Gorgias

Gorgias is a long dialog that strings together three successive conversations Socrates has with Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles.  Though it is nominally about finding a suitable definition of oratory, what really holds the dialog together is its underlying distinction between appearance and reality.  More concretely, the dialog asks whether it is better to be powerful (in the conventional sense) or to be truly just.  Towards the end, the themes of oratory versus philosophy and power versus justice intersect in the same place that they still do today: politics.  Which is perhaps why the end of Gorgias reads as almost a prelude to the trial of Socrates in Apology, and his reflections on death in Phaedo.  Socrates adamantly insists on trying to improve himself and others, even when what he has to say is clearly not what they want to hear.  This exclusive focus on the justice in his soul, rather than the power to convince others in the world, is what ultimately leads to his execution.  We even get a sneak preview of the myth that concludes Phaedo, where souls are rewarded and punished in the afterlife according to the degree of their dedication to truth in this life.  Overall, the length and complexity of Gorgias, in addition to its concluding myth, make it easy to imagine that this was one of the last 'early' or 'Socratic' dialogs.

Socrates begins the conversation in classic fashion.  Gorgias is a famous orator and teacher of oratory so Socrates asks him what sort of knowledge it is that Gorgias teaches.  If oratory is a craft analogous to painting or medicine or arithmetic, what will you know how to produce once you've learned it?  Gorgias' first answer -- that oratory teaches you how to make speeches -- doesn't satisfy Socrates.  He observes that there are many crafts that operate only by means of speeches.  For example, knowing finance or astronomy consists mainly in talking with other humans about money and stars, so the definition isn't specific enough.  We need to know what kind of speaking oratory is concerned with?  Gorgias quickly cuts to the chase and claims that oratory is the most important form of speaking, and in fact the most important activity of all.  Oratory teaches you how to speak persuasively, so that many people agree with you and do what you say.  What could be more powerful than that?  Socrates again objects that this definition is still too broad.  The master of almost any intellectual craft could be described as persuading you to believe something, usually by drawing evidence from their experience or giving you other reasons to believe them.  In other words, they're able to persuade you that they're right, because they are, in fact, right; they do know something.  So what, then, does oratory know about?  

Gorgias doesn't immediately realize that he has walked into a trap.  His day job, as it were, seems to basically be what we would call a prosecuting attorney.  Insofar as it concerns convincing a jury, it appears that what oratory should know about is what's just and unjust.  This, after all, is what's supposed to be at stake in court.  But does Gorgias claim to teach not just the art of persuasion, but also that of knowing what's just and unjust?  That's a much larger claim.  And then what about oratory more broadly, outside the courts?  Gorgias claims it is the most powerful tool there is:

I maintain too that if an orator and a doctor came to any city anywhere you like and had to compete in speaking in the assembly or some other gathering over which of them should be appointed doctor, the doctor wouldn't make any showing at all, but the one who had the ability to speak would be appointed, if he so wished. And if he were to compete with any other craftsman whatever, the orator more than anyone else would persuade them that they should appoint him, for there isn't anything that the orator couldn't speak more persuasively about to a gathering than could any other craftsman whatever. That's how great the accomplishment of this craft is, and the sort of accomplishment it is! (456c)

But in this example, the wonderful orator triumphs explicitly by convincing people that he knows something that he does not, in fact, know.  To top it off, this sort of persuasion won't work amongst an audience of doctors. It relies on the fact that most folks in the audience don't know any more about the thing in question than the orator.  So oratory appears to specifically boil down to using speeches to persuade people who know nothing about the truth ... of something that the orator is also completely ignorant of.  It's literally the fact that it's a blind man leading the blind that makes it specifically oratory.  A beautiful and convincing speech by a mathematician to the effect that 2+2=4 does not qualify.  Gorgias tries to backpedal out of the problem by claiming that he just teaches the tools of persuasion part.  He can't be held responsible if a student uses this knowledge irresponsibly, to persuade people of something false or unjust.  But hold on, isn't oratory specifically concerned with what is just and unjust in the eyes of the law?  Isn't this what oratorical speeches are originally all about?  How can the art then claim to be indifferent to, or at least separable from, whether its powers are used justly?  

Enter Polus.  Polus actually already appeared earlier in the dialog, where he responded to a simple question with a laughably vacuous and flowery speech:

CHAEREPHON: Now then, since he's knowledgeable in a craft, what is it, and what would be the correct thing to call him?
POLUS: Many among men are the crafts experientially devised by experience, Chaerephon. Yes, it is experience that causes  our times to march along the way of craft, whereas inexperience causes them to march along the way of chance. Of these various crafts various men partake in various ways, the best men partaking of the best of them. Our Gorgias is indeed in this group; he partakes of the most admirable of the crafts.
SOCRATES: Polus certainly appears to have prepared himself admirably for giving speeches, Gorgias. But he's not doing what he promised Chaerephon.
GORGIAS: How exactly isn't he, Socrates?
SOCRATES: He hardly seems to me to be answering the question. (448c)

As an already confirmed orator, Polus rushes to the defense of his now maligned art.  First though, since Polus is unable to offer a better definition of it than Gorgias, he questions Socrates about how he would define oratory.  According to Socrates, oratory is a part of flattery.  He calls it just a part of flattery, because he actually has a rather elaborate four part definition of flattery that distinguishes it by the object flattered.  There are two crafts -- care of the body, and care of the soul (which latter Socrates calls politics) -- each of which has two parts.  Care of the body requires both gymnastics and medicine.  Care of the soul, or politics, requires both legislation and justice.  There's also an analogy between the body side and the soul side.  Legislation is the counterpart of gymnastics and justice is the counterpart of medicine. 

Socrates isn't super clear on why these two crafts are distinguished in each case.  Perhaps one is concerned with specific capacities of a (social) body and the other with its overall functioning?  At any rate, the four part definition of flattery is mostly just a way to set up an elaborate joke.  Socrates has already indicated that he thinks oratory doesn't give a damn about justice, or the truth or goodness of anything it tries to persuade people of.  It's just the ignorant convincing the ignorant.  Which leads him to this gem of an analogy:

... what cosmetics is to gymnastics, pastry baking is to medicine; or rather, like this: what cosmetics is to gymnastics, sophistry is to legislation, and what pastry baking is to medicine, oratory is to justice. (465c)

Just as oratory doesn't truly care about justice, pastry baking doesn't worry itself about health, and instead just flatters our immediate sense of taste.  And just as we saw that the master orator would prevail over the doctor in public debate, we find that the pastry chef would as well.

Pastry baking has put on the mask of medicine, and pretends to know the foods that are best for the body, so that if a pastry baker and a doctor had to compete in front of children, or in front of men just as foolish as children, to determine which of the two, the doctor or the pastry baker, had expert knowledge of good food and bad, the doctor would die of starvation. (464d)

In other words, oratory bakes cream puffs for the soul.  How do you say "LOL" in ancient Greek?  ΛOΛ

Polus doesn't really reject this definition, but challenges Socrates to account for why oratory, if it is only concerned with appearance and flattery, possesses such real world power.  Being able to convince most anyone of anything is almost like having the power of an absolute tyrant.  Isn't his type of power the greatest good we all strive after?  Isn't the tyrant the happiest of men?

At this point the dialog begins to veer into more abstract territory.  With his definition of oratory, Socrates has already introduced the idea of a distinction between the appearance of knowledge and the reality of it.  Now he begins to carry this same idea forward into distinctions between real power and its appearance and real discussion and its appearance.  Is real power just doing whatever you see fit at the moment, being able to gratify your every whim and force others to do your bidding?  Or is that just the appearance of power, and its reality lies in being able to do things that truly benefit you and are good for you?  Similarly, is a debate decided by the weight of public opinion, by what you can get most people to agree with, a real discussion, or its mere semblance?  Socrates himself isn't interested in opinions, however numerous.  He believes a real discussion proceeds, via question and answer, to demonstrate to an audience of one the inconsistencies in their own opinions.  Refutation depends on internal logical contradiction, not on appealing to what seems most plausible to the most people.  In either case, we judge appearances by their effects on the world and on other people, whereas the reality Socrates proposes is a less external, more personal property.

This appearance-reality distinction is so central that we should pause the argument here to think about its context some more.  Polus contends that the orator is powerful because he can do whatever he sees fit.  Socrates inserts a distinction here, and admits that the orator can do whatever he sees fit, but, insofar as he does things that are bad for himself, he doesn't do what he wants.  Because, of course, no one knowingly wants what is bad for them.  So Socrates claims that our idea of power isn't of something neutral.  Power is the ability to benefit ourselves in some way, to do something good for ourselves.  For Socrates, every question is a moral question of this sort.  It is always and only a question of how to live a good life.  

It's true, after all, that the matters in dispute between us are not at all insignificant ones, but pretty nearly those it's most admirable to have knowledge about, and most shameful not to. For the heart of the matter is that of recognizing or failing to recognize who is happy and who is not. (472d)

But then, how do we discover what's really good for us?  After all, cream puffs taste pretty good.  We've all wanted to be tyrant for a day.  Appearances can be awfully pleasurable.  This is where the moral question becomes philosophical.  Somehow we need to identify the good.  We sense that it's not as simple as always gratifying our immediate pleasure.  Is it something closer to the integral of pleasure over time described in Protagoras?  The terms are different here -- here Socrates argues for a distinction between pleasure and happiness, while there he collapsed the two -- but the question is the same; by definition, we want the good, we want to be happy, so how do we overcome our ignorance and recognize it?  And how can we do this in particular when there are so many rival claims about what is most important and valuable in life?  How do we find the good without some transcendent signpost or all knowing sage?  Basically, I'm rediscovering Deleuze's observations about Plato's philosophical problem.  It's a moral philosophy that tries to develop an immanent method for finding the moral good.

The argument in Gorgias plays out on this implicit backdrop.   The distinction between reality and appearance is used to investigate the question Polus raises about the power of oratory.  Does oratory have any power (to make us happy) at all if it is used for unjust purposes?  Is the tyrant or orator who has the ability to inflict injustice on others happier than those who suffer those injustices?  Socrates argues that it is worse to make others suffer injustice than it is to suffer it oneself.  Unfortunately, a lot of his justification for this contrarian opinion remains somewhat circular at this point.  Injustice, Polus agrees, is bad.  So if it produces some immediate pleasure to be a tyrant, we can be sure that this is overbalanced by some negative consequence it produces later, in this case, shame.  Doing something unjust leads to a corruption of the soul that we call shame, while suffering an injustice doesn't cause this feeling to arise.  What more, being punished for committing some injustice liberates the tyrant from this shame, which implies that being punished is a good thing (it removes a bad thing).  So an unpunished tyrant is the least happy creature on earth, followed by one who has been corrected by his comeuppance.  And whoever suffered their tyranny is happier than either.  

Socrates' surprising reversal of Polus' ideas about power and happiness convinces no one since it depends on Polus' assent to the platitude that injustice is bad.  Which brings us to the final, and longest, conversation of the dialog, the one with Callicles.  Callicles doesn't mince words, and launches into an almost Nietzschean diatribe against the very equation of justice with goodness.  In fact, he thinks that what the law deems just and unjust is directly opposed to what is naturally good and bad.  

We mold the best and the most powerful among us, taking them while they're still young, like lion cubs, and with charms and incantations we subdue them into slavery, telling them that one is supposed to get no more than his fair share, and that that's what's admirable and just. But surely, if a man whose nature is equal to it arises, he will shake off, tear apart, and escape all this, he will trample underfoot our documents, our tricks and charms, and all our laws that violate nature. He, the slave, will rise up and be revealed as our master, and here the justice of nature will shine forth. (484a)

He goes on to say that Socrates is like a child for continuing to maintain those ridiculous philosophical views about how it's better to suffer injustice than dispense it.  Fatefully, he even predicts that this shit will eventually get him in trouble, and that Socrates won't even have a comeback when he is unjustly accused by someone powerful who has it in for him.  It feels so much like the day before Socrates trial that I went back to see if any of the characters in Gorgias are among the accusers (they are not mentioned). 

The next section of the dialog is taken up with Socrates dismantling Callicles' claim that it's right for the naturally more powerful, less constrained person to be better, happier, and in charge.  The argument unfolds like the layers of an onion.  First, Socrates shows that these few superior souls aren't even the most powerful.  After all, being numerically in the minority, they are easily subdued in the real world by a larger majority who agree that justice involves some measure of equality.  So by "superior", Callicles cannot mean literally more powerful.  Here we can already see the irony of Callicles' idea of 'natural' justice; if he doesn't mean naked physical power, then does he already have a somewhat 'artificial' idea in mind?  Next, Socrates investigates whether it's natural for the more intelligent to rule and command a larger share of pie.  But what exactly should they get more of?  Presumably they don't need, and shouldn't get, more food or shoes or anything that is unrelated to their superiority.  Instead, Callicles claims that it's just and right for them to get more power to rule, to lead the city, since this is what they are most qualified to do.

When faced with the political question of who should get what power and why, Socrates again takes the conversation in a more abstract direction.  It seems these questions of political power and right can only be approached by investigating what is just and good more generally.  In this case, Socrates wonders whether Callicles' superior ruler also rules, first and foremost, over himself and his own appetites. The moment parallels the point in the conversations with Gorgias and Polus where Socrates questioned what oratory was good for, and whether the tyrant was happy.  Similarly, Callicles claims that ruling is inherently good, and being ruled, even by yourself, is for the weak.  The question in all these cases is what is good in itself.  What do we want for its own sake, and not for the sake of something else?  After all, being an orator or tyrant isn't really an end in itself.  Here again, the question leads Socrates to introduce a distinction between appearance and reality -- what appears pleasurable is distinct from what is really good.

It bears noting that Socrates now seems to contradict what he said in Protagoras.  The goal of finding what's really good is the same in both cases.  But in Gorgias, pleasure and the good are treated as qualitatively distinct, where in Protagoras, the difference is not in kind but in quantity -- the good acts like the time integral of pleasures.  Here, Socrates gives two arguments to establish that pleasure and the good are qualitatively distinct.  

First, he considers pleasures and pains like hunger and thirst.  It's painful to be thirsty, but pleasurable to finally be drinking.  Once you're finished slaking, however, both the pain of thirst and the pleasure of drinking disappear at the same time as you return to equilibrium.  But good things and bad things don't stop in pairs like this.  Socrates doesn't specify which good and bad things he's referring to, but perhaps it would be something like the way your cowardice disappears when you pluck up your courage, but the courage continues to stick around afterwards.  It's as if there were two kinds of opposition possible -- opposites of degree that can cancel into neutral, like pleasure and pain, and either/or oppositions like good and bad.  At any rate, since pleasure/pain and good/bad don't behave the same way, the latter must differ qualitatively from the former.  

Second, Socrates claims that we call a man good because of something good in him.  If it's as simple as pleasure = good and pain = bad, then anyone filled with pleasure is by definition good and anyone in pain is bad.  But those we usually call 'good men' and 'bad men' alike experience both pleasure and pain at different times.  So then we've lost all ability to call a man 'good' or 'bad', since this seems like it would depend entirely on his current state of mind, at least if pleasure and the good are identical.  Again, this argument depends on a qualitative distinction between the good and the pleasurable; pleasure and pain come and go, but good and bad don't change.

Having made another distinction between appearance and reality, this time between pleasure and the good, Socrates unravels the final layer in Callicles' contention that the 'superior' people should get to do whatever they want.  Callicles obviously didn't mean that they were superior because they were stronger, but because they were more intelligent and more virtuous, more suited to rule.  And he obviously didn't mean that they just rule over others, but over themselves as well.  And he clearly didn't mean that ruling over themselves is just gratifying any pleasure, but only the good pleasures, since obviously pleasure ≠ good.  The sequence is meant to be a joke, since it's clear that Callicles meant exactly each of those things, and he has been moving the goalposts as Socrates' investigation progresses, all the while feigning annoyance that Socrates is too childish to know what 'everybody knows' Callicles really meant.  With the final layer we get to the heart of the matter and return full circle to the original question of what is oratory.  Because we've come right back to the fundamental moral dilemma -- how does the superior person know which pleasures are the good ones? 

For you see, don't you, that our discussion's about this (and what would even a man of little intelligence take more seriously than this?), about the way we're supposed to live. Is it the way you urge me toward, to engage in these manly activities, to make speeches among the people, to practice oratory, and to be active in the sort of politics you people engage in these days? Or is it the life spent in philosophy? And in what way does this latter way of life differ from the former? Perhaps it's best to distinguish them, as I just tried to do; having done that and having agreed that these are two distinct lives, it's best to examine how they differ from each other, and which of them is the one we should live. (500c)

Socrates, of course, doesn't really have an answer to this question.  Unless we consider the continual posing of the question as itself a type of meta-answer.  Having run through three semi-cooperative interlocutors, he finally launches an oratorical monologue of his own that seems to point in this direction.  The craft of philosophy, he claims, differs from the knack of oratory, just as the craft of medicine differs from the knack of pastry making, because a craft concerns itself with understanding what pleasures are truly good for us, whereas a knack just seeks to flatter the majority of people with any old pleasure it stumbles into producing.  The former seeks to cultivate only the good through some organized system, rather than merely hunting about in the dark pressing whatever dopamine buttons it finds, regardless of whether they are good or bad.  In the case of philosophy, this means producing an organized and self-controlled soul, which is a good in itself and what ultimately makes us happy.  

But the best way in which the excellence of each thing comes to be present in it, whether it's that of an artifact or of a body or a soul as well, or of any animal, is not just any old way, but is due to whatever organization, correctness, and craftsmanship is bestowed on each of them. Is that right?—Yes, I agree.—So it's due to organization that the excellence of each thing is something which is organized and has order?—Yes, I'd say so.—So it's when a certain order, the proper one for each thing, comes to be present in it that it makes each of the things there are, good?—Yes, I think so.—So also a soul which has its own order is better than a disordered one?—Necessarily so.—But surely one that has order is an orderly one?—Of course it is.—And an orderly soul is a self-controlled one?—Absolutely.—So a self-controlled soul is a good one. (507e)

You can see how Socrates is actually no longer completely satisfied with a purely meta-level definition of the good as any searching for the good, but is starting to smuggle some positive content into its definition.  The good is organized, not random.  The good has to do with understanding or knowledge, and not with guessing.  The good is controlled, not wild. The basic valances that have dominated Western philosophy for 2,500 years start to appear right here.  

With this definition of the good as self-controlled, Socrates works his way back to his earlier political questions about whether it's worse to suffer injustice or perpetrate it, and whether politicians and orators possess a craft that improves us, or merely a knack for flattering us.  Mostly this just repeats the ground he already covered with Polus.  But there is an interesting and surprising (to me at least) historical reflection on Pericles.  I always thought of Pericles as a total hero.  But when you look at him in light of Socrates' insistence that a politician should improve the souls of their citizens, teaching them what's truly good for them and inclining them towards it, his political career seems a failure.

  SOCRATES: Nothing. But tell me this as well. Are the Athenians said to have become better because of Pericles, or, quite to the contrary, are they said to have been corrupted by him? That's what I hear, anyhow, that Pericles made the Athenians idle and cowardly, chatterers and money- grubbers, since he was the first to institute wages for them.
  CALLICLES: The people you hear say this have cauliflower ears, Socrates.
  SOCRATES: Here, though, is something I'm not just hearing. I do know clearly and you do, too, that at first Pericles had a good reputation, and when they were worse, the Athenians never voted to convict him in any shameful deposition. But after he had turned them into "admirable and good" people, near the end of his life, they voted to convict Pericles of embezzlement and came close to condemning him to death, because they thought he was a wicked man, obviously.
  CALLICLES: Well? Did that make Pericles a bad man?
  SOCRATES: A man like that who cared for donkeys or horses or cattle would at least look bad if he showed these animals kicking, butting, and biting him because of their wildness, when they had been doing none of these things when he took them over. Or don't you think that any caretaker of any animal is a bad one who will show his animals to be wilder than when he took them over, when they were gentler? Do you think so or not? (515e)

I hadn't even realized that Pericles was a questionable figure, but apparently it's possible that his corruption caused the entire Peloponnesian War.  Talk about a guy who serves cream puffs to his people!  It's interesting to see this debate about what we would now call populism right at the start of democracy.  If Pericles was so admirable and good, in the sense that he made his fellow citizens better and more admirable by teaching them about what's best and most just, then why did they end up turning on him?  It's a tough charge to answer.  And it leads Socrates to explain the reason he never takes a fee for his own teachings, in contrast to the sophists.  Like the Buddhists with their idea of dana, if he truly teaches you to be good, you will find it so valuable that you will want to pay for what you received.  As for those who oppose his methodical search for what's best ... well, he pays them no mind, regardless of the consequences.

SOCRATES: I believe that I'm one of a few Athenians—so as not to say I'm the only one, but the only one among our contemporaries—to take up the true political craft and practice the true politics. This is because the speeches I make on each occasion do not aim at gratification but at what's best. They don't aim at what's most pleasant. And because I'm not willing to do those clever things you recommend, I won't know what to say in court. And the same account I applied to Polus comes back to me. For I'll be judged the way a doctor would be judged by a jury of children if a pastry chef were to bring accusations against him. (512e)

Finally, almost as if to emphasize that this is a prelude to the trial of Socrates, he tells a less elaborate version of the same myth that appears at the end of Phaedo.  Each departed soul is stripped naked in the underworld and judged according to its devotion to truth, justice, and the philosophical way.  Those tyrants who were never punished for their injustice on earth are considered incurable and tossed into Tartarus forever.  Those who were wicked but at least suffered some punishment that improved them finish taking their 'cure'.  And those spotless souls like, "that of a philosopher who has minded his own affairs and hasn't been meddlesome in the course of his life", are sent off to the Blessed Isles.   The final distinction between appearance and reality, between seeming and being, is saved for the ultimate -- the separation of body from soul, the distinction between life and death.  Death is for real.