Plato's Gorgias | The New Thinkery Ep. 8

Welcome back to the new thinkery on David Barr with me as always is my good friend Greg McBrayer. How are you Greg? Hey David, don't welcome that July from the World Headquarters at Nice People, National Ohio. It's great to grab home to grandpa's cheese barn.

Grandpa says he more cheese. He more cheese. Now Greg, if I don't see any of that cheese down the line, I will prevent you from plugging that nice establishment. And Alex, how are you doing?

You're calling us from Boulder Colorado. That's the home of a different kind of industry. Yeah, the marijuana industry. No, I meant.

Super. Super is everybody here has a Subaru. I guess there's some cheese as well, but not grandpa's cheese. Didn't you just get a Subaru?

Yeah, I did. All right. Yes, as we'll learn from this dialogue, it's important to pay tribute to convention. Right?

Yes. And our silent partner who is not with us, Jake, the can and can and our producer, we just would like to thank at the outset. Thank you, Jake. Thanks to all of our listeners, those who have subscribed recently, please do subscribe and rate us wherever you get your podcasts.

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And one more thing. I think so those who have supported us who have made donations, it's incredibly helpful. Yeah, we make a lot of jokes on the show, but I feel like you actually couldn't measure it though, Alex. I mean, just for not my gratitude, we're a measurably good here.

I have a measurable gratitude for a measurable sum. We're sincerely grateful all jokes aside. And once we have a little thermometer, if you've ever taken part in a fundraiser, sometimes they'll stick a paper thermometer on the wall and you'll see it rise as donations come in. Our thermometer has the picture on top of it of somebody whose name we won't reveal.

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That's right. So the sooner we get to our goal, the sooner you might learn something tuning in. Let's just say his name, this is David's idea. His name starts with an M and ends with an R key to sod.

Yes. And we have to conjure him up every episode at night. So today we're talking about the Gorgias, Plato's Gorgias. If you're very excited about Greg and Alex, I'm teaching this dialogue for years.

It's one of Plato's most well-known dialogues about rhetoric, about justice. It's paired nicely with the apology, with the Republic of other dialogues. But let's kick it off. What's going on?

What's this about just in general terms? Sure. Well, you already mentioned the title. It's called the Gorgias.

What's the subtitle? I forgive me. I know you had it right now. I'm only go on rhetoric.

One of the goals isohn, of this dialogue called the Gorgias is what is rhetoric. What is this? The rhetoric, aka ending like rhetoric, and electrician, data dietitian. These all mean people who are expert at certain things.

And so the implication is that Gorgias is a kind of expert. Sorry, is a kind of expert at speaking. What does that might mean? So we're really trying to figure out one of the things we're trying to figure out is what is this scale of speaking.

You mentioned that the other major theme is justice. I think that's right. The dialogue is named after Gorgias, who was himself a famous rhetorician. I would say one of the most famous people that Socrates speaks to also, Britannias, either asengine, insofar as it's named for the main interlocutor.

It's fairly typical. 25 or 27 dialogues are named after individuals. Most of those are named after individuals that's actually speaking in the dialogue. Main interlocutor, but he doesn't speak for the greatest length of time.

Yeah, in fact, so the dialogue, the gorgeous falls into three main parts. There's a short conversation with Gorgias, and then a short conversation with a student who's named Polis longer than the first conversation, and then a third conversation with this gentleman named Calipley's. And so each conversation gets longer as we go on. That's right.

So he's not the chief interlocutor in a way, the title is sort of indicate, but he's not the chief interlocutor in terms of he's not the guy to get the most airtime or something like that. I mentioned Gorgias was relatively famous. We actually have some of his writings. His his incomium to Helen is available.

Alex, you don't have to have a favorite translation of that, do you? Oh, no. I have the little, is it Cambridge or something like that? The little orange one?

Yeah, maybe it's not Cambridge, or it's Bristol, I think maybe. Yeah, so it's Gorgias. Nice Socrates. Sorry going on.

Yeah, it's just, and it's an interesting document because it does show rhetoric, sorry, Gorgias is pride in his, in his trade. He's defending, you know, the figure who for the Greeks was the most indefensible of figures. Helen of Troy, not so much because he thinks she's just or she's a good person or moral abstaining person, but in order to show off his ability with rhetoric, I can defend even the indefensible sort of how trial lawyers might be attracted to defending really ugly. Like O.J.

Simpson. Yeah, so I'm just Simpson. Right. Right.

So. And I will be teaching that O.J. Simpson speech as we talked about in the last episode. Is that right?

Yeah, well, actually, Johnny Cochran is a bit dozen 50 must have quit as an example of this rhetoric, in fact, of judicial rhetoric. But any of that, so working himself as an expert in the rhetoric, I think we'll probably get into this. I think some of these socratic interlocutors are rather nasty fellows. Stracemics comes to mind.

Protagoras in this dialogue, Calvus, I think, Alex is going to leave us for showing how Calvus is sort of nasty fellow. Gorgias himself strikes me as a sort of decent guy, decent ish, not quite fully decent. I will get to that moment. This is a typical dialogue as far as it's performed.

There's no one narrating it. It's typical as far as it's named for a chief interlocutor. The subject matter is kind of typical. A lot of the dialogues are about virtues.

They also see me as office or in a rish. It's long for a short dialogue or short for a dialogue, a longer dialogue. It's about 80s to fond of pages. So medium and length.

So again, kind of right down the middle. The dramatic date I have in my notes as 405 BC. So Socrates would have been about early 60s, 60s, 60s, 60s, 60s, and more stuff like that. And what was that going on in Athens?

That's a great question. Let me just quickly, the way that I usually go about determining the dramatic data is there's this excellent book by Deborah Nails called The People of Plato. And it has an excellent appendix on dates. There's also a great book by Catherine Zupert on Plato that has a dramatic date.

And so usually I compare those and then I, at the beginning point is looking at what they say and then I try to figure out a biography or disagree based on content of anything else to mention. So those usually get started by me. There's a couple of places where I disagree. I think Alex and I talked about how we think that most of these folks who situate the protagonist get that dramatic date wrong.

Some do. Or else it's also about. Yeah, some do. On the gorges is a dramatic date.

It's actually 405 is one possibility. But I think there's a couple of, and I did prepare this point. So maybe I'm wrong, but I think there's a couple of conflicting dramatic dates. Right.

It's actually so that it takes place at it seems like almost at any time during the Peloponnesian War. Just to answer David's point, which is I think right because there is a kind of tone of imperialism of cynicism about democracy to the dialogue, all the, some of the different opinions that we're floating about during the Peloponnesian War. The first time in this war. Yeah.

Now that I think about it, we just to plug an episode that actually may be released before this, but we will have Boston College, political science, political philosopher Bob Bartlett on soon to talk about two new translations by Aristophanes, the Akarnians and the Knight, the Knights, and the figure there is Cleon, the demagogue Cleon, and rhetoric is front and center. So I think Greg, if you or Alex could say something, just how central to life, the practice of oratory and how seriously, I think how central to democratic life to politics, oratory was for Athenians, more than it is, I think today. Is that fair? Just because if you wanted to get something done just through the way the assembly was structured, how things and Athens moved along, it was different from just being able to speechify or not on C-Span.

Look, I think that's a great question. My mind is moving in two directions here. So the first thing I'll say is that rhetoric seems to have emerged at a particular historical time, at a particular place, in a particular political setting. And you're right, that it was democratic Athens.

And so it seems to have arisen in result of this democratic assembly of the need for people to stand in front of their fellow citizens and to be able to persuade them of things, that some of course, of action was more jost, or more advantageous, or they needed to do public displays, or at least funeral oration. And so to the extent that if you were involved in politics and democratic Athens, it was extraordinarily important, I think you're right, to be able to speak well. And there's all kinds of evidence that many of these politicians actually had training in rhetoric, and that's why these rhetoric since Gorgias wasn't from Athens. So some of these skilled speakers would come to Athens to teach the young to be able to do this.

Now, your second part of the question was, something wrong with why is it not practiced now? And that is a really good question. I'm teaching a course on rhetoric right now, and I'm using a secondary text called Farnsworth's Classical English Redrick, which gives examples of different rhetorical devices in Afro, for example, in San Francisco. And one of the things it does is it'll describe rhetorical devices, and then in the margins, it has examples drawn from politics or literature that people have employed those devices.

And as I'm teaching this to my students right now, I'm trying to get them to notice that there's a pattern, and I'll solve these examples come from the 19th century, although meaning come into the 20th century to the end by around 1940 or 1950. There are a few important examples, counter examples, some early to king, for example. But by and large, these folks are in the 19th century and in the early 20th century, and they're British. And so it's somewhat of a paradox to me that rhetoric seems to have emerged in a democratic regime, but in our democratic regime, it seems to have fallen very much by the wayside.

I think we could, if we wanted not much, we want to go down this line of thought, but I do think there's some explanations that are possible. I think our commitment to equality tells us that you shouldn't be skilled at speaking, we prefer plain spoken people. The Enlightenment project by and large was very dismissive of rhetoric. If we can teach everyone the truth, why should we have this shady thing called persuading people?

By the way, this is my mind's a little bit later right now, but I guess another thing I would say there, David, is you have led me to the point that I probably should have made from the beginning that rhetoric is a shady, considered by some to be a shady endeavor. It seems to be morally negative, morally bad, not good. And that's what Socrates will press here in just a moment. I don't know if that was a very round about way to try and answer some of the questions you raised.

No, that's great. That's great. If I could, yeah, to follow up on that, I do think everything you say about the Enlightenment and Democratic society and the sort of, I would attribute more to the decay of rhetoric rather than the non-existence of rhetoric. In fact, I think one of the ways when I taught this dialogue a couple years ago, I compared one of the ways I compared Gorgias, Polis, and Caloclesis III main interlocutors is as a kind of general degradation.

You pointed out Gorgias is a nice guy, Caloclesis, not a nice guy. And there's a way in which Gorgias is kind of a self-satisfied rhetorician. I would even call him a kind of one of these journalists who's so proud of being a journalist. He's proud of his public activity and his ability to sway the masses.

Polis is a bit more manipulative and he's kind of like one of these gable news pundits or something, whereas Caloclesis seems to be all about fake news. So these are ways in which you have a kind of rhetoric, even nowadays, and I think there's a kind of parallel you can set up there. This is a way in which we have rhetoric nowadays, even when we don't necessarily take it seriously. It seems to be a necessary feature of democratic politics, perhaps of politics generally, and to emerge just out of the very nature of public discourse.

So I do think the Gorgias is still very relevant as Decade is our rhetoric is, perhaps for the very reason it's Decade, it's relevant. Taking place as it does during the decay of another. And then Aristotle, Aristotle, we can talk about this later, I don't want to talk about Aristotle, but famously follow up with his own book on the same subject matter, along with the slew of Romans. And yeah, we should do an episode standpoint on Aristotle's work, the art of rhetoric, where he even the title already indicates that he's fundamental to disagree with at least what Socrates claims here in Gorgias, right?

That Socrates denies it's an art. Just let's go start going. No, just a couple small ones, and this will get us into the dialogue. But I think that the example, the Gorgias, the way that he speaks about rhetoric, leads people to believe that rhetoric is a kind of skill, it's a kind of weapon, he compares it to boxing.

And so there's a way in which a weapon can be used well or used badly. And I think that to the extent that he's decent as he's not interested in, he's not interested in teaching people how to use it badly, but he's kind of different. He doesn't really care that much if people use it well or badly, just like if you were a boxer or if you had gone or something like this. And so we tend to view, we tend to view people with guns differently depending on who they are.

But yeah, you want to talk about, I mentioned briefly to get into the dialogue, there's three main guards, there's a conversation with Gorgias, his student policy takes over, and then Cal of leads takes over, and the main three conversations between Socrates and those three guys. I'll just mention just to problematize a little bit, there is a kind of frame at the beginning, and it ends with this myth that Alice is going to at least briefly describe for us. And the narrative frame to get us into the dialogue, the narrative frame is Socrates has one of his students, although he doesn't call him a student clarifying with him, and they're approaching Gorgias and his students, because Chironos apparently knows either Gorgias or one of his students, he actually might know the student of his members. But you get impression right off the bat that Socrates is interested in talking to Gorgias, he's curious about Gorgias, he wants to learn something from him, or for some reason that is not fully explained in the dialogue, he has a desire to speak with Gorgias.

I think this stands in contrast with a lot of other dialogues where Socrates has to be compelled to speak to people, and to be a public, they would grab him by gnarmen and make him stay, the apology, I mean, there's policemen, right, they're holding a mess, and so something about Gorgias, something about Gorgias is drawing Socrates in. And if I could just add to that, it's not simply that he wants to speak with Gorgias, if that were the case, I presume he could have pulled Gorgias, he could have found a private moment to speak to him, but instead this dialogue takes place in front of a large number of people, right, it's like this day of speechifying, and Socrates shows up, and the dialogue takes place, and do we know, I mean, is it, I guess we have to kind of extrapolate from the text that this is taking place in front of dozens of people, if not more, but he could have talked to Gorgias privately is my point. Yeah, there's enough people there that at one point early on when Gorgias wants to leave, it's said that there's an uproar. So I would say it has the most people added with the exception of the apology, which has at least 500 other people and host of others watching, right, so which is definitely the largest audience, at least that I can think of in the dialogues, right?

But you mentioned, David mentioned also that Gorgias has just given one of these set piece rhetorical displays, like the incommium of Helen, and we don't hear that, and we also learned that Socrates and Chiron, actually Blaine's on Chiron, but they haven't heard, they didn't come to listen to the set speech, and so we can take Socrates' value that his friend Chiron, Hellema, or you can sort of think, well, I think that if Socrates didn't really want to go hear that speech, he would have gone to hear it, which is curious, because he says he wants to hear the power of this man's art, Gorgias, and if you really want to hear the power of it, you might think he might think he would see it being put on his way. So yeah, well, it depends. So he says, and that's a good segue, right, about his intention. He wants to know the power of the art of the man, right?

Now the power, as far as a public, and its ability to sway the public, might be manifest already to Socrates. Gorgias claims to be able to answer any questions, yet as we soon see he's not altogether capable of answering Socrates' question. So perhaps he's wondering about the power of rhetoric with respect to somebody like him. Can it altogether convince him of what Socrates wants him to convince him of?

That's at least would suggest that perhaps a Socrates goes on to argue a kind of knack or guesswork, right? If he can't simply persuade human beings through a kind of art, right? If there is no simple art of rhetoric, then it turns out that the power does have its limits as amazing as it seems, especially it seems amazing that people like Polis and Caligles, it has a kind of limit. There's a sort of interesting dramatic detail about this early into the, early in the dialogue when Socrates says, hey, I'd like to speak to Gorgias about this question.

Caligles says, well, yeah, there's nothing like speaking to the man himself, implying that he can't be replaced. Likewise with Polis jumps in, you get a sense, Polis is studied with Gorgias, and yet he can't replace Gorgias, just as actually Carofon can't replace Socrates. So there's perhaps something of an art to rhetoric, but also something that can't be simply communicated. And there's also, I think, an implicit comparison between rhetoric and therefore philosophy, which also has a difficulty in being simply taught.

Perhaps they both can't be taught as arts for the same reason, because the human soul isn't able to be generalized or you can't create a sort of set piece for individuals, individuals might have different questions. Yeah, so I mean, that's sort of the intention going into it. And the conversation with Gorgias is fairly friendly, actually very friendly, I think things only start to deteriorate with Polis and Socrates kind of turns it up there, but he's not very nice either. But with Gorgias very friendly, trying to understand what rhetoric is.

And then finally, Gorgias seems by the end of it really interested in what Socrates has to say, even as he's talking to Polis and all the way through with Calichles, he interjects. So perhaps one of the things he's trying to accomplish in discussing rhetoric with Gorgias is to gain his interest, show him that he has something to learn about his own art, perhaps some self-knowledge to gain, and some self-knowledge that might be imparted through a discussion, Socrates' discussion with Polis and Calichles, people influenced or educated by Gorgias. I was struck reading this and then having recently been reading Aristophanes, thinking back to the clouds, how the the rhetorician of the Sophist and the philosopher both are open to similar charges of like abuse of their skill or their knack or their art. And like in the clouds, you have a father who's justifiably upset.

Now this is it's a comedy, but there's some truth to the father's upset that his son is going to learn with Socrates in the New Thinkery, and he's come out in the Old Thinkery, and he's come out changed. The OG thing, the OG thingery. And so I think that they're both philosophy and rhetoric have these similarities, but I wonder if some of that, Socrates is aware of some of this I think. Yeah, so I mean one aspect that seems sophisticated about philosophy is the use of irony, hiding what it is you think.

Also adjusting, and I would group this with irony, but without having to commit to anything like that, adjusting your speech to the particular interlocutor. I think this is related to the point about Gorgias. Socrates is a kind of master this. When he enters into conversation with all three of them, he adjusts himself.

He even is able to anticipate their questions, sometimes giving speeches in which he anticipates what they had they respond back and forth. He does that, especially with CaliCles. And so there is a sense that both are able to anticipate something of what their speakers are going to say or their audience is going to say or how they're going to react. But Socrates seems to have a deeper understanding of that in some way.

Maybe here we can go a bit more directly into Gorgias's, his discussion with Gorgias. One thing, a feature that I like to emphasize when I teach this dialogue is how much Gorgias struggles even to define it. The main difficulty that I would raise is that he is reluctant or doesn't quite understand that speeches aren't just bare speeches separated from a subject matter and therefore producing an outcome, but are somehow connected to reality. That speech not only speaks to someone, but it speaks about something.

And speech always has the structure. Rhetoric therefore emerges primarily in an attempt to treat speech separate from being. Every art or most arts Socrates argue to have a rhetorical element, like when your doctor talks to you about in layman's terms or something like that or tries to relate through images, what's going on in your body. And so I think one of the things we first learn about is that if there's something distinctive about the renovation, it's in their attempt to make speech powerful without making it powerful insofar as it invokes something real.

Sorry, Greg, jump on in. No, that's okay. I'm just, if you're in the audience and you got a loss there, I'm a simple country boy from Georgia. So I'm going to try and say this a little differently.

Actually, my friends from Georgia would like to meet a reminder of my audience that I was not actually raised in Georgia. Apparently, they're a little upset in my representation state. This is what happens when Greg eats too much at grandpa's cheese hut or whatever. He forgets where he's from.

He imagines himself as a simple country boy who learned Greek and... Listen, they have a quota for poor country bunkers. That's all it is. But in any event, I think what Alex was saying was that this detaching of the power of speech from any particular content or any particular subject.

And so, Gorgias, as we get into the Gorgias section of the dialogue, he can speak about just about anything. It's sort of a universal or a transferable art. And he talks about his wife and kind of a guy, one of the examples he gives is that his brother is a medical doctor and he brags to Socrates and everyone else listening. That he's actually better at persuading his brother's patients to take their medicine than his brother the doctor is.

And so, there's this kind of... When I say that Gorgias is decent-ish, I think it's just kind of easy going and sort of just doesn't really think through the problems that his art is that right. He doesn't know what it's about. He doesn't know what he's thought through this question that Alex was just talking about.

Yeah. And that moment is actually very revealing. There's another dialogue called the Plato statesman where Socrates, I'm sorry, Iliad Exstranger presents the doctors kind of metaphor for the statesman. At one point, this statesman is said to rule over primarily these three other arts, the judge, etc.

But the rhetorician is one of them. So, Gorgias' subordination of himself to his brother is a kind of ideal that's immediately done away with with polis. Polis who says, although Gorgias says that he'll teach his students something about justice, he said that out of shame. In reality, you don't need that connection to a real subject matter.

It's just going to allow you to accomplish whatever it is you want to do. And therefore, this ideal that the stranger points out in Plato statesman is left behind. And we're given this nastier form that doesn't see itself as subordinated to a subject matter or higher art even, but sort of worthwhile pursuit in its own end. Powerful in its own right.

The other thing I think that Gorgias doesn't see about his art is he seems to present it as though it's some like all powerful or omnipotence. And he doesn't recognize the limits of persuasive speech. So, the first war is war. The dialogue is increasingly violent.

I would say it's the most violent dialogue. I mean, we'll get to a slide right there. So, threats made later. And so, except for the the Fido maybe where somebody actually ties.

Well, yeah, it's peaceful. It's a peaceful day. He owes a talk to a sleekist. I hope the same.

I don't say the same idea. In any event, yeah, that is shameful. So, this example of rhetoric and the way in which the Gorgias seems not to recognize the limits of it. So, he sort of presents himself as being able to persuade patients of anything.

And I do think that the dialogue is pointing to the limit of speech, which is force. Reminds me that when I teach this, I usually tell students about a story that's true. When I was a child, I broke my arm. And so, there's like this elaborate story about the limits of rhetoric.

So, I broke my arm on a C-soft to get to play on C-soft such a kid's bar. They play on C-softs. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, keep them under supervision so they don't do what happened to me. I was showing off for this little girl Betsy Sue and she cherry-bombed me, which if you kid... This was in Georgia?

This was in Berlin, Germany. This little frowline. There's no C- She was what the Germans call a fettica frowline. Yeah.

Anyway, I broke my arm in like seven or eight places. It was really, really bad. I was young. I was like five or six years old and I went up to my dad who we were at some party.

We weren't at home. And then once my father had said, uh, I've been drinking, I've been sleeping on a drink. Yeah. I think dad might have been drinking that night because he told me to just quit crying to the man up.

And so, I did. And went home, went to bed. What got the next morning in my arm was like, you know, pointing the wrong way. So, can I...

This is where the story doesn't make... Yeah. When you showed your father the arm initially, it should have been pointing the wrong way. Yeah.

No, no, it was just broken. So, but then I went on his father and laid. He was a little... Listen, he had the sauce.

But the arm, you know, when you sleep on it, then it kind of just gravity kind of just let it go and go. And I think it swole and did a bunch of stuff overnight. And me and my broken, it wasn't obvious, I guess, to look at it. But the next morning, it was quite obvious.

And I said, dad, I think something's wrong. He's like, yeah, let's go to the doctor. And by the way, don't tell mom, let's just get out here real quick. And so, we go to the doctor and my favorite part of the story, this is a ridiculousness of some medical doctor, some experts came right to the floor.

He began by trying to explain to me the doctor that if I didn't... So, you know, it's now been set, right? So, 12 hours later, something like this. So, what they have to do now is re-break it.

And so, what proceeds that went on follows is this doctor trying to persuade me to let them re-break my arm. But he begins with a scientific argument, right? Well, here's what will happen if the bones don't grow right and this will happen and they'll mare and then you'll forever happen. And I'm like, I don't care about my Gibby 25-year-old arm.

I haven't even thought about that. And then he begins to use persuasion and be a good boy. You know, all the good little boys let us re-break our arms, which I don't think was true. But...

And then he... It's a famous unit, something in German, let's say, right? Yeah, it was all in German and said in my torture. And then much less persuasive.

And then he brought a bag of Oreo cookies. And I didn't like Oreo cookies, which was part of it. It'd be made of it in Schappel chip. But it was like five Oreos.

It was like, let me re-break your arm and I'll give you these Oreo cookies. And I thought, that's dumb. I've got boxes of these things at home. So, finally, what worked was he called in two or three other doctors and nurses and they just held me down in Rebroke My Arm.

And the point there is that you can't persuade some people of stuff and you have to resort to force. And I think Gorgias doesn't recognize that. And just one small more point else. My particular favorite ancient philosopher is N.F.E.E.

and writes a story about a failed military general who happens to have been a student of Gorgias. And one of the reasons I think that Zenfen points out that this man failed was he didn't fully understand that he couldn't simply lead an army relying on rhetoric. Where is that correct? That's good.

That's in the analysis. Okay. I think that's a really instructive example of the limits of rhetoric, mostly because I don't buy that for one second, that long-winded nonsense story about a... I'll paste the picture.

That's all completely true. I'll tell it backwards. And you'll know it's true. One limit is force.

The other limit is reality. There's a story Tacitus tells about the Mitty and saying he conquered Germany and he dressed up a bunch of people, some slaves like Germans and everyone was like those aren't Germans. He put like wigs on him. I guess Germans looked a certain way back then.

And everyone's like, I don't believe you. So there's both the reality. It's true. Is our listenership going to go up or down in Germany after this?

No, this is a general after my own part. No, this is pro-Germany. You had some sort of post-World War II anti-German shtick. Those were all actually American doctors.

Anyway, but Socky's mentioned an example Alex actually about. He says this is when he's trying to get that idea that the artist of war is in contact because Socky brings this example up Gorgias. He says, you can persuade... It's not methyzelle.

You can persuade a mathematician that two plus two plus three. No. So you're persuading relies on the audience being a non-expert and not nowhere. That's right.

I think just to bring it back to the Gorgias, which I don't know if people remember prior to Greg's story. That's what we were talking about. But Gorgias has this advertisement that speech can do anything. It doesn't seem like he really believes it.

Maybe he does a little bit, but he certainly doesn't live by that. He seems to envision himself as just another practitioner of a skill who teaches other people this skill. But any skill you have to sell people on it. And his advertisement includes this sense that you can do anything.

Polis, the second interlocutor, is somebody who really, really has bought into this. And he believes speech can accomplish anything. More specifically, he says it can get, allow you to do anything you want. Socky draws a distinction, an important distinction for Socky's, but to simplify it is just that.

Well, what you want is good things. And sometimes when you do what seems good, it isn't actually good. So what does rhetoric do? Does it allow you to know what's actually good and to accomplish that?

Or does it just give you what seems good? And Polis collapses too. But this is an important distinction that should raise for them. The question of, well, what is good?

And how do we know what's good? Reddit doesn't seem to teach us that. Polis has to say, well, that's just obvious. What you want is just obvious.

You know this from just sort of regular experience. You want power. You want money. You want to kill whoever you want.

He says, Socrates is less certain that this is actually good for you. And he seems to want to push the question in that direction. Polis rejects it. And that's where the dialogue turns really nasty.

He wants to say it's obvious what's good. What's good for you are all these injustices. And so there's an implicit identification of injustice with the good. It's one thing to say, and to raise this for quite a question, is justice actually good?

And try to sort that out. We have experiences where justice is good, right? It protects us from certain ills. And then we have experiences where justice doesn't seem good.

I don't want to, you know, day the traffic laws. I want to get where I want to go quickly. I don't want to pay taxes. And these seem to be burdens, right?

Polis wants to push far far to injustice being the good. And Socrates therefore strikes a more moral tone than he might in another dialogue by arguing more directly for justice being the good than anybody else. And so what's interesting is as Socrates becomes more moral in his speech speeches, the dialogue turns uglier and uglier. And this obviously gets heightened in polis and even more so with Calichrys.

I think that's an important thing to understand about his discussion with Polis Greg, you want to add? Yeah, it's interesting. Sorry, I don't I don't have a fully developed thought here, but I wonder if we were to crack the. Is it partially developed to?

We'll get to that later. I was wondering if you track the speeches Thucydides presents in the Peloponnesian War is great history, if we would find the same thing, Alex, you mean the same sort of degradation? And I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, as the war as the war goes on, I'm just curious to know them than I do, but I do know that there are quite a few illusions from the gorgeous two different speeches. One of them being gorgeous.

Maybe you remember who said this Greg, I don't remember offhand, but Gorgias says, well, the good thing that rhetoric provides is freedom and rule over others, right? That's from who in the Peloponnesian War is saying? That's one of parakeles of speech. I don't think it's parakeles, but freedom and irony.

Yeah, something like that. But this desire rhetoric to free you from conventional restraints and sort of allow you to acquire quite a bit. That's certainly what Polis and especially Calichrys seem to think that rhetoric ultimately is. Yeah.

You already transitioned to Polis, I thought it might be worth mentioning that one of the things that bridges the Gorgias and Polis section, what seems to compel Polis to jump in, is Socrates's denial that he's, he's, he's not going to use his illusion that rhetoric is an arc and then Polis jumps in and asks him explicitly and Sartis says, yeah, I'm sort of ashamed to admit it, but in front of Gorgias who's so reputable and so on. But yeah, I don't think it's actually, I think it's actually an arc. So a big part of the Polis conversation regards the fact that Sartis thinks that it's a sham, that it's fraudulent. It's, if you want us to use the other word he uses.

The formula he uses that I tend to think about it. Yeah, it's flattering. Yeah. The formula he uses is that it guesses at the pleasant without the best, which is to say that it needs some sort of knowledge of the good in order for it to accomplish what it sets out to accomplish and for it to be actually to the good of the person using it.

Right. So if I know that, you know, health and, and, and wealth are good and power are good, fine, rhetoric can be able to help me get those things, but if those aren't the good, then how does rhetoric operate or how do we attain those things? The rhetoricians, because they have this sense of they want to desire for freedom from these constraints, really ignore that question of the good. And so Polis kind of introduces that and Calculus I think takes it to the next level.

Just as Polis says, oh, Gorgias was too ashamed to admit that rhetoric doesn't teach justice. Calculus also says that Polis was too ashamed, but here's a little bit different that he was too ashamed to admit that that doing injustice is shameful. Right. Doing injustice, he says is not shameful.

It's actually noble, noble by nature. And this is where we get Calculus classic distinction, which I think Greg can maybe spell out a bit, right? Sure. So Polis, I mean, Socrates book about crook persuades Polis ultimately that it's better to suffer injustice than to do with justice.

He does this with a series of arguments. Polis at first says this preposterous. It's not going to be sure if he's persuaded by the way, but he eventually says that he's persuaded. And then at this point, Calculus turns to Chironphon, Socrates' comrade friend, student, and says, is this guy serious?

I mean, come on, this Socrates is serious, is he really think that it's better to suffer injustice than to do with justice that's ridiculous. Come on. And Chironphon echoing what we said at the beginning of the dialogue says, well, there's nothing like asking the man himself. So at this point, the conversation turns to Calculus and Socrates.

And Calculus, as Alex rightly just alluded to, says, look, it's actually stuff, and I'm my buddy's Polish and Gorgias. They were just too ashamed to admit what they really think. I'll tell you what I really think. And what I really think is you're a schmuck and you deserve, I'm gonna knock you out.

Mama said knock you out. What he says, I'm gonna knock you out. He says I'm gonna punch you in the jaw. They try that at the next APA meeting, you know?

I would love to sometimes. But they're virtual now. Actually, they don't even close me. You don't know what Greg does after the meetings.

It's like an all-at-trag-out war. Yeah, yeah. Oh, drag out. Yes, drag out war.

Taking on 20 to 30 analytics. I take all the comments. Yeah. And so, so yeah, it begins very violently.

I mean, Calculus says, look, you philosopher types. I mean, you're getting the shadows and you talk with young boys, which I think is a pretty dirty insinuation. And you just spend time battling like a child, grow up and be a man. They didn't understand that comic.

Can you explain it for the folks at home? Only in the corrupting the youth. Corrupting the youth. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it means.

Let's elevate the discourse. Yeah. Come on. Come on.

Come on. So it begins like around 44. There's something I mentioned beginning, but we're using, I think all three of us are using James Nichols's translation, the Gorgas, with Corrupt. Thank you.

Of course. We're now at the University Press. So around 584A and following us where Calculus begins sort of threatening Socrates. But there's this, I mean, Alex and I already bought this a little bit beforehand, but his anger and his animosity towards Socrates is sort of curious, because it seems to sort of reveal a concern for Socrates.

At least Socrates interprets it that way. Oh, I think God, I found somebody finally like you, your godsend, who can tell me the truth. You're so outspoken and shameless. And I'm so, so I'm so lucky to have found you.

Yeah. He, which is, which shows that this is common, I think, to Calculus if there's some important distinctions between them, but it shows that the person who advocates for injustice seems to be motivated by justice, wants to expose justice for the fraud that it is. And one of his big problems with Socrates, and this maybe is where we disagree a bit, is I think Calculus does view Socrates as a kind of stronger, naturally stronger type, but one who's been corrupted by justice. He speaks about Socrates persuading these politicians and making them look like fools.

And Calculus says, well, these politicians are foolish because they've engaged in the conversation. They shouldn't even give it any credit. Calculus then proceeds to engage in the conversation that we grow as obviously increasingly more silent. But there's a sense, I think, in which Calculus seems to, at least on some level, maybe somewhat subconsciously, as much as he talks about wanting to beat up Socrates or how easily Socrates could get beat up by the city, that he still wants to say, Socrates, you're going about this all wrong.

Right? Or is great because it'll protect you, right? It'll save you from this. And I think above all, it's the thing that allows natural justice to be enforced.

Right? Natural justice does not have an advocate on its behalf, except for the naturally strong, but if the naturally strong, somebody like Socrates are duped, then natural justice. And this is incidentally, maybe we'll hold on for a minute, but I think this is related to the myth, but natural justice is kind of unattainable. Safe through somebody like Socrates, who is so powerful in speech, unleashing his powers in this way.

Yeah, I mean, Calculus, they're too, just to sort of generalize perhaps a little too many lines of argument. One is about the stronger by nature, and then there's this investigation of pleasure, and he doesn't even talk about. And the first place, Gorgias, as Calculus says, look, you're like me, you're one of the strong basically, which by which he clarifies, he says, that means those who are courageous and intelligent. And so those people have been tamed.

He basically admits that he sees himself as a lion, that's been defanged or then turned into a little pussycat by the city. And you can tell he resents this domestication, he resents that he's been domesticated because he thinks he's king of the jungle by nature. And then he says it shouldn't be an intelligent rule and get more. And I think that's the transition to hedonism, but Socrates, curiously enough, Socrates and republic, I think would agree that the wise and the wise and intelligent of the same class Socrates thinks the wise ought to rule.

So there is this strange harmony between the two of them, even though there's clearly the syntagans. But Calculus just gets nastier and nastiering. And I think that one of the things Socrates is trying to point out, I'll use some of the chain language. Calculus seems to present himself much like there's something he says above or beyond good and evil.

He's beyond morality. But Socrates is trying gradually to show him that he actually is very concerned with morality. He gives us a hammer or Gorgias, because I don't want to lose sight of, no, no, you said, I think correctly, that he's trying to demonstrate something too Calculus, but I don't want us to lose sight of the effect that you suspect, Greg, is this is all having on Gorgias. Good point.

So I think one of the things he's trying to do is show his own satisfaction, maybe, but also to Calculus, that Calculus might actually be more interesting than he really realizes. But simultaneously and paradoxically, therefore, so the frame conversation is with Gorgias, this famous rendition, which seems kind of easy going like I mentioned. And he's sort of teaching these young kids the skill and he doesn't and Spock, which is, I think, showing him what the examples of Polis and then Calculus, the effect that he's having on young. And I think part of showing how nasty Calculus is is showing Gorgias how nasty Calculus is.

So he's sort of saying, look, here's what these kids are picking up from you. Here's what they're going to do. And I think that and Alice mentioned that a couple points, Gorgias keeps steps in to keep the conversation going between Socrates and Calculus. I think Gorgias, I think this is eye-opening for Gorgias.

I don't think he realized that he was creating these little monsters who were nothing but sort of power-hungry yeetness. Oh, Calculus is younger. Younger than Gorgias, yes. Younger than Gorgias.

We get much of that impression now. I mean, he's younger than Socrates as well. But I don't know what this is. No, that's good, Greg.

I didn't. Calculus is one of the rare figures in Plato, who does not seem to have a historical counterpart. But if he is younger, so we can't really guess how old he is. He does seem to be young enough to have a beloved.

I was thinking early 30s, but I don't know. I don't really have a good. But the whole point is just simply younger than Gorgias. Yes.

Okay. He's Gorgias a student. That's not much as clear from the dialogue, I would say. Or a groupie maybe, if not a student, something like that.

Sure. So I guess we mentioned that Calculus begins with this praise of the courageous and intelligent those who buy nature ought to rule, those who buy nature ought to have more. And then he turns at $4.94 each to a discussion of hedonism. So when he's talking about the intelligence to have more, it seems clear that he means, so that's actually, do you mean like a good shoemaker should have more shoes and Calculus?

Yeah, of course, that's what I mean more shoes you've done. So it seems like he wants more and more. So eventually he completely means us. He wants more pleasure, more things that please him.

And there's this long discussion of four, any four of hedonism. And I think Socrates is trying to show again to Calculus that he's not simply interested in pleasure. And so, for example, in the discussion of courageous and cowardice, Socrates said, well, who actually enjoys more pleasure when they're fleeing a scene of battle is a coward or a courageous person. And Calculus would have to admit that the coward's actually enjoy a great deal of pleasure.

And so then, Socrates said, well, that's the case, then the coward is really no better worse than the courageous person. Of course, Calculus can't stomach this. And then, but he still wants to maintain that pleasure is really good. And so, so, he said, what about somebody who just eats and drinks all day?

And so, yeah, that's fine. And so you're eating and drinking and pooping all at the same time. It's like, yeah, totally cool. I don't know if you've seen idiopersie, but there's a scene at the beginning of the bureaucracy where that actor, Dax Taylor, is like watching TV and he's sitting at a lazy boy that has a toilet on it.

He's like eating Cheetos and drink. What was the drink? It wasn't Mountain Dew, it was like some Gatorade product. Anyway, he's like drinking and eating Cheetos and pooping and Calculus like, yeah, that's the best life.

And then he says, what about people like an itch and you scratch it all the time, but you get pleasure from itching. And he's like, oh, yeah, that's totally fine. And he, he names a very, very base pleasure. Yeah.

So, based enough that even the disobeek Greg McBrayer refuses to name it. I can name it only because I don't think anyone will know what it is. It's a catamite. Yeah, Google that.

And if you don't find another picture of Greg McBrayer, I'll gladly pay you. So, yeah, and so he advocates for pleasure. It's actually very early on in the dialogue initially. I think the first word is actually Calculus says, oh, in war and battle, this is what you do, right?

Late to battle first to a feast, implying that what matters above all is pleasure, not actually fighting it out. And so this is a suggestion that even though Calculus is an advocate of the view of courage for the sake of pleasure, ultimately, he's an advocate of cowardice for the sake of pleasure. That's how he lives his life. And in a way, one way to understand his speech, which is, to be honest, we can't do it even remotely enough credit.

There's so many twists and stories, twists and turns, rather, and that it's, I frankly can't ever sort it out. It's to be too complicated. But I think one way to think about it early on, for Saka's first argument is, well, if it's naturally more powerful, or the ones who watch a rule, isn't that the many? That's in a way, the end be all end all four Calculus.

He's too scared to actually manipulate the many instead. He ends up flattering them. Instead, he gives them what they want. And so rather than being some sort of mastermind behind it, he's actually a kind of servant or a servo, right?

He's just just ended up in service to the many. And this is where I think the myth comes from, right? The myth is a sort of afterlife myth where the unjust are punished, which could be read in a very moralistic tone, but I think more subtly could be read as as calically supporting calically as you, where the naturally just don't seem to actually rise, right? Because he advocates ultimately for cowardice, the naturally just are going to get there, do not in this life, but in the next.

And I think that's one way in which you can read that myth, Greg, I just want to talk about the myth, but I just want to transition to it in the drama, the dialogue, calically, becomes more and more recalcitrant, becomes less and less involved as a speaker. And so unlike the polis section, where it seems like Socrates may have actually persuaded polis, it seems to me that when Socrates moves to them, there's Socrates gives a myth, which he emphatically denies as a myth twice, by the way. And I think the reason he turns to a myth is precisely because of caliphes is pulling away. So go ahead and talk.

I don't know you want to talk more about the myth, Alex. No, I think I think the myth is complicated and it involves these two mythical figures who are set by hese to have learned something of justice from Zeus, me and us learned it from Zeus, and then Radimathes, from Minos. Yeah, they're judges in a kind of underworld, kind of hells cape, but everybody's sort of judging on the justice and injustice and there's stuff about whippings, right? And all that.

But I think dramatically, and one of the big problems is that, and this is a good point to end on, Socrates says explicitly, this is not a myth, you'll think it's a myth, but it's actually a logo, it's a speech, an argument, it's an account. And it's very hard to make sense of this because it's so obviously a myth, right? It involves mythical figures, it involves a sort of, it's a story in the one of the other meanings of the Greek word, luthos, from which we get myth is a kind of story, it fulfills a plot. And I think one way to think about that is that this is logically or it's logically implied, it's implied by the logos or the argument that something like this has to be the case for Calculus view of the world, not to be ultimately tragic, where the naturally strong or simply overcome by the many, whether overtly in that they're forced to flatter them out of cowardice, or more insidiously, as he seems to think Socrates is a corrupted, strong type.

So just one small, small point would be that myths, I think Alice always said, I'll be in a story, but I think when I teach this and I tell them, when I say myths to students, they hear us lie, they hear falsehood. And I think that it has a much more, can have a much more mutual term just like story, whereas we would tell the story like, and what's the moral of the story, because you're trying to get a moral across without actually going through a rational argument. So for example, you know, all the students know the story of William Cride Wolf, and you can ask them, you know, what's the moral of the story they all know? Alex, David, I'm sure you know, what's the moral of the story of William Cride Wolf?

No, just don't keep deceiving people. Yeah, you'd only like twice, because clearly the moral of the story, you get away with the third time. Yeah, so you were trying to transition to something more meaningful. Yeah, I just wanted to, yeah, let me just, I think for listeners, if you're interested, one thing that came to mind was a episode on Plato's myths.

There are a number of dialogues we're in on the Republic for one, where does he tell the myth of Atlantis in the Tameus? It's in the dialogue that follows the Tameus, it takes us tranotically as a continuation of the Tameus. Okay, so there's a lot of different myths, the Smith of Ur in the Republic, the gorgeous one is the end of the Fido, there's a myth about what happens to our souls after we die and it's kind of shot around at the cosmos and all that sort of stuff. Occasionally, dialogues do end with kind of myth or fictitious sounding, if not overtly fictitious.

Yeah, and so if listeners are interested, we could devote an episode to Plato's use of myth. Maybe we nestle it in a discussion on poetry versus philosophy or the relationship between the two. So if you're interested in that, write us an email. Yeah, you scared me there.

We didn't discuss this. No, no, no, no, no, I won't do any of this. I'll be looking at that. We're getting up to time, if you could just sum up in a sentence or a few sentences, both of you, what you get from this dialogue, specifically.

That might be nice for listeners who are approaching it for the first time or haven't read it in a good while, just the orient. Well, what do you get from it? I think this is a, I think when we did the read and play it away, so we talked about why or what dialogues we would consider starting with, and this was one of the ones we mentioned. And for me, one of the reasons is because it's typical in the way that Socrates, you get Socrates on display or even with a series of nasty characters, there's no clear resolution, there's no clear answer.

That's, that's one of the reasons it's about justice, it's about rhetoric. So all those are good reasons why it's a good dialogue to start with, it's relatively short. I mean, it's not the Republic or law's length, it's about 80 pages. So those are all reasons why I think it's going to show.

Now, what do I get out of it? I suppose here's what I would say. The one of the puzzles that needs to explain to me is why to stop, please go to learn from this guy, Gorgias. I suspect that one of the possibilities is that that Socrates wants to see if there is an art of public speaking that he can use to defend his particular way of life philosophy.

I suspect he thinks that the answer is in part no, but I also suspect that just given that the dialogue ends with a myth, I suspect that another answer might simply be that this kind of myth making might be the only popular rhetoric that can make other people better. I don't know if that, on a large scale or on a grand scale. So that's a couple of points. So that's actually a good transition.

Something we haven't mentioned is that this is not Plato's only dialogue on rhetoric. He also wrote a book called The Phaedrus. The Gorgias is about rhetoric in relation to justice. The Phaedrus is about rhetoric in relation to beauty or nobility.

I think that's one way to think about what's going on. So in the, the Gorgias is a very ugly dialogue, it's full of very nasty sort of attacks on one another. It's also full of shameful discussions. It has, we've talked about, Socrates in The Phaedrus is concerned with a kind of noble rhetoric.

And there rhetoric is, seems to be a part of philosophy when it's understood properly. I think actually that account of rhetoric properly understood makes sense of how Socrates acts in this dialogue, the way that he pivots ironically and, and plays the part of the moralist to sort of hold policy and callocles to their true or deeper desires. But one thing I would say, therefore, looking at it from that perspective is that what I get out of the Gorgias most of all is this rhetoric run amok. This is rhetoric divorced from truth, rhetoric divorced from good statecraft.

And what you get is a kind of degraded rhetoric, one that turns into a kind of demagoguery. I think it's also more public as a result. The rhetoric that you see in The Phaedrus is far more private. And so maybe this is necessarily what happens to rhetoric in political life, that it gets degraded into a more public, less truthful motive of making speeches.

Never, of course, losing sight of the fact that rhetoric, always in addressing an audience, isn't wholly truthful. So I tend to think about this dialogue as instructive from a political angle, and of its need or its pointing indirectly towards a nobler or more philosophic rhetoric. I think that's a wonderful note on which then. Thank you both.

Thank you listeners. And we'll see you again next week. Yeah, and follow us on the New Thinkery at Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, email us at theNewThinkery.com, visit our website, theNewThinkery.com. Take care.