Synopsis
Socrates and his friend Chaerephon arrive late to a festival hosted by a nobleman named Callicles, just after the famous Gorgias finished a rhetorical presentation. Socrates is at first ridiculed in Plato's Gorgias for naively asserting that each individual's choice or action is measured by a future outcome. He goes on to demonstrate that no action is justified for its own sake, as the persuaders would have us believe, but rather, an action is only justified in pursuit of the good. Again, you must understand the good as universal lawfulness, not some arbitrarily pleasing thing. This is to say that the action that perpetuates good things is a good action and the action that perpetuates bad things is a bad action. We know the seed by its fruit, so to speak. If no action in itself is good and every action is necessarily done for the sake of the good, then acting for any other purpose other than the good is Flattery. More specifically action for the sake of the action itself is Flattery. The dialogue features Socrates taking to first Gorgias, then Polus and finally Callicles on the subject of what it good for the mind and for the body. The action starts with Socrates trying to get Gorgias to explain what oratory is. Oratory is the "craft" of rhetoric that Gorgias taught. Socrates carefully questions Gorgias about what oratory can accomplish until Gorgias said:
“The orator has the ability to speak against everyone on every subject, so as in gatherings to be more persuasive, in short, about anything he likes, but the fact that he has the ability to rob doctors or other craftsman of their reputations doesn’t give him any more of a reason to do it. He should use orator justly as he would any competitive skill. And I suppose that if a person who has become an orator goes on with this craft to commit wrongdoing, we shouldn’t hate his teacher and exile him from our cities. For while the teacher imparted it to be used justly, the pupil is making the opposite use of it. So it is the misuser whom it’s just to hate and exile or put to death, not the teacher. ”
“Well, at the time you said that, I took it that oratory would never be an unjust thing, since it always makes speeches about justice. But when a little later you were saying that the orator could use oratory unjustly, I was surprised and thought that your statements weren’t consistent...But now, as we subsequently examine the question, yourself too that it’s agreed that, quite to the contrary, the orator is incapable of using oratory unjustly and of being willing to do what’s unjust...it’ll take more than a short session to go through an examination of how these matters stand”
This causes Gorgias to bow down and out of the conflict, when up jumps Polus, an apprentice of Gorgias. Polus aka little horse came at Socrates like he "wanted all the smoke," and Socrates obliged him. Polus was triggered by the sight of his master being defeated by Socrates compelling him to stand in defense of oratory. Perhaps the sight of Gorgias' shame and thus the shame of himself, motivated his sudden action. While with Gorgias, Socrates waited to see what Gorgias had to say, with Polus, Socrates lays out his own view of what oratory is. Oratory to Socrates was a form of flattery.
“These then are the four parts (justice, legislation, gymnastics, medicine) and they always provide care, in one case for the body (gymnastics and medicine), in the other for the soul (legislation and justice), with a view to what’s best. Now flattery takes notice of them and - I won’t say by knowing, but only by a sort of guessing - divides itself into four, masks itself with each of the parts, and then pretends to be the characters of the masks. It takes no thought at all of whatever is best; with the lure of what’s most pleasant at the moment.”
Socrates Speaking of Orators
“I don’t think they’re held in any regard at all”
Later on the same page he continues saying that, "Both orators and tyrants have the least power in their cities." Socrates draws a contrast between what he call crafts and knacks. He explains to Polus that the difference between crafts and knacks is understanding, and how only one of the two was good. The conversation eventually shifts to the power of a tyrant, where Socrates proves to Polus that a tyrant has power to do little more than increase his own shame. After eventually putting Polus, as with Gorgias into a string of contradictions by proving that a thing could not be itself and it opposite at the same time, the same place and in the same respect, Callicles enters the conversation. Callicles cannot believe that Socrates could be for real about everything he was saying to Polus. With Callicles the conversation shifts to ruling, both oneself and others and of what is best and of which is best in each or both. Callicles expressed the following view.
“I believe; hence, the become detractors of people like this because of the shame the feel, while they conceal their own impotence. And they say that lack of discipline is shameful...and so they enslave men who are better by nature, and while they themselves, lack the ability to provide for themselves fulfillment for their pleasures, their own lack of courage leads them to praise self-control and justice.”
Again with Callicles we more closely visit the distinction between crafts and knacks before moving to more fundamental ideas. When Socrates tries to implore Callicles to consider whether it is necessary for a ruler to be able to rule his or herself, Callicles responded in the following way:
“““The man who will live correctly must let his own desires be as great as possible and not chasing them and he must be sufficient to serve them when they’re as great as possible give courage and intelligence and to fill them up with things from which desire arises on each occasion”
Socrates defeats the irrational reasoning of Callicles with the statement:
“And isn’t it just the same way with the soul, my excellent friend? As long as its corrupt, in that it’s foolish, undisciplined, unjust, and impious, it should be keep away from its appetites and not be permitted to do anything other than what will make it better. Do you not agree...now isn’t it better for the soul than lack of discipline, which is what you yourself were thinking just now?”
“Doing what’s unjust is more to be guarded against that suffering it, and that it’s not seeming to be good but being good that a man should take care of more than anything, both in his public and his private life; and that the second best thing after being just is to become just by paying one’s due, by being disciplined; and that every form of flattery, both the form concerned with oneself and that concerned with others, whether they’re few or many, is to be avoided, and that oratory and every other activity is always to be used in support of what is just.”
The Significance of the Gorias Dialogue
By the end of the dialogue there is no question left in the readers mind as to who is the better ruler between the tyrant and the philosopher. The unanimous victor is philosophy, without any question. More than 300 years BCE the question was settled definitively and lawfully in favor of philosophy. Socrates defeats Gorgias and company which is significant, but what is crucial is what he implicitly defeats as a consequence of defeating them. What Socrates defeat in defeating Gorgias, Polus and Callicles, is the foundation for every evil doctrine that has ever been or could ever be. With this knowledge, we can be free ourselves of our susceptibility to falling for the latest incarnation of the Gorgias Doctrine. With our knowledge of the unity that exists beyond all the changes and or variability to the Gorgias doctrine overtime, the prejudice in ourselves and others, the popular opinion of the time, or any masks or illusions, we could never be confounded as to the distinction between philosophy, which is a love of wisdom, and flattery or oratory which love nothing more than pleasure.
Flattery
The Domain of the Flatterer
“Oh yes, Socrates, if only you knew all of it, that it encompasses and subordinates to itself just about everything that can be accomplished. And I’ll give you ample proof. Many a time I’ve gone with my brother or with other doctors to call on some sick person who refuses to take his medicine or allow the doctor to perform surgery or cauterization on him. And when the doctor failed to persuade him, I succeeded, by means of no other craft than oratory. And 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 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.”
“These then are the four parts (justice, legislation, gymnastics, medicine) and they always provide care, in one case for the body (gymnastics and medicine), in the other for the soul (legislation and justice), with a view to what’s best. Now flattery takes notice of them and - I won’t say by knowing, but only by a sort of guessing - divides itself into four, masks itself with each of the parts, and then pretends to be the characters of the masks. It takes no thought at all of whatever is best; with the lure of what’s most pleasant at the moment.”
All flatterers can be identified by their dogmatic rejection of the following 3 principles of Ideal Judgement:
The universe is lawful.
The forms we observe are reflections of that lawfulness with a tendency toward it.
All lawful change must reflect a tendency toward the forms which themselves reflect universal lawfulness.
If these three premises stand, no flatterer could ever make themselves King by the power of their oratory, the prejudice of the people or any combination of the two.
Philosophy versus Flattery:
Flattery
Flattery is best defined in opposition to philosophy.
Just as every form has a lawfully identifiable tendency, so does Flattery.
Power
For the philosopher is understanding, of form, of lawful change, and of the necessity of having a tendency toward that lawfulness.
For the flatterer is deception, illusions and hypnosis, prejudice and ignorance
The Standard
For the philosopher is the eternal ideal
For the flatterer is impossible to reach or define (So in the words of Aristotle "we must choose the lesser between two evils")
Measurement
For the philosopher is your understanding of lawful change measured against an ideal
For the flatterer is arbitrary change measured against an arbitrary ideal (Conclusion: Morality is Arbitrary)
Tendency
For the philosopher is toward the good
For the flatterer is toward a never ending struggle between compelled order and total chaos
Magnitude
Wisdom brings abundance
Flattery brings excess
Up Against
For the philosopher the energy and dedication require to acquire understand, mass ignorance, mass prejudice, the flatterer
For the flatterer the time required to maintain illusions, the lawfulness of the universe, the lawfulness of change, that the enemy of your enemy becomes your friend
Faith in
For the philosopher it is the form and lawfulness of the "unhypothesized" highest good
For the flatterer it is his own ability to proposed the prevailing view
Value
For the philosopher it is the future
For the flatterer it is the moment
Judgment
The philosopher uses understanding to name things lawfully
The flatterer uses prejudice to label things arbitrarily