Plato Gorgias

Plato Gorgias Based on your interpretation of "The Gorgias," what is the relationship between philosophy and politics, in a democracy? How does the debate between Callicles and Socrates inform your answer to this question? In the dialogue entitled "Gorgias," the title character, a teacher of rhetoric, does rhetorical battle with the philosopher Socrates. Several individuals enter the dialogue, most notably Callicles, whom over the course of this dialogue emerges as a rather callous individual.

His attitudes emerge as proof that although Gorgias calculatingly instructs individuals in the proper way to comport themselves to sway the masses, such sophistry is a false way to decide how best to govern and who is best to govern. The ideas stressed in Callicles' philosophy of government are diametrically opposed to that of Socrates, the dialogue suggests, because Callicles simply wishes to win arguments, rather than to establish what is right and just. Socrates, on the other hand, aspires to the true and actual attainment of wisdom.

However, outside of the general negative tone towards rhetoric in the construction of "The Gorgias" as a dialogue between Socrates and the sophists, the latter, even including the philosophy Callicles, it might be said, does not advocate an entirely indefensible position. After all, relational truth is based in the individual's self-perception, according to democratic notions of opinion -- what is right and correct for one human being is not necessarily the best for another human being.

Furthermore, obtaining the tools of rhetorical persuasion enables an individual, in a democracy, to persuade other individuals of his or her point-of-view in the marketplace of ideas. The teacher Gorgias advocates this in a way that is not particularly persuasive over the course of the dialogue, as he sounds a bit like an Athenian soft-soap seller from Madison Avenue, advocating that with his teaching, one will be able to convince the banker, the doctor, and anyone to do one's bidding.

Persuasion itself, he says, is the chief tool of rhetoric and the object of the skill. Calicles seems to be the most intent on abusing this skill, equating the ability to persuade and obtain power with what is good and true. It is perhaps here, that philosophy must enter into the question. Although Socrates disparages rhetoric and the marketplace of ideas entirely, the science of philosophy need not be wholly distilled from the process of rhetoric.

Philosophy may, one might say, be the first, inner rhetorical dialogue one engages within one's self. In a democracy one engages in a rhetorical and private before one decides what one's own public position will be, in a democratic state. After determining this, then one enters the marketplace of ideas and attempts to use rhetoric to bring individuals into one's own personal philosophy and engage with other's public philosophies. Of course, rhetoric can be abused and reduced to a tool.

To take the sophist's position to its logical extension, only the most rhetorically adept person at swaying the masses should always have the most power. However, this positing of extremes of Socrates' anti-rhetorical view with the advocates of the moral value of pure rhetoric eschews the ability of ordinary individuals to deploy philosophy in critically filtering out pure emotional excesses without understanding rational origins of argument.

Rhetorical devices may make use of emotions, but to take Socrates' implied stance that only philosophical logic and syllogisms are valid when making decisions is to eschew emotions entirely from political decision making in a democracy -- an admirable stance on planet Vulcan, perhaps, but not a truly viable stance in a democracy of human beings, either. Rhetoric should not be abused,.