Plato's Gorgias: Outline
©Steven K. Strange 2003

Place among Plato's Dialogues. General Theme
The Gorgias does not belong to the earliest period of of Plato's works, that of the so-called 'Socratic dialogues' (such as the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito) which are clearly meant to represent with some accuracy the way in which his teacher Socrates actually conducted his philosophical activity. Nevertheless, since the Gorgias is extremely concerned with portraying Socrates' moral attitude, and especially since there are so many allusions in the dialogue to Socrates' fate, executed after a political trial because of his refusal to compromise his principles, we are probably safe in assuming that the portrait of him is fairly faithful, even if a bit exaggerated in some respects, such as the unusual degree of dogmatism on his part.

As Zeyl, our translator, says in his introduction, the theme of the dialogue is a choice of lives: the life of the orator/politician vs. that of the philosopher, represented by Socrates, which can also be thought of as the opposition between the pursuit of truth and mere opinion. (This is underlined by the use in the round with Callicles of the theme of Euripides' lost tragedy, the Antiope, in which two rival brothers represented the contemplative life and the life of political activity respectively [cf. 484c ff.].) Since Socrates, like the Greek philosophers who follow him, conceives of happiness (eudaimonia), the ultimate human goal or telos, as a kind of life, we may also say that it represents a contrast between different conceptions of happiness. But Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles, and Socrates' exchanges with each of them, represent different aspects of this contrast: Gorgias, the nature of oratory or rhetoric as a deceptive rather than truth- and good-oriented practice, which a true craft must be; Polus, the conflict of the associated life-style with the virtue of justice; Callicles, its conflict with the virtue of self-control.

This contrast between conceptions of happiness raises two very important problems which the Gorgias itself fails to answer, but which Aristotle and the Stoics deal with and which will concern us throughout this course:

(1) What is the nature of happiness? Socrates in the Gorgias expresses a mostly negative view about this: happiness or the human good does not consist in pleasure or gratification. But Socrates does imply that true goodness is connected with proper order (see Zeyl p.xiv). This is close to the Stoic conception.

(2) What is the connection between true happiness and moral virtue, especially justice? (Socrates shows himself sure that justice and self-control or 'temperance' are required for happiness, but does not make it clear why this must be so.)
Outline of the dialogue:

I. Prelude (447a-449c)
Chaerephon and Polus, acting as proxies for their teachers Socrates and Gorgias, begin the inquiry into the nature of the alleged craft of oratory. P is unable or unwilling to engage in the right sort of inquiry, into the essence of oratory or what it really is - he can only define it by saying it is the best or most admirable of the crafts.

II. Round with Gorgias (449c-461b)
The main contrast here is S's philosophizing as a pursuit of truth (and goodness) opposed to oratory, which pursues persuasion at the expense of goodness and real truth about a subject, also the contrast in their styles of speech (long speeches vs. brief exchanges of question and answer). S does not deny that G is a skilled orator, but only that oratory is a true craft. This is not explained until the interlude between S and G inserted in the next section, where oratory is exposed as a mere 'knack', a sort of 'flattery' aiming without knowledge at the merely apparent good, not a sort of 'care' as a real craft concerned with the human good would be.

III. Round with Polus (461b-481b)
P complains that S has shamed G into the false claim that (as an orator) he knows the nature of justice, which is inconsistent with other things G has conceded about oratory. P proposes to abandon any connection with justice entirely: oratory is the most 'admirable' or finest craft, according to P (cf. 448d), merely because its practitioners are most able to get what they want, to succeed in society, and thus are happy.
S denies this: they may do as they like ("as they see fit", Zeyl), but they do not do what they really want, since what everyone wants is real happiness, and this requires justice, which P admits they neither know or care about. S refutes P by getting him to concede that doing injustice is foul or disreputable ("shameful"), even if it is not worse than suffering injustice. What is foul, however, is so either by being painful or harmful, and thus doing injustice can only be harmful.

IV. Round with Callicles (481b-522e)
C complains that S has shamed P into saying that doing injustice is foul or shameful: he denies this, and straightforwardly identify happiness with the maximum of pleasure or gratification of desire. He claims it is only by convention, not by nature, that doing what is considered unjust is shameful - by nature, what is right or just is that the stronger, superior and better persons have more (i.e. more pleasure or gratification) than others, whereas S's view is that justice requires everyone in society to receive equal treatment. (Aristotle, in Nicomachean Ethics Book V, defends a 'geometric' conception of justice that declares that for the better to have more is not unfair or inequitable, thus reconciling Socrates and Callicles' conceptions of natural justice. This is not implausible in some circumstances at least: think of punishing criminals.)

S's five arguments against C's hedonism:
(1) C thinks the superior are few and the many weak: but the many are stronger than the few, and hence are superior by C's own standards.
(2) C then declares that (like S) he takes 'stronger' to mean 'more intelligent', not 'physically stronger'. S claims that such a person won't want to have more than others. C rejects this, and the associated virtue of self-control or temperance: happiness consists in gratifying as many desires as possible. S then argues that such a life is not preferable, since it is difficult to gratify a great number of desires: analogies with leaky jars and dirty birds.
(3) C is forced to give up 'simple' hedonism, the view that any sort of pleasure or gratification is good as such, in favor of 'complex' hedonism, the view that there are good and bad, fine and foul pleasures: happiness will then consist in maximizing the better sort of pleasure. S shames him into this by forcing C to consider certain pleasures that he finds disgusting (passive homosexuality).
(4) (First refutation of complex hedonism) All bodily pleasures are 'impure', in that they are necessarily mixed with pain.
(5) (Second refutation of complex hedonism) Not only intelligent people but also fools are capable of experiencing pleasure: they may even experience more, and thus be more happy.
At 503d ff., there is a very important passage in which Socrates claims that all good (e.g. the products of any true craft) will involve the imposing of proper order and organization into something, implying (he thinks) that self-control must be involved in the good human life. In the case of this soul, this proper order consists in a state of the soul that is strictly analogous to health of the body, conceived as order and harmony of its constituents. (This thought recurs in a crucial way in the very famous account of the nature of virtue in Book IV of the Republic.)

V. Myth & Epilogue (523a-527e)
Here Plato states, in mythical form, what seems to be his sincere belief (was it Socrates' as well?) that justice is after all rewarded in the long run and injustice punished, sc. by the gods after death.