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Socratic Rhetoric in the Gorgias

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Gabriela Roxana Carone
Gabriela Roxana Carone*
Affiliation:
University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO80309, USA
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Extract

Given that it seems uncontroversial that Socrates displays considerable contempt towards rhetoric in the Gorgias,the title of this paper might strike one as an oxymoron. Indeed, a reading of the text has more than once encouraged scholars to posit an Opposition between the elenctic procedures championed by Socrates and the rhetorical procedures of his interlocutors. At least three features have been highlighted that seem to indicate this contrast:

  1. 1. the Socratic interest in short questions and answers versus his interlocutors’ use of long speeches (makrologia);

  2. 2. the Socratic interest in truth regardless of the opinion of the many, the latter seeming an important concern of the rhetorician;

  3. 3. the supposed Socratic appeal to the intellectual powers of the interlocutor, which is usually contrasted with the appeal to the emotions which is distinctive of rhetoric.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , June 2005 , pp. 221 - 241
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2005

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References

1 For the first two points, see e.g. Robinson, R. Plato's Earlier Dialectic (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1953), 15–16,Google Scholar 82; Irwin, T. ‘Coercion and Objectivity in Plato's Dialectic,’ Revue Internationale de Philosophie 156/7 (1986) 49–74;Google Scholar Zeyl, D. Plato: Gorgias (Indianapolis: Hackett 1987),Google Scholar x-xii; Vlastos, G. ‘The Socratic Elenchus: Method is All,’ in Socratic Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1994), 1–37Google Scholar at 7, 13-14, 20; for the third, see e.g. Wardy, R. The Birth of Rhetoric (London: Routledge 1996), 83–4;Google Scholar and cf. also Cooper, J. ‘Socrates and Plato in Plato's Gorgias,’ in Reason and Emotion (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1999), 29–75Google Scholar and Penner, T. 'Socrates,’ in Rowe, C.J. and Schofield, Malcolm eds., The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000), 164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For an interesting historical discussion that qualifies the traditional distinction between the methods of Socrates and those of rhetoric and associated practices see Nehamas, A. ‘Eristic, Antilogic, Sophistic, Dialectic: Plato's Demarcation of Philosophy from Sophistry,’ in Virtues of Authenticity (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1999), 108–22.Google Scholar For other studies that, from different perspectives, also query that distinction, cf. below, nn. 5, 6, 34, and 44, with my disagreements there.

2 Pace e.g. Irwin, T. Plato: Gorgias (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1979),CrossRefGoogle Scholar who Claims that ‘someone becomes a “true rhetor” only insofar as he abandons rhetorical techniques,’ i.e. ‘he does not choose rhetorical methods for different ends’ (215); this attitude is echoed by Vickers, B. In Defence of Rhetoric (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1988),Google Scholar who takes it that for Socrates one must ‘give up rhetoric as a verbal art for philosophy’ (110).

3 One may wonder to what extent we can assume that Socrates’ interlocutors are advocates of the flattering kind of rhetoric, given that Socrates remarks to Gorgias that he is not necessarily a target in his criticism of rhetoric as flattery (462e-463a). Two things can be said in this regard. First, we can see at least both Polus and Callicles as endorsing that kind of practice in the fundamental sense that, with self-advantage ultimately in mind, it seeks to please the crowd by confirming their values (see, respectively, 473d-e, 481d-e, 484d, and below, n. 21). On the case of Callicles, see especially Saxonhouse, A. ‘An Unspoken Theme in Plato's Gorgias: War,’ Interpretation 11 (1983) 139–69.Google Scholar Second, one must note that even Gorgias appears to endorse the pursuit of self-advantage through manipulation of the audience (452e) and disingenuous concern with image rather than real knowledge (459b-c) which Socrates will describe as characteristic of the flattering kind of rhetoric (464c-d, cf. 459d-e). It is, then, only because Gorgias seems to contradict himself later on even on those issues (cf. 460e-461a) that Socrates says he is not sure that his description of the flattering kind of rhetoric applies to him (cf. esp. 462e8-463a2).

4 In principle, I use the word ‘opponents’ for the rhetoricians contemporary to Socrates, including his interlocutors in the Gorgias, without assuming any contentious or ad hominem implications, but simply to the extent that they embody, in Socrates’ eyes, a cause starkly opposed to his own—hence the energy that he spends in combating it in discussion. What this Opposition consists in, however, still needs to be assessed.

5 As claimed by Beversluis, J. Cross-Examining Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000),Google Scholar esp. 342-3.

6 For the latter view see Gentzier, J. who also examines ways in which Socrates can be seen to employ sophistic tactics other than those which will deserve our attention in this paper: ‘The Sophistic Cross-Examination of Callicles,’ Ancient Philosophy 15 (1995) 17–43,CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. 40-2.

7 ‘Dialectic’ is a common denomination for Socratic method (see e.g. Vlastos, 4), and will be used in this context as no more than a translation for dialegesthai, which may also be rendered as ‘the activity of dialogue’ for the sake of truth, which is central to the philosophical enterprise as Socrates conceives it.

8 Despite Callicles’ initial contention, however, Socrates argues that popular morality's praise of justice is ‘natural’ and not artificial (cf. 488d). To that extent, Socrates may have reason to claim that such praise of justice must express what the many really believe and not merely what they are made to believe.

9 Cf. Vlastos, who draws a distinction between ‘overt’ and ‘covert’ beliefs (23); and Brickhouse, T. and Smith, N. Plato's Socrates (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1994),Google Scholar who point out that ‘Polus actually believes both of a pair of contraries’ at the outset of the exchange (76). Kahn, C. Plato and the Socratic Dialogue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996),Google Scholar suggests that the claim that Polus believes the opposite of what he has just stated is only proleptic, as Polus does not believe it but would come to believe it if he understands what is at stake (140). However, no conditional tone surrounds Socrates’ assertions; rather, Kahn himself talks of an ‘innate moral sense' that would be shared by Polus and everyone eise, and be manif ested in their sense of shame (138). This gives us elements to believe that there is surely a side of Polus that already agrees with Socrates, much as Polus may at the same time hold belief s contradictory to that (a contradiction that Kahn puts elsewhere [‘Drama and Dialectic in Plato's Gorgias,’ Oxford Studies in Ancient Phüosophy 1 (1983) 75-121, at 95] as Polus’ [and popular morality's] secret admiration for success and power, no matter how obtained, on the one hand, and the condemnation of unjust acts on the other). In any case, it is important in this regard that Socrates then need not be opposing one firmly established popular view by presenting one which is altogether alien to popular belief, but pursuing, and trying to validate, a line of thought that is entrenched in popular belief. For an argument in favour of the psychological force of Socrates’ proof, insofar as it appeals to shame as a ‘natural sign that deep down we really prefer virtue,’ despite ‘the artificial values imposed upon us from without by such corrupting influences as Gorgianic rhetorical education,’ see McKim, R. ‘Shame and Truth in Plato's Gorgias,’ in Griswold, C. ed., Piatonic Writings, Piatonic Readings (London: Routledge 1988), 34–48,Google Scholar at 39

10 Similarly, Socrates continues that if Polus and all others agree that committing injustice turns out to be worse than suffering it, then neither Polus nor anyone else would choose the former alternative over the latter (475d-e).

11 For further discussion of 474b, 475c and of Socrates’ appeal to what the many believe see also Bolton, R. ‘Aristotle's Account of the Socratic Elenchus,’ Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 11 (1993) 185–95;Google Scholar Benson, H. ‘The Dissolution of the Problem of the Elenchus,’ Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 13 (1995) 45–112;Google Scholar Brickhouse, T. and Smith, N. The Philosophy of Socrates (Boulder: Westview 2000), ch. 2;Google Scholar and the works mentioned in note 9 above.

12 The appeal to the opinion of the many recurs in the discussion with Callicles, when Socrates asserts that ‘the many believe … that to commit injustice is more shameful than to suffer it’ (489a); and when he associates his views on enkrateia with what ‘the many’ mean (491dlO). Why should Socrates invoke the opinion of the many despite previous dismissals? See here the historical perspective afforded by Ober, J. Political Dissent in Democratic Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1999),Google Scholar who takes passages such as these to suggest a Socratic awareness that ‘to inhabit the public domain of the democratic polis is to be affected by and borrow from the language, procedures, and assumptions of the demos’ (214). But it is also important to note that even Callicles is caught by such strictures (so Socrates can press him on this), if it is the case that there is a side of Callicles which (despite his scorn of popular morality, and rebuking Socrates for advising the opposite of what we ought to do at 481c) will agree with the Athenian demos, no matter what (as Socrates suggests at 481d-e; pace Brickhouse and Smith, who think that if Socrates has any grounds on which to accuse Callicles of self-contradiction at 482b-c, they are not afforded explicitly by his dialogue with him to this point [Plato's Socrates, 73]).

13 After all, from the beginning of their exchange Socrates self-consciously (albeit playfully) imitates even some of Polus’ mannerisms, such as at 467b-c.

14 Thus Socrates may be here foreshadowing Plato's later presumption that truth is universal and in some sense within, so that anyone can reconnect with it if correctly guided by the elenchos, as will be suggested by the theory of recollection in the Meno (see esp. 81c5-7); cf. Phaedo 73a7-b2. Compare Vlastos (25, 29).

15 See here Nehamas (110-11), who cites passages such as this as evidence that the ability to proceed by short questions and answers is not an exclusive feature of the Socratic elenchus.

16 On the sophistic appeal to myth in the Protagoras cf. Morgan, K. Myth and Philosophy from the Presocratics to Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000), esp. 153–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For Protagoras himself being treated as a rhetor cf. Phaedrus 267c, and for the Protagoras myth as an example of ‘allegorical narrative used rhetorically’ see Cole, T. The Origins of Rhetoric in Ancient Greece (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1991), 60.Google Scholar

17 In this discussion, I use ‘emotion,’ ‘desire,’ and ‘affect’ as referring to states of the soul which have a feit quality, and which can generically be treated as pathê. (For an example of the way in which pathos seems contraposed to logos see the remark by Callicles at 513c.)

18 His profession of intellectualism (with the associated theses that no one does wrong willingly and knowledge is sufficient for virtue), as well as his expression of his desire to learn in order to avoid vice, seems no less prominent in this dialogue than in the others: see e.g. Gorg. 460b-c, 468b, 479b, 488a3, 519c-e, and compare Ap. 25e-26a, Eut. 4a, 15a-16a, Prot. 358c-d, Meno 77b-78b, Euthydemus 281b, Rep. 1351a.

19 Thus Cooper Claims that ‘Socrates is assuming that someone might make someone a good and virtuous person simply by instructing them, through Speeches of some sort, in how to behave’ (65), thereby ignoring any other factors than the mind or understanding. Wardy, for his part, takes the Socrates of the Gorgias to have a ‘radically rationalistic psychology’ which he contrasts with the interest in rhetoric's emotional appeal under the guidance of philosophy in later dialogues such as the Phaedrus (83-4); while Penner Claims that, at least for Socrates, ‘only philosophical dialogue can improve one's fellow Citizens’ (164) and that ‘the only access to a person's moral character is by way of reason’ (169). Of course these are not the only views. But where affective factors have been recognized, it has usually (though not universally: see e.g. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, 246-7) been difficult to Square them with the Socratic intellectualism professed in the Gorgias; thus Irwin thinks that the recognition of soul division in the leaky jars passage makes the Gorgias ‘internally inconsistent on this major issue’ (Plato's Ethics [Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995], 116). For an extensive critical discussion of the State of the question on the Gorgias’ moral psychology see my ‘Calculating Machines or Leaky Jars? The Moral Psychology of Plato's Gorgias,’ Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 24 (2004) 55-96.

20 As perhaps e.g. Ladies 201b, Gorgias 489a might make one suppose. I have, however, queried this distinction as applicable to the moral psychology of the Gorgias in my 'Calculating Machines.'

21 That Socrates should align these two methods at once is quite telling, and makes one think that Polus may provide a good illustration of Socrates’ intriguing remark that the rhetoric that he despises is a form of flattery, solely aimed at producing pleasure. For, in principle, Polus is appealing to very horrendous and painful imaginary scenarios (just as Greek tragedy can do, which Socrates, however, also classifies as flattery aiming to gratify rather than improve the spectator, 502b-c). How can a form of speech which arouses or can arouse pain count as flattery? We can say that the appeal to pleasure here is of the second order: that is, the rhetorician can still be seen as providing pleasure to the crowd by making them feel their values confirmed (cf. Gentzler (19); and on how Greek tragedy does so for Plato see Halliwell, S. ‘Plato's Repudiation of the Tragic,’ in Silk, M.S. ed., Tragedy and the Tragic (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996), 332–49Google Scholar, esp. 333-5). Thus even if it is painful to imagine having one's eyes burnt out, the person who is part of the crowd will at the same time be relieved by agreeing with Polus that one would never willingly choose that alternative over its opposite. (And the trick, Polus can hope, might work on Socrates precisely by making him uncomfortable as long as he doesn't agree with the crowd.)

22 Even though Socrates had already alluded to his own affective responses to dialogical exchange by referring, for example, to the ‘pleasure’ that he obtains in discussion; see 458a3 and 462d5-6.

23 According to common Athenian rhetorical procedures, ‘the introduction of any speech must establish a bond between Speaker and audience if the rest of the speech is to do its work,’ as puts, C. Carey it, ‘Rhetorical Means of Persuasion,’ in Worthington, I. ed., Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action (London: Routledge 1994), 26–45,Google Scholar at 29.

24 Doesn't Socrates’ engagement with a person's emotions conflict with his professions of intellectualism recorded in n. 18? As I have argued at some length in my ‘Calculating Machines,’ the fact that Socrates is appealing to emotions through logos betrays his belief that the former are after all amenable to reason (compare the reference even to one's appetites or epithumiai as persuadable at 493a); so that the Gorgias’ intellectualism, properly understood, is not one that excludes affective elements in one's personality. And even though the dialogue later seems to present this erôs as a pathos that prevents Callicles from being persuaded of Socrates’ logoi (513c), Socrates still believes that a more frequent and better application of his method will succeed (513c7-dl) — a method that would presumably include channelling that erôs towards a worthwhile goal (rather than suppressing, ignoring or annihilating it) as is distinctive of the good rhetorician at 517b.

25 On Aristotle see Kennedy, G. The Art of Persuasion in Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1963), 95.Google Scholar On the appeal to the emotions as a common rhetorical procedure see also Cole (144) and Carey (26-32).

26 See in particular Callicles’ allegation, in this passage, that Socrates falls into lowly dêmêgoria ‘while professing to pursue the truth’ (482e4), as if Socrates’ methods were insincere. But Socrates can of course say that even if (or to the extent that) he does appeal to shame, it is in a manner that he takes to be consistent with truth and reason and not (in the common eristic manner) at the expense of truth (after all, at 455c-d he had pointed out to Gorgias that emotions such as aischunê can get in the way of genuine dialogical exchange; cf. the expression of a similar concern at 487a-b). Such a procedure would be in line with the intertwining of reason and affect that I presented as characteristic of the Socratic intellectualist position in the Gorgias in my 'Calculating Machines.’ Certainly, Socrates teils Callicles not to be moved by shame at 489a, which could be taken to signal a ‘radical intellectualist’ view that denies that the emotions should play any role in argument, and thus (if it is true after all that Socrates appeals to shame, as Callicles suggested at 482c-d) to betray an inconsistency between what Socrates preaches and what he practices. This conclusion, however, need not follow. For Socrates may be advising Callicles not to follow his sense of shame if such a sense is corrupted (as thumos can be at Rep. IV 441a; after all, it was Callicles himself who complained that certain things are aischra only by Convention, not by nature, 483a); or he may be trying to force Callicles to see that he is disagreeing with himself if he thinks that he is not prey to such emotion, as is shown later on by Callicles’ calling Socrates ‘shameless’ (494e) and by his eventually having to abandon the equation of indiscriminate pleasure with the good that would lead to the embarrassing concession that the pleasures of the catamite are good. For other discussions of the role of shame in the Gorgias see McKim, Irwin (Plato's Ethics, 123-4), Kahn (Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, 138-42); cf. also above, n.9.

27 See also Socrates’ appeal to Callicles’ good will (eunoia) at 487a and 487d; for the appeal to this emotion as a typical rhetorical practice to secure trust and bond with the audience see Carey (27-9), who also mentions among such practices the appeal to one's good character (ethos) (34-6); compare here Socrates’ self-description to Gorgias as the kind of man who would not be moved by competitiveness but by a desire to know the truth of the matter at 458a-b, which immediately gains Gorgias' adherence; and a similar appeal to character in the exchange with Callicles e.g. at 487e-488b.

28 Further, Socrates’ very description of his myth as a true story (523a) may be intended to counteract, on the same plane, Polus’ appeal to the story of Archelaus at 471a-d (which Socrates’ myth reverses, by presenting Archelaus as an example of the most miserable man at 525c-d).

29 Compare here, in particular, how Socrates uses this picture with the hope of persuading Callicles that the life of unrestraint could not be happier than its opposite (494a2-3), in a way that seems to take up directly Polus’ similar appeal to painful imaginary scenarios to show that the person who undergoes the punishment could not be happier than the one who does not (473c5).

30 But note how Socrates can also be seen as trying to re-orient that contentious drive to the right goal, rather than suppress it altogether, by telling Callicles that they must compete (cf. philonikôs) to know what is true and what is false with regard to their argument at 505e4-5.

31 This is independent of the fact that Callicles thinks Socrates does not succeed: see e.g. 494a6, 501c7-8, 513c4-6.

32 Indeed, we are told at 453d-454a that anyone who teaches persuades about what he teaches (and this persuasion is treated as ‘the instructive kind’: tês didaskalikês, 453e7). At 453a-b Socrates talks of ‘persuading’ himself that he is the kind of man who would not undertake dialogue from any other desire than to know the truth of the matter.

33 I have explained how this is also likely to be the case with regard to the learning of crafts such as arithmetic or carpentry in my (2004: 60-61).

34 Insofar as rhetoric was ‘indeed the main tool of politics in Athenian democracy,’ in the words of Vickers (84). For politics being associated with rhetoric in Socrates' Athens, see e.g. Gorg. 500c-d, 513b, and Ober (206-9). Cf. Dodds, E.R. Plato: Gorgias (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1959), 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For Socrates’ characterizing rhetoric and politics, on an ideal plane, in terms of the same goal (the improvement of the Citizens) cf. 503a, 504d-e and 515c. North confirms this line when pointing out that ‘Socrates is able to make this Statement [i.e. that he is the only Athenian that attempts to practice true politics] because he now admits the theoretical possibility of a noble art of rhetoric,’ even though she thinks, contrary to what I am arguing here, that ‘how such a noble rhetoric would actually operate the Gorgias does not reveal’ (H. North, ‘Combing and Curling: Orator Summus Plato,’ Illinois Classical Studies [1991] 201-19, at 210).

35 After all, he only says that he tries (or attempts, epicheirein, d7) to employ the true political art: cf. Irwin (Plato: Gorgias, 240). (Pace Beversluis, for whom ‘Socrates Claims that he alone practices the true political art’ [365].) Similarly, after Callicles confesses that he is not persuaded, Socrates indicates that Callicles will be if they examine the matter ‘better’ (513c), which is consistent with his previous professions of ignorance (488a), just as when he teils Callicles that he has never seen the good kind of rhetoric (503bl). The fact that Socrates does not claim to be a master of the art that he tries to put into practice safeguards him against the Charge of insincerity.

36 In fact, the specific example given is clothing, but note that clothing had before been treated as part of cosmetics, at 465b4.

37 For how the true kind of rhetoric advocated in the Gorgias anticipates the marriage of philosophy and politics in the Republic see e.g. Irwin (Plato: Gorgias, 215-16); Kahn, (Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, 131);Google Scholar Parry, R. Plato's Crafl of Justice (Albany: SUNY Press 1996), 12Google Scholar ff. This kind of politics will probably subsume the institutions of legislation and justice that were said to take real care of the soul in the discussion with Polus, at 464a-c.

38 In fact, rhetorical procedures are in the Phaedrus said to be an indispensable preliminary to the possession of the technê (269a-c), in line with the Gorgias’ Suggestion that the subservient arts are instrumental to the goals of their respective master arts. But the Phaedrus too acknowledges that without knowledge (as would be afforded by a dialectical examination of the nature of the soul, its various species, and the kinds of speech suited to each, as well by an adequate grasp of the truth), rhetoric can hardly be called a technê, much as the possessor of the ‘truly rhetorical and persuasive art’ (269c-d) needs to make use of common rhetorical procedures in his art (269b-270b, 270e-272b, 273d-e). The goal of true rhetoric in the Phaedrus, as in the Gorgias, involves implanting virtue in the soul through persuasion (270b, 271a). In this manner the philosopher emerges in the Phaedrus as the true rhetorician, in a way that is continuous with the positive use that we have seen Socrates contemplate for rhetoric in the Gorgias. Thus I take issue with those studies which have contrasted the Gorgias with the Phaedrus precisely in this regard, either by treating Socrates’ critique of rhetoric as flattery in the Gorgias as an attack on the ‘nature’ of rhetoric (as if something were intrinsically wrong with it: see e.g. Irwin, Plato's Ethics, 97 and 368 n. 6), or, in general, by attributing to Plato an intransigent attitude towards rhetoric in that dialogue (such as Romilly, J. de The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens [Oxford: Oxford University Press 1992], 71;Google Scholar Nicholson, G. Plato's Phaedrus [West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press 1999], 51;Google Scholar Nussbaum, M. The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986),Google Scholar who Claims that the Phaedrus departs from the Gorgias’ ‘very general condemnation of rhetoric' [227]; and Cooper, J. Plato: Complete Works [Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997],Google Scholar who Claims ‘whereas in Gorgias Socrates paints an unrelievedly negative picture of the practice of rhetoric, in Phaedrus he finds legitimate uses for it, so long as it is kept properly subordinate to philosophy’ [792]).

39 I have analysed this essential feature of the moral psychology of the Gorgias in my ‘Calculating Machines.’ For suggestions that the Gorgias represents an important stage in Plato's growing awareness of the role played by emotive or sub-rational factors in one's psyche see e.g. Klosko, G. The Development of Plato's Political Theory (New York: Methuen 1986), 50–4;Google Scholar and Scott, D. ‘Piatonic Pessimism and Moral Education,’ Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 17 (1999) 15–36,Google Scholar even though I disagree with their (and a widespread) view that the Gorgias marks a transition towards the acknowledgement of irrational affective elements in one's personality (possibly intransigent to reason) which would represent an abandonment of Socratic intellectualism. See here again my ‘Calculating Machines’; on why I do not believe we need to read such a view into the Republic see my ‘Akrasia in the Republic: Does Plato Change His Mind?’ Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 20 (2001), 107-48.

40 Cf. Rep. II 377b ff.

41 Pace Gentzler, who Claims that ‘Sophistic tactics cannot be used to achieve the goals that Socrates professes’ (24); and those scholars mentioned in n. 2 above. But see below, n. 42.

42 Dodds was already disturbed by this Statement, which, he claimed, would have thereafter ‘a long and shocking history’ (236). Do we have reason to be disturbed? If the end justifies the means, then even lying, or using logical fallacies, may be justified for the sake of attaining persuasion, much as the goal is now called good. I am not here dealing with this larger problem, which would also involve analysing whether Socrates thinks that all or only some of the procedures of the flattering kind of rhetoric can be subordinated to a good goal. But one can immediately see that, even within the coordinates of the theory just laid out, Socrates may object to certain practices (such as implanting falsehoods in one's soul, 458a, or pandering to every whim of the beloved, 481d-482c) on the grounds that no real benefit can be derived from them — just as not anything can count as a means towards a goal (e.g. contaminated food can never be used for healthy cooking). Thus the Subordination of rhetoric to philosophy will have the effect, to a great extent, of transforming the nature of rhetoric (and even dropping some of the procedures that it employs when put to bad use), rather than keeping it intact by merely superimposing a new goal.

43 See especially the contrast between ‘fine’ (kalon) and ‘base’ (aischron) at 503a, where the very practice that we saw Socrates at one point attempt, that of dêmêgoria or popular oratory, is condemned as base precisely insofar as it lacks ‘the preoccupation to make the Citizens’ souls as good as possible’ (503a7-8).

44 On this issue see Penner, T. ‘Desire and Power in Socrates,’ Apeiron 24 (1991), 147–201,CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. 177-80, 196. Socrates does not say that we do bad things (such as killing) for the sake of good ones; rather, he treats the instrumental actions (such as killing itself) as beneficial if they bring about some good (498c). Accordingly, it is wrong to claim that ‘even though rhetoric in itself is a bad, even shameful, thing, it might still be able to serve what is good’ (Weiss, R. ‘Oh, Brother! The Fraternity of Philosophy and Rhetoric in Plato's Gorgias,’ Interpretation 30 [2003] 195–206,Google Scholar at 205). The point is rather that, if rhetoric can be put to a good end, it will have turned out to be beneficial.

45 For the ambivalent use of rhetoric in this regard cf. 517a5-6; for how this kind of practice can be ‘subservient’ (diakonikê) either to knowledge or to ignorant and harmful pandering contrast 518al-5 with 517b3-5, 518c-d; and for how rhetoric, as any other action, must be used for the sake of the just see 527c, cf. 480d.

46 See here my ‘Calculating Machines,’ 83-7.

47 See Charm. 156d-157c, Meno 80a, Theaetetus 157c-d. As I argue in ‘Calculating Machines’ (92-4), the Gorgias may press particularly strongly the question how that charm can be most successfully utilised, so that philosophical method will get to produce persuasion and lasting effects on the soul. The ‘charming’ effect of philosophical logos (intended to counteract the seductive effects of bad poetry) is restated at Rep. X 608a-b, as if philosophy itself could provide therapy to the psyche: see here Simon, Bennett Mind and Madness in Ancient Greece: The Classical Roots of Modern Psychiatry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1978), 182–6.Google Scholar Presumably, the power of a charm is to make a person behave as one wants her to behave: think of cases of hypnosis, which have been used by psychologists to alter forms of behaviour in the patient. Also, a charm can be used to cause or dispel certain feelings: thus, at Phaedo 77d5-78a2 it is implied that Socrates' words are a charm which will have the effect of dispelling fear, while in the Symposium (215c-216a) Alcibiades describes Socrates' bewitching effect and how his words get to his feelings more than Pericles' or any other rhetorician's.

48 See Phaedo 114dl-7, Laws VIII 840b5-c3, X 903al0-b2, cf. X 887c7-d5; in the Laws, charms are said to promote psychic harmony, especially if administered from infancy (II 659el-5). Pace Dodds, E.R. The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press 1951), 212Google Scholar with 226, n. 20, who contends that a charm is some irrational resort to magic, one should note that these ‘charms’ are to a large extent accompanied by logoi even in Plato's final work: on the Laws, see Morrow, G. Plato's Cretan City (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1960), 310.Google Scholar On the relation between myth and persuasion see Rep. X 621b8-cl, III 415c7; on the relation between myth, persuasion and incantation see e.g. Phaedrus 265b-c and Brisson, L. Piaton, les mots et les mythes (Paris: F. Maspero 1982), 93–105.Google Scholar The emotional appeal of myths has also been explored by, among others, Elias, J. Plato's Defence of Poetry (New York: SUNY Press 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 Cf. e.g. Pol. 286b ff., Laws IV 722a-b.

50 Just as in the Gorgias one's epithumiai are described as ‘persuadable’ at 493a (even though this is probably said in a context that alludes to the effect of flattering rhetoric on one's emotions). In the Republic we are told that the best way to ‘hold in check’ one's appetites is by ‘persuading’ them that it is better not to be fulfilled or by taming them with argument, rather than by compulsion and fear (VIII 554c-d; cf. VIII 548b7-8 and IX 586d4-e2).

51 Cf. Phaedrus 260d ff., Politicus 304c-d.

52 This paper was completed while I was holding a Laurance S. Rockefeller Fellowship at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. I am grateful to both institutions for their support.