Chapter 1 - Gorgias of Leontini and Plato’s Gorgias

Summary

This chapter considers the relationship between the historical Gorgias of Leontini and Plato’s portrayal of him and his ideas in the Gorgias. By drawing on fragments and testimonia of the historical figure, it shows that Plato’s understanding of Gorgias and his views informs both his characterization of the orator himself in the Gorgias, as well as that dialogue’s philosophical content and aims. In particular, three of the central themes of the Gorgias – ones that the character himself introduces – are prominent in Gorgias’ own works and in the doxographical reception of him: (1) the conception of speech as a form of power or dunamis; (2) the relation between power and wish or boulēsis and their joint role in human action; and (3) the contrast between – and contrasting relationships speech itself has with – belief on the one hand and knowledge on the other. Whether the historical Gorgias was ever personally committed to the relevant ideas in question or not, the chapter argues that he at least gave voice to them in his works, and that Plato, at least, evidently took them seriously as expressions of Gorgianic theory and practice.

Gorgias of Leontini, born in his Sicilian home town around 485 BCE, was a central figure on the intellectual landscape of the Greek world in the fifth and fourth centuries. He is reputed to have been a student of the eminent philosopher Empedocles, as well as of Tisias and Corax, two of the earliest teachers of legal oratory in Sicily. When he visited Athens in 427 as the leader of a political embassy on behalf of Leontini, he reportedly astonished the Athenians with his oratorical skill on that trip, and he spent subsequent decades making his living as an itinerant speaker throughout mainland Greece, becoming especially well known for his flamboyant style of rhetoric and his use of novel rhetorical techniques. His speeches and written works themselves covered a wide range of topics and occasions, from the political to the philosophical to the oratorical itself, and over the course of his exceptionally long life – perhaps as long as 109 years, according to ancient reports – he made a profound and, arguably, unrivaled contribution to the nascent art of speech in the fifth century.¹ One sign of his influence as a leading rhetorician of his time is the clear impression he made on Plato. He is a main character in Plato’s Gorgias and is mentioned in six other Platonic dialogues as well – Apology, Meno, Symposium, Phaedrus, Hippias Major, and Philebus – and all of his appearances in the Platonic corpus draw attention to his occupation as an orator.²

This chapter considers the influence of the historical Gorgias of Leontini on Plato’s Gorgias – a topic that has been largely neglected by commentators.³ On the interpretation I will be defending, some of the central issues and ideas on which Plato’s dialogue focuses – ones introduced by the character himself – are directly informed by views Gorgias presents in his own works. In particular, the Gorgias explores a number of philosophical issues that emerge out of, or are closely connected to, the historical Gorgias’ ideas about the nature, effects, and use of speech or logos. On this view, then, the orator is no idle character in the dialogue, nor a mere placeholder for rhetoricians in general, but rather represents the source of some of the text’s distinctive themes. My approach will be to examine fragments and testimonia of the historical person – drawing especially on Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen and his Defense of Palamedes – in conjunction with his character in the Gorgias and with references to him in other Platonic dialogues. I will focus specifically on three Gorgianic themes or lines of thought that are prominent in Plato’s dialogue: (1) the conception of speech as a form of power, or dunamis; (2) the relation between power and wish, or boulēsis; and (3) the contrast between – and contrasting relationships speech itself has with – belief, on the one hand, and knowledge, on the other.⁴ Note that I do not mean to argue that the historical Gorgias actually held the views Plato associates with him in his dialogue. Gorgias’ works are notoriously playful and paradoxical, which makes it difficult to discern the extent to which they represent sincere expressions of personal belief, or simply the speculative, tongue-in-cheek, or even jesting remarks of an imaginative orator.⁵ For that reason, my thesis is simply that Gorgias gave voice to certain ideas in his works – whether he was personally committed to them or not – and that Plato evidently took them seriously as an expression of Gorgianic theory and practice.⁶

1.1 The Power of Speech

1.1.1 Speech as a Dunamis in the Gorgias

The first point of contact between Gorgias of Leontini’s work and Plato’s depiction of him is also the most obvious: the conception of speech as a form or source of power, which is introduced early in the dialogue. The main thread of discussion initially emerges out of Socrates’ stated interest in finding out precisely what ‘art’ Gorgias practices and what kind of ‘power’ (dunamis) it has (447b–c). Gorgias’ answer is that he practices and teaches rhetoric (449a), which is an expertise in speeches (449d–e) that deals with ‘the greatest of human concerns’ (450a–b). When Socrates presses him to state exactly what ‘greatest good for human beings’ it is that rhetoric produces, Gorgias responds:

The thing that is in actual fact the greatest good, Socrates. It is the source of freedom (eleutheria) for human beings and at the same time it is for each person the source of rule (archein) in one’s own city … I’m referring to the ability to use speeches to persuade judges in a law court, councilors in a council meeting, and assemblymen in an assembly or in any other political gathering that might take place. Indeed, with this power (dunamis) you’ll have the doctor for your slave (doulos), and the physical trainer, too. As for this financial expert of yours, he’ll turn out to be making more money for somebody else instead of himself: for you, in fact, if you have got the power (tōi dunamenōi) to speak and to persuade the crowds.

(452d–e)⁷

Gorgias goes on to elaborate: oratory ‘encompasses and subordinates to itself just about every other power (hapasas tas dunameis) all at once’; its ‘power’ (dunamis) is so great that the rhetorician is able to speak more persuasively on any subject than anyone else, including even experts in their given fields (456b–c); this ‘power’ (dunamis) makes it possible, among other things, for them to rob doctors or craftsmen of their reputations; and it is a ‘competitive skill’ (agōnia) analogous to boxing, wrestling, or fighting in armor (456a–457c).

The central feature of Gorgias’ account of oratory is power. Oratory is itself a dunamis or power; it is a source of seemingly unlimited social and political power over others; and it is similar to forms of power that involve the use of literal physical force or brute strength. The dialogue itself takes this conception even further, however. When Gorgias’ student Polus takes over the conversation, he pushes the connection between rhetoric and power to its limits by likening the orator’s ability to the absolute political authority of a tyrant (tyrannos) or potentate (dunastēs) (466b–c, 471a–d, 479a). Polus has in mind especially their power to administer capital punishment, seize property, and banish people from their cities at will, and he cites as an example the Macedonian king Archelaus, who ascended to power through unjust acts of murder. In making these comparisons, Polus follows the implications of Gorgias’ agonistic conception of oratory to their sinister but natural conclusion: oratory provides the same potential for injustice as the unchecked power of violent political tyrants. This conception of oratory-as-power that is introduced by Gorgias himself and amplified by Polus turns out to be programmatic for the Gorgias, in that it gives rise to many of the central questions and concerns that Socrates and his interlocutors address over the course of the text (some of which will be discussed further in Sections 1.2 and 1.3).

1.1.2 Gorgias on the Power of Logos

What I would now like to show is that the conception of oratory that Plato’s character Gorgias introduces in the dialogue is informed by the historical figure’s own work. In particular, Gorgias famously articulates a rather radical version of the view that oratory is a form or source of power in his Encomium of Helen, a speech in which his ostensible aim is to exculpate Helen of Troy for sailing away with Alexander. She can only have done so, he argues, for one of four reasons – the will of the gods, physical force (bia), having been persuaded by speech (logos), or under the influence of love – and in none of these four scenarios is she truly to blame for her action. In his defense of Helen’s innocence in the third case – that of persuasion – Gorgias’ strategy is to liken speech to physical violence. Although it is only a tiny and invisible ‘body’, he says, speech is a ‘mighty potentate’ (dunastēs, 8) that has the ‘power’ (dunamis, 10) to transform the minds of an audience. It can excite their emotions, change their beliefs through persuasion, and ultimately make them act in whatever ways the speaker desires. All of these effects, moreover, are compulsive and irresistible for the listeners themselves. Gorgias comments:

What reason prevents us from <thinking> that Helen came led by speech no more willingly (ouk ekousan) than if she was ravished by force (bia)? It is possible <to see how> the faculty of persuasion <rules>, which does not have the look of compulsion (anankē), but does have its power (dunamis). For speech, by persuading the soul that it persuades, compels (anankase) it both to accept what it says and to agree to its deeds … The power of speech (tou logou dunamis) has the same relationship to the order of the soul as does the order of drugs to the nature of bodies. For just as different drugs draw different humors from body, and some put an end to sickness, some to life, so some speeches induce grief, some joy, some fear, some instill courage in the audience, and some drug and bewitch the soul with a kind of pernicious persuasion.

(12–14)⁸

The similarities between Plato’s dialogue and Gorgias’ work are striking. Both elide the traditional Greek contrast between force (bia) and persuasion (peithō) by assimilating convincing speech to a form of brute force.⁹ For Gorgias, it may literally be a physical force, since it is evidently corporeal in nature, and it acts on the listener as a form of compulsion just as violence does, and with the same inevitability as the mechanistic effects of pharmaceuticals on the body itself.¹⁰ His emphasis on the ‘power’ of speech and his characterization of it as a mighty ‘potentate’, moreover, directly anticipates the language Plato’s character Gorgias uses, as well as his student Polus’ likening of the orator to a literal potentate.¹¹

Finally, we have evidence from elsewhere in the Platonic corpus that Plato associated Gorgias with the conception of logos as a form or source of power that operates like brute violence. Most obviously, in the Philebus, Protarchus claims, ‘I have often heard … Gorgias saying that the art of persuasion is greatly superior to all others, for all things are made its slaves willingly (doula di’ hekontōn), rather than by force (dia bias)’ (58a–b). The fact that he has ‘often’ heard this claim makes Plato’s attribution of the view to the historical person especially emphatic. Also significant is the Meno, where Gorgias’ student, who claims to share his teacher’s views, successively proposes that virtue is (for a man) ‘being successful in political affairs’ (71e), or (for everyone) ‘the ability to rule (archein) over human beings’ (73d) or ‘to desire admirable things and have the power (dunatos) to acquire them’ (77b). His characterization is of virtue, not oratory, but the virtues he enumerates closely resemble the goods that the character in Plato’s Gorgias promises oratory can provide for human beings. The connection between Meno and Gorgias, then, combined with Meno’s pride in his own ability to deliver ‘very good speeches’ (80b), suggests that Meno’s attempts to define virtue are informed by the Gorgianic conception of speech and its value to human beings.¹² The idea common to both dialogues is that, from Plato’s perspective, the main demographic for Gorgias’ brand of rhetoric is those who seek political power and influence. The long list of ambitious politicians whom Gorgias is supposed to have influenced or taught may corroborate this point. Xenophon, for his part, explicitly reports that Proxenus became Gorgias’ student in order to become ‘capable of doing great things’ or ‘capable of ruling (archein)’, and out of a desire to achieve ‘great power (dunamis)’ (Anab. II.6.16–18).

Gorgias’ emphasis on the power of speech in Plato’s dialogue, therefore, is not mere Platonic invention. Rather, it reflects Plato’s perception of both the historical figure’s works and practices themselves and how they were received by eager students and aspiring political leaders.

1.2 Power and Wish

1.2.1 Dunamis and Boulēsis in the Gorgias

Plato’s dialogue also engages with the historical Gorgias’ work and with his account of oratory-as-power, I argue, in its exploration of the relationship between power and wish, or dunamis and boulēsis. Socrates and his interlocutors, beginning with Gorgias himself, advocate and explore the idea that power is what allows people to obtain or achieve the things they wish for, and that that is what makes it valuable to human beings. To put the point in language that neither Plato nor Gorgias themselves quite use, wish determines the end a person seeks, and power provides them with the means of achieving it.

This idea recurs throughout the text, but I will highlight three extended passages in which it is especially prominent. First, Gorgias’ character introduces the idea in his description of the power oratory provides: the orator has the ‘power’ to be persuasive about ‘whatever he wishes’ (boulētai), even if what he ‘wished’ (bouloito) were to undermine the legitimate authority of doctors or experts unjustly. In response, Socrates takes issue with the suggestion that the orator will ever commit injustice. The just person necessarily ‘wishes’ (boulesthai) to do just things, he argues, and those who learn what justice is become just themselves. If, therefore, the orator has knowledge of justice – as Gorgias, perhaps only under pressure from Socrates, promises – then the orator must be just and hence ‘will never wish (boulēsetai) to do what’s unjust’ (460c).¹³

Second, the relation between power and wish becomes central in one of the most memorable arguments of the whole dialogue, which takes place between Socrates and Polus. At issue is Polus’ conviction that orators ‘have the greatest power (megiston dunantai) in their cities’, because like tyrants and potentates, they can (as we saw in Section 1.2) put to death, banish, or confiscate the property of anyone they ‘wish’ (boulōntai) (466b–c). Socrates, however, claims that orators and tyrants are actually the least powerful people in their cities, on the basis of a distinction between doing what one believes best, on the one hand, and doing what one wishes, on the other. The general idea is that what people ultimately wish for, and seek to achieve in their actions, is what is good or best for them, but people often hold false beliefs about what is good and consequently act in ways that are actually bad for them. In such cases, they do what they believe is best but not what they actually wish for. This line of reasoning provides the resources to refute Polus:

S. Therefore, we do not simply wish (boulometha) to slaughter people, or exile them from their cities and confiscate their property as such: we wish (boulometha) to do these things if they are beneficial, but if they are harmful we do not (boulometha). For we wish (boulometha) for the things that are good, as you agree, and we do not wish (boulometha) for those that are neither good nor bad, nor those that are bad … Then if a person who’s a tyrant or an orator puts somebody to death or exiles him or confiscates his property because he supposes that doing so is better for himself when actually it’s worse, this person, I take it, is doing what he sees fit, is not he?

P. Yes.

S. And is he also doing what he wishes (bouletai), if these things are actually bad? Why do not you answer?

P. All right, I do not think he’s doing what he wishes (bouletai).

S. Can such a man possibly have great power (mega dunatai) in that city, if in fact having great power (to mega dunasthai) is, as you agree, something good?

P. He cannot.

(468c–e)

Contrary to the Gorgianic account of rhetoric, then, orators are not necessarily powerful after all: power refers exclusively to the ability to obtain the good things one ultimately wishes for, but orators and potentates often fail to achieve what is truly good for them.

Finally, the concepts of dunamis and boulēsis are prominent in a later exchange between Socrates and Callicles. The context is that Socrates has earlier argued that although both doing injustice and being the victim of it are evils, the former is an even worse evil – the greatest of all evils for human beings, in fact – than the latter. Socrates and Callicles agree, moreover, that failure to protect oneself, one’s friends, and relatives against evils is shameful, and it is more shameful the greater the evil is. What, then, Socrates wonders, must a person acquire in order to protect themselves and others against the evils of doing and suffering injustice? He asks:

Is it power (dunamis) or wish (boulēsis)? What I mean is this: Is it when a person does not wish (boulētai) to suffer what’s unjust that he will avoid suffering it, or when he procures a power (dunamin) to avoid suffering it? … And what about doing what’s unjust? Is it when he does not wish (boulētai) to do it, is that sufficient – for he will not do it – or should he procure a power (dunamin) and a craft for this, too, so that unless he learns and practices it, he will commit injustice? … Do you think Polus and I were or were not correct in being compelled to agree in our previous discussion when we agreed that no one does what’s unjust because he wishes (boulomenon) to, but that all who do so do it involuntarily?

(509d–e)

Socrates’ line of questioning, then, establishes that wish is ineffectual in the absence of power. It is not enough to wish not to suffer injustice; one must also have a power that precludes suffering it. More importantly, and perhaps more surprisingly, even wishing not to commit injustice oneself is insufficient to guarantee that one will act well; one must also acquire ‘some power’ that enables one to act virtuously and avoid vice (510a).¹⁴ Once again, then, dunamis in the Gorgias is what allows us to achieve the objects determined by boulēsis.

1.2.2 Gorgias on Boulēsis and Dunamis

Plato’s characterization of power and wish in his dialogue has its antecedent in the historical Gorgias’ own works. This connection has been underappreciated by interpreters, but the evidence for it is striking. For Gorgias frequently couples the concepts of boulēsis and dunamis together in his speeches in an innovative way that draws attention to their conjoined roles in human action. Most notably, Gorgias’ pairing of power and wish becomes the centerpiece of his argument in the Defense of Palamedes, an apologetic speech written from the perspective of the accused, who is attempting to exonerate himself from the spurious charge of treason brought against him by Odysseus. In his introductory remarks, the defendant promises, ‘I shall prove to you that [my accuser] does not speak truly, in two ways: for neither if I wished to did I have the power (boulēstheis edunamēn), nor if I had the power did I wish (dunamenos eboulēthēn) to undertake these deeds’ (5). This opening statement provides the framework for the rest of the speech, as Palamedes organizes his argument by defending each of the two conjuncts in its turn, and he repeats the terms dunamis and boulēsis and continues to pair them throughout.¹⁵ Importantly, this two-part line of defense assumes that power and wish are each distinct necessary conditions of human action: in order to prove that someone did not do something, it suffices to show either that they did not wish to do it or that they did not have the power to do it.¹⁶ The arguments succeed only if action requires both. In the Palamedes, therefore, power and wish are closely related to one another in human behavior, just as they are in Plato’s dialogue.

Two further considerations amplify this connection. The first is that Palamedes’ defense speech develops a view of human motivation that anticipates some of the details of Plato’s treatment of wish in the Gorgias. In particular, we have seen that Socrates defends the following cluster of ideas in the dialogue: everyone ultimately desires the good, and no one wants what is in fact harmful to them; people harm themselves only out of ignorance; no one voluntarily does wrong (since injustice is harmful, and no one willingly harms themselves); and people want to protect themselves, their families, and their friends from harm. Palamedes, likewise, articulates versions of these same ideas throughout his speech:

No one wishes (bouletai) to run the greatest risks for nothing, nor to be a wrongdoer in the greatest of wrongs.

(13)

There is not a single person who commits a crime out of a desire to be harmed.

(18)

All people do all things for the sake of one of these two motives: either to pursue some profit or to avoid a loss.

(19)

It is madness to undertake deeds that are impossible, unprofitable, disgraceful, by which one will harm one’s friends and benefit one’s enemies … It is not the business of the prudent to commit the greatest wrongs and to choose evils in preference to the goods at hand. If then I am wise, I did no wrong; if I did wrong, I am not wise.

(26)¹⁷

The parallel between the two texts on these points provides further evidence that Plato’s treatment of wish and human action in the Gorgias is informed by the work of the dialogue’s namesake.¹⁸

Second, we have good reason for thinking Plato was familiar with Gorgias’ Defense of Palamedes. As previous commentators have noted, the defense speech Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates in his own Apology bears a number of notable similarities, in both structure and argumentative content, to Palamedes’ speech. To give just a single example of special note for present purposes, one of Socrates’ arguments for his innocence relies on the claim that no one ‘wishes (bouletai) to be harmed rather than benefited by his associates’, or, more generally, that no one ‘wishes (bouletai) to be harmed’ at all (25d–26a). The parallels between the two works are, on the whole, sufficiently abundant and impressive to suggest that Plato’s work is informed directly by the Gorgianic speech.¹⁹ To the extent that we can be confident in this conclusion, the case for thinking that points of contact between Gorgias’ works and the Gorgias itself reflect the orator’s influence on Plato becomes even more compelling.

Finally, it should be emphasized that Gorgias conspicuously pairs the concepts of power and wish not only in the Palamedes, but also, and in similar ways, in his other works as well. A surviving fragment of his Olympian Oration states, ‘Reason, like the Olympic summons, calls the willing (boulomenon), but crowns only the able (dunamenon) (DK B8). Similarly, in his Funeral Oration he implores, ‘May I have the power (dunaimēn) to speak what I wish (boulomai), and to wish (bouloimēn) what I ought’ (DK B6). Both of these passages characterize power as sine qua non of wish fulfillment, and the second also presents the idea that wish itself must be oriented correctly in order for human action to be successful. Finally, in the Encomium of Helen itself, where we have seen that Gorgias’ emphasis on the ‘power’ of logos anticipates his appearance in Plato’s dialogue, he claims, ‘Persuasion that proceeds by means of speech shapes the soul however it wishes (hopōs ebouleto)’ (13). Speech, like any form of power for Gorgias, constitutes a means for attaining or accomplishing the things we wish for.

Given the paucity of extant fragments and speeches by the historical Gorgias, it is remarkable how consistently the concepts of power and wish appear together in them. Indeed, it is almost a signature of his work.²⁰ It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that Plato’s fastidious exploration of the concepts of power and wish in his dialogue, in connection to the Gorgianic view of oratory-as-power, is directly indebted to Gorgias of Leontini’s own work and ideas.

1.3 Belief and Knowledge

1.3.1 Epistemology and Oratory in the Gorgias

Finally, Plato’s dialogue echoes Gorgias’ own work in the distinction between knowledge and belief, along with the contrasting relationships oratory has to each of them. The precise connections between the two thinkers on these issues are, I think, especially rich and complex, and it is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore them fully. However, I offer here a sketch of their similarities on a few main points that we find in the Gorgias.

Over the course of the dialogue Socrates draws and appeals to an epistemological distinction between belief (doxa or pistis), on the one hand – which he also variously refers to as ‘guessing’ (stochazein), what people ‘think’ (nomizein) or ‘judge’ (oiesthai), how things ‘appear’ (phainesthai), or simply ‘not knowing’ – with ‘knowledge’ (epistēmē), ‘knowing’ (eidenai or gnōnai), or ‘intelligence’ (nous), on the other. Knowledge is enduringly stable and infallible; it is always true, and the truth itself is fixed and constant. Belief, by contrast, admits of both truth and falsity, and it tends to be mutable and fallible. It is typically responsive not to how things truly are, but rather to how they ‘seem’, and how things seem are often misleading and often change.²¹

One source of misleading appearances is oratory itself. According to Socrates, oratory does not produce knowledge in its listeners, nor even (at least typically) true belief. Rather, it can be and often is deceptive. In response to Gorgias’ laudatory remarks on the persuasive power of speech, Socrates distinguishes between persuasion that results in knowledge (such as when educators persuade their students by teaching them) and persuasion that results in mere belief without knowledge. Orators, Gorgias confesses, do not provide knowledge through their speeches. They do not, as Socrates puts it, ‘have the power to teach such a large gathering in a short time’ (454c–455a). This shortcoming is due at least in part to the fact that, as we have seen, the orator can speak persuasively about anything, whether or not he himself is an expert on the matter. When Gorgias finally urges Socrates to speak his mind and say what he thinks oratory is, Socrates famously classifies it as a form of flattery, the distinguishing feature of which is that it ‘puts on the mask’ of true knowledge, but, ‘gives no thought at all to what is best, but rather with the lure of what’s most pleasant at the moment, it hunts down foolishness (anoia) and deceives (exapatai) it, so that it is believed (dokei) to be the most deserving’ (464c–d). He describes another form of flattery, cosmetics, as ‘a mischievous, deceptive (apatēlē), disgraceful, and vulgar thing, which deceives (apatōsa) by means of shapes and colors’ (465b). The orator, then, not only fails to teach, but actually misleads his audience about how things really are.²²

The deceptive power of speech is not absolute, however: oratory’s capacity to persuade is ineffective against those who possess actual knowledge. When Gorgias boasts of the orator’s power to be more persuasive in a crowd than, for example, an actual doctor speaking on the topic of health, Socrates responds, ‘Does not “in a crowd” just mean “among those who do not have knowledge (en tois mē eidosin)”? For, among those who do have it, I do not suppose that he’ll be more persuasive than the doctor’ (469a). His point draws attention to a limitation of oratory’s power. If the rhetorician were speaking to an audience of doctors, he would not be more persuasive than an expert physician. In general, if a crowd possessed knowledge of the subjects on which the orator speaks, he would no longer have the power to convince them however he wishes. On Socrates’ view, however, the majority of people are ignorant in any given field of expertise, which is why orators like Gorgias are consistently capable of persuading large crowds.²³ In order to be successful, Socrates explains, ‘Oratory does not need to have any knowledge of the state of their subject matters; it only needs to have discovered a persuasion device in order to make itself appear (phainesthai) to those who do not have knowledge (tois ouk eidosi) that it knows more than those who actually do have it’ (459b–c). The successful orator can make the ‘foolish’ believe that he speaks the truth even when in fact he does not. To sum up this point in light of the distinction above: the stability of knowledge makes it impervious to the deceptive influence of oratory, whereas the volatility of popular belief makes it, and the crowds of people who rely on it, vulnerable to that influence.

1.3.2 Gorgias on Speech, Deception, and Knowledge

We find close precedents for the above points in Gorgias’ own works. In fact, they are all identifiable in a central passage from the Encomium. In the middle of his panegyric of speech, he explains:

Everyone who has persuaded anyone about anything persuades him by fashioning false speech. For if everyone had concerning everything memory (mnēmēn) of the past, <awareness> (ennoian) of the present, and foreknowledge (pronoian) of the future, speech – although the same – would not deceive in the same way it does now, when it is not easy to remember (mnēsthēnai) the past, examine (skepsasthai) the present, or divine (manteusasathai) the future. So concerning most things most people take opinion (tēn doxan) as their soul’s guide. But opinion, being unreliable (sphalera) and insecure (abebaios), involves those relying on it in unreliable and insecure fortunes.

(11)

To begin with, this passage anticipates the Gorgias’ distinction between knowledge and belief, in that it draws a contrast between doxa, on the one hand, and what Gorgias refers to as ‘memory’, ‘awareness’, or ‘foreknowledge’ on the other. The latter are clearly meant to designate types of cognitive achievement that are superior to mere belief, and two of the terms he uses, ennoia and pronoia, are formed from the same root as two of the words the Gorgias uses to refer to knowledge and ignorance, nous and anoia. As in Plato’s dialogue, moreover, the historical Gorgias claims that most people possess only belief about most matters, and he characterizes belief as having the same sort of shortcomings that Socrates attributes to it in the Gorgias: it is ‘unreliable and insecure’. The orator goes on to reiterate the fallibility and mutability of belief. He describes how speeches can ‘produce one belief after another, taking away this one and imposing that, making untrustworthy (apista) and unclear (adēla) things appear to the eyes of belief’, and he stresses ‘how changeable (eumetabolon) is the confidence of belief’ (13).

Gorgias draws the same sort of distinction in the Palamedes, contrasting belief and knowledge at several points throughout the speech. In one especially dramatic passage, Palamedes addresses his accuser directly:

Do you accuse me on the basis of precise knowledge (eidos akribōs), or mere belief (doxazōn)? … That you do not have knowledge (ouk oistha) of what you are accusing me of is clear. Accordingly, since you do <not> know (eidōs), you merely believe (doxazein). Further, you most audacious of men, do you dare to prosecute a man on a capital charge, putting your trust in belief (doxēi pisteusas), a most untrustworthy (apistotatōi) thing, without knowing the truth (tēn alētheian ouk eidōs)? What knowledge (sunoistha) do you have of me having done such a deed? Everyone alike holds beliefs (doxasai) about everything, and you are no wiser in this than anyone else. But we must not trust those who merely have beliefs, but those who know, nor think that belief is more trustworthy than truth, but on the contrary that truth is more trustworthy than belief (all’ oute tois doxasousi dei pisteuein alla tois eidosin, oute tēn doxan tēs alētheias pistoteran nomizein, alla tantantia tēn alētheian tēs doxēs).

(22–24)²⁴

The extravagant repetition of the contrasting terms here reinforces the epistemological picture of the Encomium. Once again, belief is compared unfavorably to its cognitive superior, knowledge, and the defining flaw of belief, its ‘untrustworthiness’, echoes its ‘unreliability’ and capacity to produce ‘untrustworthy’ appearances.²⁵ Furthermore, Palamedes parallels the Encomium in affirming the prevalence of belief instead of knowledge among human beings about most or even all things. Palamedes’ language also anticipates the language of Plato’s Gorgias especially closely. The orator’s terms for belief, doxa and pistis, and his terms for (or that he associates with) knowledge, eidenai and alētheia (‘truth’), are the same ones Plato favors in his dialogue.

We also find in the above passage from the Encomium the idea that speech – perhaps even by its very nature – deceives. Gorgias repeats this point throughout that speech: words produce ‘deceptions of belief’ (doxēs apatēmata); an artfully composed speech ‘charms the crowd and persuades everyone, though it is not spoken truly’; and ‘wicked persuasion’ has the capacity to ‘bewitch’ the soul.²⁶ His argument itself, moreover, presupposes the deceptive power of speech. He is attempting to show that Helen is blameless if the reason she left was that Alexander persuaded her to go. The background assumption is that it was wrong to leave, and hence if Alexander did use speech to convince her to sail away with him, his speech deceived her.²⁷

Gorgias’ preoccupation with the deceptive power of speech is evident outside of the Encomium as well. The defendant in Gorgias’ Palamedes argues that his accuser Odysseus ‘does not speak truly’, that he makes ‘contradictory’ claims, that he is a ‘liar’, that his accusations are ‘dreadful and false’, and that his speech amounts to ‘slander’ without ‘evidence’. By contrast, Palamedes himself promises that he speaks the ‘truth’ (15), rather than ‘deceptions’. Moreover, as in the case of the Encomium, historical context draws further attention to the misleading power of speech. Gorgias’ Greek audience knows that Palamedes was innocent, but that Odysseus’ false accusations ultimately prevailed. In other words, deceptive speech triumphed over true speech.

It is also worth mentioning a fragment in which Gorgias characterizes tragedy as ‘a form of deception in which the deceiver is more honest than the non-deceiver, and the deceived is wiser than the non-deceived’ (DK B23). Although his remark is about tragic poetry, rather than oratory in particular, the line between the two is actually quite blurry in Gorgianic thinking. In the Encomium, the orator asserts that ‘all poetry is speech in verse’ (9), and he is known to have applied poetic style to his rhetoric, ‘not wanting the orator to sound like ordinary speakers’.²⁸ In other words, poetry is itself a type of speech alongside oratory, for Gorgias, and he strives to make his own oratory more poetic.²⁹ The deceptive power of tragedy, for him, is one form of the deceptive power of speech in general.³⁰

Finally, the extended passage from the Encomium above provides a clear antecedent for the Gorgias’ idea that persuasion is ineffective against those with knowledge. According to Gorgias’ speech, the orator has the ability to deceive those who hold fallible and unstable beliefs, but anyone who knows how things were in the past, are now in the present, or will be in the future is invulnerable to such deception. Most immediately, the orator is making a point that applies to the case of Helen at hand. Gorgias’ audience would have been well aware that Helen eventually regretted her departure with Alexander. In the Iliad, she dramatically laments her actions:

If only death had pleased me then, grim death, that day I followed your son to Troy, forsaking my marriage bed, my kinsmen and my child, my favorite, now full-grown, and the lovely comradeship of women my own age. Death never came, so now I can only waste away in tears.

(3.173–76)³¹

Taking her regret for granted, the Encomium plausibly suggests that if Helen had possessed certain knowledge of the future – if she had known the pain and despair of the fate that awaited her at Troy – then no words of persuasion could have moved her. Like other mortals, however, Helen could not see the future, and that made her vulnerable to Alexander’s deception.³²

Gorgias clearly does not mean to limit his point to Helen, however. On the contrary, her case is just one example of what he presents as a broader epistemological claim about human beings in general. Presumably, in making the general claim, Gorgias has in mind especially many of the political and judicial contexts in which orators attempt to win over a crowd. Consider, for example, Thucydides’ account of the rival speeches delivered by Nicias and Alcibiades to the Athenians concerning whether the city should undertake a military operation in Sicily (6.8–26). Alcibiades’ rousing jingoism was, of course, ultimately more persuasive to the Athenians than the cautious advice of Nicias as they speculated about the future of their empire. The insight Gorgias offers in the Encomium, however, is that if the Athenians had known how their invasion of Sicily would end – in defeat, and with devastating losses – then Alcibiades’ spirited rhetoric would have been powerless to convince them to make their ill-fated decision. It is only because of the uncertainty of the future, and the fact that the Athenians had mere beliefs about how it might turn out, that his speech was able to have the persuasive, and in his case deceptive, force that it did.³³

Likewise, in typical forensic contexts, a throng of jurors can only guess from the speeches delivered to them whether an alleged criminal really has committed the offense with which they are charged. In the Palamedes, Gorgias’ defendant actually appears to lament precisely this point. In his closing remarks to the jury, he says, ‘If it were possible through words for the truth of what is done to emerge, plain and simple, it would easy to come to a decision based on what has been said. But since that is not the case, take care for my person, and take your time deliberating’ (35).³⁴ The implication is that if Palamedes could provide knowledge of the truth to the jurors through his defense alone, then the accuser’s speech would lose its deceptive power, and their just and right decision would be an easy one. It is only because they do not know what happened that the deception has the potential to be effective. In other words, the historical Gorgias’ work draws attention to the very point that his character admits in Plato’s dialogue: that the power of speech is conditional on the audience’s lack of knowledge, and that such ignorance can be taken for granted in any large crowd of listeners, given the ubiquity and instability of human belief. Not only that, but Plato’s Gorgias expresses his anxieties about the implications of this idea for precisely the sorts of political contexts – the ‘law courts and other large gatherings’ – that motivate the epistemological insights of the Encomium and the Palamedes.³⁵

I think the above suffices to show that Plato’s exploration of the distinction between knowledge and belief in connection with oratory is directly informed by the work of Gorgias of Leontini. Two further references to the historical figure in Plato’s other works, however, provide further support for thinking that Plato closely associated Gorgias in particular with the relevant ideas about these issues. First, in Plato’s Symposium the young Agathon offers an exaggerated encomium of Love that parodies the historical Gorgias’ rhetorical style – enough so that Socrates himself says the speech ‘reminded me of Gorgias’ (198c). Socrates goes on to (mockingly) suggest that Agathon’s speech has taught him that he was previously confused about what it means to deliver a speech of commendation:

In my foolishness, I thought you should tell the truth about whatever you praise … But now it appears this is not at all what it is to praise something; rather, it is to apply to the object the grandest and most admirable qualities, whether it actually has them or not. And if they are false, that is no objection … Your description of Love and his gifts is designed to make him appear (phainētai) better and more admirable than anything else – to those who lack knowledge (tois mē gignōskousin), plainly, for of course he would not appear that way to those who know (tois eidosin).

(198c–199a)

Second, as he enumerates the putative contributions of various thinkers to the ‘art’ of rhetoric in the Phaedrus, Socrates comments, ‘And what about Tisias and Gorgias? How can we leave them out when it is they who realized that what is probable must be held in higher honor than what is true; they who, by the force of their speech make small things appear great and great things small?’ (267a). Taken together these passages point to the same ideas we find in the Gorgias: that orators are able to manipulate appearances and deceive their listeners, but that their power to subvert the truth in this way is conditional on an ignorant audience’s reliance on mere belief and guesswork about probability.

1.4 Conclusion

According to one ancient biographer, when Gorgias himself read Plato’s portrayal of him in the dialogue, he remarked ‘that he had neither said nor heard any of these things’.³⁶ The aim of this chapter has been to show that the claim attributed to the orator in this apocryphal story is, if not strictly false, at least misleading. For we have seen that some of the central ideas Plato explores in his dialogue about the power of speech and its relation to human desire and cognition are ones that originate or are emphasized in Gorgias of Leontini’s’ own work. For the orator himself, persuasive speech is valuable because it provides the power to achieve one’s wishes by altering the minds and influencing the actions of those with untrustworthy belief. Plato, for his part, accepts that rhetoric can achieve the sorts of things Gorgias and his students claim – it can be used to manipulate an ignorant crowd in the service of material gain and political control – but he rejects the inherent value of those achievements, and hence of the so-called art that affords them. Rhetoric is a genuinely beneficial ‘power’ only if it achieves what people genuinely ‘wish for’, but nothing about oratory itself guarantees that outcome, and much about its actual use and practice suggests, on the contrary, that people more often employ it in the service of meretricious goods that do them and their fellow citizens harm. Gorgias’ character and the views he expresses in the dialogue represent Plato’s effort to engage critically with some distinctively Gorgianic ideas and their implications in connection with his own philosophical, ethical, and political concerns and agenda.