgias, via a cautious research of the dialogue's 3 major sections, together with Socrates' well-known argumentative duel with Callicles, a passionate critic of justice and philosophy. He finds how the doubtless disparate issues of rhetoric, justice, and the philosophic lifestyles are woven jointly right into a coherent complete. Stauffer's interpretation of the Gorgias sheds new mild on Plato's suggestion, indicating that Plato and Socrates had a extra favorable view of rhetoric than is meant, and demanding situations a few of Socrates' most renowned claims approximately justice.

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Extra info for The Unity of Plato's 'Gorgias': Rhetoric, Justice, and the Philosophic Life

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Gorgias responds to the demand of his rivals that he identify “this greatest good” that rhetoric provides for human beings (see 452c8–d4) by giving a bolder and fuller statement than any he has given thus far. The good that rhetoric provides, he proclaims, is “that which is truly the greatest good and the cause of freedom for human beings themselves and at the same time of rule over others in each man’s own city” (452d5–8). Despite its boldness, however, Gorgias’ statement is not without ambiguity.

203–4, present more nuanced views, but they, too, describe Gorgias as more public-spirited than he is. More accurate, in my view, are Dodds, Gorgias, 10; Nichols, “The Rhetoric of Justice in Plato’s Gorgias,” 133–5; Rankin, Sophists, Socratics, and Cynics, 43; Murray, “Plato on Power, Moral Responsibility and the Alleged Neutrality of Gorgias’ Art of Rhetoric,” 357–9. P1: KAE 052185847Xc01 CUNY307/Stauffer 28 0 521 85847 X December 1, 2005 13:25 Examining the Master of Rhetoric from those arts that produce persuasion by teaching people about their subject matters.

For further confirmation, see Meno 95b9–c4. P1: KAE 052185847Xc01 CUNY307/Stauffer 36 0 521 85847 X December 1, 2005 13:25 Examining the Master of Rhetoric learned the just things (consider 460a5–b7, which could be taken to suggest such a view). But would such a man not only know the just things but also do them? 29 By posing this last question, which admits of only one answer for a decent man or a prudent one, Socrates foists on Gorgias an understanding of what it means for the rhetorician to be a knower of justice that is itself in accordance with justice or ordinary decency.

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