The Nexus Archive
Platonism · Dialogue
Gorgias
by Plato · The Architect of Ideals · Classical Greece, c. 428-348 BC
Socrates tests rhetoric against justice through escalating encounters with Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles.
- Brutal
- ~2 hr 45 min read
- 3 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the Polus and the Power to Do Wrong guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
What Is Rhetoric Good For?
To speak and have people obey: the attraction is easy to feel. A persuasive person can win a case, direct an assembly or escape an accusation. Socrates arrives after Gorgias’s display with a quieter demand—to say what this impressive power knows, and what it is good for.
Each interlocutor strengthens the challenge. Gorgias protects rhetoric’s dignity, Polus admires the tyrant’s freedom, and Callicles argues that conventional morality enslaves the naturally strong.
In Jowett’s translation, the conversation is courteous, mocking and at times openly exasperated. Behind its questions about pleasure and justice stands a personal danger: a man who will not flatter may have little protection in court. The argument puts two desires under pressure together—the desire to live well and the desire to survive.
The opening pages
Gorgias and the Art of Rhetoric
GORGIAS
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Callicles, Socrates, Chaerephon, Gorgias, Polus.
SCENE:—The house of Callicles.
CALLICLES The wise man, as the proverb says, is late for a fray, but not for a feast.
SOCRATES And are we late for a feast?
CALLICLES Yes, and a delightful feast; for Gorgias has just been exhibiting to us many fine things.
SOCRATES It is not my fault, Callicles; our friend Chaerephon is to blame; for he would keep us loitering in the Agora.
CHAEREPHON Never mind, Socrates; the misfortune of which I have been the cause I will also repair; for Gorgias is a friend of mine, and I will make him give the exhibition again either now, or, if you prefer, at some other time.
CALLICLES What is the matter, Chaerephon—does Socrates want to hear Gorgias?
CHAEREPHON Yes, that was our intention in coming.
CALLICLES Come into my house, then; for Gorgias is staying with me, and he shall exhibit to you.
SOCRATES Very good, Callicles; but will he answer our questions? for I want to hear from him what is the nature of his art, and what it is which he professes and teaches; he may, as you [Chaerephon] suggest, defer the exhibition to some other time.
CALLICLES There is nothing like asking him, Socrates; and indeed to answer questions is a part of his exhibition, for he was saying only just now, that any one in my house might put any question to him, and that he would answer.
SOCRATES How fortunate! will you ask him, Chaerephon—?
CHAEREPHON What shall I ask him?
SOCRATES Ask him who he is.
CHAEREPHON What do you mean?
SOCRATES I mean such a question as would elicit from him, if he had been a maker of shoes, the answer that he is a cobbler. Do you understand?
CHAEREPHON I understand, and will ask him: Tell me, Gorgias, is our friend Callicles right in saying that you undertake to answer any questions which you are asked?
GORGIAS Quite right, Chaerephon: I was saying as much only just now; and I may add, that many years have elapsed since any one has asked me a new one.
CHAEREPHON Then you must be very ready, Gorgias.
GORGIAS Of that, Chaerephon, you can make trial.
POLUS Yes, indeed, and if you like, Chaerephon, you may make trial of me too, for I think that Gorgias, who has been talking a long time, is tired.
Chapter guides · 3
Polus and the Power to Do Wrong
Persuasion and the power to choose
Gorgias’s promise of persuasive mastery meets Socrates’s question about whether getting one’s way is the same as getting what is good.
Belief without knowledge
Gorgias identifies rhetoric with persuasion about justice in courts and assemblies. He distinguishes the belief it produces from knowledge, yet boasts that an orator can prevail over an expert before an ignorant audience. His claim raises a problem of responsibility: he disowns pupils who misuse his teaching, but also agrees that he teaches justice to those who lack it.
An art or a gratification
Socrates presses the conflict between those admissions. Polus blames Gorgias’s embarrassment and challenges Socrates to say what rhetoric is. Socrates calls it a knack of flattery, comparable to cookery posing as medicine: it aims at pleasure without an account of what benefits the person served. Polus’s admiration for the power to kill, exile or confiscate then forces a distinction between doing what seems best and obtaining the good one actually wants.
The successful wrongdoer
Socrates says he would rather suffer injustice than commit it, and denies that an unjust act becomes good through impunity. Polus answers with Archelaus, whose murders and usurpation have brought him a kingdom. He takes this apparent success as an obvious example of happiness and insists that Socrates really agrees. The example remains a challenge between them, not a demonstration they have jointly accepted.
Pleasure, Good, and the Political Life
The good beyond gratification
An argument for just punishment becomes a dispute over self-restraint, natural superiority and the purposes of public speech.
What punishment is supposed to heal
Socrates asks for Polus’s assent rather than a crowd of witnesses. From Polus’s admission that doing injustice is more disgraceful than suffering it, he argues that it is also worse. He then compares just punishment to medicine: its pain may release the soul from injustice. The argument concerns punishment that is just, not every penalty a court might impose. Its unsettling consequence is that rhetoric should help expose one’s own wrongdoing instead of securing impunity.
Callicles contests the terms
Callicles says shame has trapped both earlier speakers. He opposes the conventions of the weak to a natural right of the superior to have more, then specifies superiority as intelligence and courage in public affairs. Self-restraint, in his account, makes a virtue of inability: happiness requires large desires and the power to satisfy them. Socrates’s images of sound and leaking vessels do not persuade him; an ever-renewed influx is precisely the pleasure Callicles wants.
Agreement without reconciliation
Pleasure and pain can occur together, Socrates argues, whereas good and evil cannot be identified with that pair. Callicles also concedes that some pleasures are harmful. Goodness therefore supplies a standard for choosing pleasures, and public speech must be judged by whether it improves its hearers. Callicles grows unwilling to answer. With Gorgias’s encouragement, Socrates continues by questioning himself and reaches the claim that an ordered, temperate soul is good. The exchange has produced admissions, but not a willing reconciliation.
Public Service and Final Judgment
The Soul Before Its Judge
Socrates measures public life by justice, then closes with a judgment no wealth or reputation can sway.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read Gorgias?
- About 2 hr 45 min in total.
- How difficult is Gorgias?
- Brutal. A mid-length dialogue; about 3 hours of reading.
- Which translation is this?
- The Benjamin Jowett translation from the Ancient Greek. The text follows The Dialogues of Plato, translated by B. Jowett, third edition, volume II (Macmillan and Co., New York and London, 1892).
- Can I read Gorgias for free?
- Gorgias is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription. The opening above and two chapter guides on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 3 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. Two open in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Plato
Born into an Athenian family during political upheaval, Plato became a student of Socrates and later founded the Academy. His dialogues transformed his teacher's public questioning into a vast investigation of justice, knowledge, education, politics, and reality.
“What is justice?”
Plato gives Western thought one of its central temptations: the belief that politics, education, beauty, and the soul can be judged by a reality higher than opinion.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. Gorgias is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.