Gorgias (Rhetoric) By Plato audiobook with text and illustration, and dramatized 🎵 with sound effects and music, by Audiobooks Dimension.
Title : Gorgias (Γοργίας)
Author : Plato (Πλάτων)
Written : 393 BCE
Place of Origin : Ancient Greece
Original Media type : Papyrus, Manuscript
Original Language : Ancient Greek
Genre(s) : Ancient Greece, Dialogue, Philosophy
Translator : Benjamin Jowett (1817 - 1893)
Narrators : David Rintoul, and Full Cast
Musician : Nature's Eye
Editor : Audiobooks Dimension
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Dramatized 🎵
A glance at the history of Greek philosophy before Plato.
The Ionians of Asia Minor founded the life farming of Greece. At a time when the brutality of the customs still prevailed on the mainland of Hellas, people were already smart to organize life in these colonies and tried to understand the situation more deeply. Here Homer's heroic poetry first sounded, the flowers of Greek science and art first opened their eyes to the blue sky of Ionia. How is it to be explained?
First of all, luxurious material wealth provides necessary support for spiritual pursuits. Through extensive, lively trade, those maritime cities soon became prosperous, as their ships criss-crossed the Mediterranean in all directions, bringing and exporting goods from country to country. Thus wealth and power accrued to the Ionians; gradually they also gained the spiritual development that they learned to use their treasures in the service of civilization.
If the experiences and spiritual horizons of the Ionians greatly expanded on those extensive journeys, the peculiar political conditions at home also did their part in developing their intellect and self-esteem. The original supremacy was started by the people, i.e. the prosperous bourgeoisie to oppress under the leadership of petty chiefs, who did destroy the power of the nobility, but also on the shoulders of the People's Party itself rose to become a dictator. In their courts — men like Thrasybulus in Miletus, Polykrates in Samos, Gelo and Hieron in Syracuse and others. — sweetening of life with arts and learning was indeed preferred; but the deposed superiors frowned in dissatisfaction. In these party battles, the individual woke up to realize his own value and right. From there arose again a flowing source for a song that did not praise the exploits of gods and heroes as before, but as a lyric lived in the middle of its own time and sang about the feelings, wishes, dreams of one's own mind, expressed dissatisfaction with existing conditions. On the other hand, there was a tone that soothed the dullness of the mind: "control your mind! attitude is the best", trying to restrain the individual from striving for excess. This ethical contemplation is represented by the so-called gnomic poetry, and in the same direction go the short, accidental life instructions, which were later thought to be so-called as the sayings of the "seven sages".
Thus, in the stages of the 7th and 6th vs, independent judgment arose in the field of practical life. But even in science fiction, the individual strives to free himself from the bonds of the general way of looking at things. Independent research begins to emerge, science in the truest sense.
For that, information resources had to be accumulated. Those extensive shopping trips offered a good opportunity for that as well. In the East, the Ionians came to see the phenomena and monuments of an ancient civilization; these they sensitively adopted and transferred to their native soil to grow. From the East, they received the playing of the flute and new subjects for the art of construction; as well as the first rudiments of writing, mathematics and astronomy. The obtained information was developed independently. Thus already the Pythagorean Philolaus (c. 500 BCE) is said to have taught about the spherical shape of the earth and something like its rotation. Physics, even biology in between, was studied. Medicine, which was hampered for a long time by the lack of physical and anatomical information, could only give rules based on experience. Relatively extensive geographical information was obtained early on through seafaring. History grew out of the epic and related poems presenting the phases of old heroic families. Another source was the founding legends of cities.
Even inherited religious concepts began to be shaken and changed by scientific contemplation, going in two directions: either the stories of the gods were explained naturally or a deeper moral meaning was seen in them. The cosmogonic poetry that developed from the epic (Epimenides) explained that the gods and the world were born, from what, from the primordial abyss (chaos), night, air, etc. A more philosophical direction (Pherekydes) assumes that everything was born from the marriage of Zeus, Time and Earth. In the doctrine of divinity, the moral side gets an even greater value: Zeus is the moral ruler of the world, the human soul is old, the wages of work are paid in the future life. Finally, the myths are explained quite ethically and allegorically.
In this way, the contemplation of religion in a way took philosophy directly into the bosom. There was another way to reach the same goal. The desire for research, once awakened in various fields of science, naturally expanded its circle ever wider, to include even the ultimate, supersensible subjects to be investigated, the first causes and births of the elements of being. Philosophy was born in a union with the natural sciences and mathematics or theology, and the first philosophers practiced these other sciences at the same time.
This is how, with long preliminary work, the soil from which Greek philosophy began to sprout independent sprouts in the 6th century was shaped. The first philosophers are Plato's forerunners within two centuries; that's why we have to talk a little about them here. They all ask: In the fluctuating stream of phenomena, what is the eternally constant basic force that holds the universe together? Is there an element that milena is descended from? The sages of Ionia, following the direction of the cosmogonic poets, answered these questions in one way or another. Three men from Mileto appear first.
Thales (c. 600 BCE) claimed that water was that basic substance: you knew that Oceanos (the ocean) was the god and the progenitor of the world, and that his hometown got its wealth from the sea, so in a way, its life and well-being. — Anaximandros (d. about 545 BCE) did not put as the basic material anything finite, material that ends in its fetuses, but stepping boldly into the realms of thought, he said the visible world from the bosom of the invisible, eternal infinity (to apeiron). It seems that some kind of law of development loomed over him: from the opposite of cold and warm, water was born, from which the continent grew, from which first low and then increasingly higher plants and animals were born. — Avaximenes also assumed an infinite, perhaps concrete basic substance, air, from the thinning of which fire arose, from the thickening wind, clouds, water, earth, etc.
Here, for the sake of our chronological order, we must mention a man who, apart from the just-mentioned doctrine, approaches Pherekyde's position and is perhaps more a theologian than a philosopher, — Pythagoras of Samolain (c. 580 – 500 BCE). He cleansed religion of the imaginations favored by poets, denigrating divinity, and acted as a religious reformer. He seriously demanded moral purity and, teaching the immortality of the human soul, sharpened man's responsibility for his works. — After the Master, his doctrine remained under the custody of the "Pythagorean League" under the veil of religious (Orphilian) mysteries; the purpose was still to raise the people to a better spirit of chastity. — Music and numbers were given an important place in the club's philosophy.
The natural philosophy of Miletus influenced the change in the religious way of thinking, when it was noticed that polytheism and one basic substance did not fit well together. The changed scientific position is represented by Xenophanes from Colophon (c. 570 – 470 BCE). Rebuking the presentation of gods in human form, he taught that there is only one god, unborn, indestructible, perfect. But he is not outside matter, but is in it, is one with the world. Xenophanes' position is monotheistic-pantheistic. He thus had the essence explained; but how that primal force, or primal being, being itself unchanging and motionless, was capable of creation, how change, or othering, adapts to being, remained unexplained by him. Both of them were developed separately by the next two schools of thought.
The deep-minded, but difficult to understand, "obscure" Heraclitus (from Ephesus, d. around 470 BCE) denied the world a permanent essence: like a flowing stream ("panta rei"), living things are always born to disappear, disappear to be born. That struggle between birth and loss, that age variation keeps everything going and is the only thing that is real: without it, living things would not exist. When the phenomena of heat are associated with the metabolism, according to Heraclitus, fire embodied that age-old exercise and is, in a way, the beginning of everything. From the initial fire, water was born by thickening, from that earth, from which again thinned water, from that became. The changes follow the specified order. Here we can see the natural law looming over the philosopher, albeit still in a mythical veil as "destiny, justice, reason". — Man repeats in himself the phase course of the world: fire changes into lower substances. The soul is fire, whose earth and water s.o. the body takes prisoner. In order to remain alive and free from the bonds of materiality — Heraclitus favored the doctrine of soul wandering — the soul must always take new nourishment from the general fire, the world order. As this happens physically through breathing, it happens in a higher degree through the senses and in the highest degree through the operation of reason. The highest rationality is to submit to the law, the public order, above all the divine law, i.e. under the world order. The rule of law in society is sacred and does not allow the masses to riot.
The Elea school, whose founder is Parmenides (from the city of Elean l. Velia in southern Italy, found around 515 BCE), goes in completely different directions. He developed Xenophanes' belief in the sameness of God and the world into a purely metaphysical theory centered on the concept of being. All thought comprehends something of what is — said he — the non-existent is not thought; while something is thought, when its existence is realized, it is real. Being is the basis of everything, it is timeless, ageless, unchanging, always like itself, unique; all multiplicity and multiplicity is gone from it. — Parmenides also tried to give the ideal being a real content. Pure being and absolute corporeality are the same: there is no empty space, everything is full. In this way, the essence is indivisible and thus immobile. But the essence is conscious: therefore god and mailina, spirituality and corporeality are one. However, when there seems to be a multiplicity in the state that moves and changes its form, arises and disappears, the philosopher explained that it is only a deception of the senses. Conceptual thought expresses the truth — and it forbids all movement.
Parmenides' student Zeno (from Elea, ca. 490 – 430 BCE) still tried to strengthen the doctrine of the unity and immutability of being. He does not delve into empirical reality, but works only with the concepts and proofs of formal logic, trying to find contradictions in everyday belief about the multiplicity and changeability of objects. This is how he developed dialectics.
Thus two schools of thought, the Elean and the Heraclitus, stood opposite each other. The former only knows essence as it is and denies multiplicity and change; the other feels births and losses, without connecting them to the firm foundation of being. But thought requires a permanent essence, and on the other hand, change is an undeniable fact. How could such stark opposites be reconciled? The next direction took it to do. It tried to form the concept of being in such a way that even a regular course of development would be understandable from its point of view. For this, concessions were made on both sides. On the other hand, unity and immobility were abandoned, in order to hold more firmly to the fact that basic substances cannot be born, disappear or change their quality (Empedokles, Anaxagoras, Atomists), when the multiplicity and motion of objects seemed to sufficiently explain births, changes and losses; on the other hand, we had to give up the one-sidedness of Heraclitus, which left no room for anything in the rhythmic movement of transformation.
Empedocles (from Akragaa, lat. Agrigentum, p. around 490 BCE) also claimed that there is no real birth and loss: birth is only a mixture of elements, loss is the discharge of the mixture. The "root substances" themselves, which he assumed to be 4: earth, water, air, fire, do not arise, change, disappear. If they change places and mix with each other in different relationships, a motley herd of private entities is created. But the basic ingredients don't seem to combine or separate from the mixtures by themselves, but a driving force is needed for that. Empedocles is the first to combine those two great movers: matter and force. The substance is moved by the dual power of love and hate: love unites the substances, hate separates them. This is how Empedocles' cosmology got a sublime poetic coloring: a great global drama flows from it, when sometimes love is about to join the sweet harmony of earth and sky, sometimes hatred tears it apart, until love again, trembling from its grave, joins the broken parts together. — In this way, science and poetry will go hand in hand for a long time to come.
Anaxagoras (of the Ionian Klazomenai b. about 500 BCE) taught thus: the world itself remains unchanged, is not born, and does not disappear; only associations and separations of substances take place in it. But there are not 4 elements, or "seeds of entities", but an infinite number, as many as there are properties of entities, which, according to the Elean concept of entities, are eternal, permanent. Otherwise, you cannot explain the extremely variable forms of the phenomenal world. All the tracks are of the same origin and are named after their major; if the amounts of substances increase or decrease, changes occur in the objects. Those substances are set in motion by some rational substance (nous), which organizes and regulates their movements. Mind and knowledge reside in it, and with its vitality it animates the inanimate mass of matter; but it is not supermaterial reason, but matter itself, if at all the finest and most spiritual of all. — This is how Anaxagoras tried to explain the life of nature, which cannot be derived from mechanical movements. — That "reason" created the world at the beginning of time by setting up a vortex in the middle of the chaos, which separated the matter circles of the upper and lower air; as the vortex continues to spin, creation continues. But even after being separated, substances have remained attached to each other.
Plants, animals and people do belong to the lower, dark, slimy, moist, thick atmosphere; but so much of the heavenly fire from the upper sphere has remained in them that organic life has developed in them. If a person strives for the participation of worldly reason, the truth will become clear to him, because the senses do not express it.
Atomists did not determine the number of elements according to the properties of the particles, but thought that the quality differences depended on the ratios of different magnitudes. The first exponent of the theory, Leukippos, based it on the Elean doctrine of existence. According to him, being denies birth, death and quality change: being and matter (corporeality) are one. Contrary to Parmenides, however, in order to explain multiplicity and motion, he asserted that there is an empty space; a world is born from the union of full and empty. He further taught, according to Parmenides, that beings by nature are unchanging and equal. The differences arise only from how the special entities relate to the empty space at any given time; they depend on how the boundary line runs between empty and full. All different quality therefore depends on differences in shape, size and movement. Objects in themselves are indivisible, equal. And what are they? In empty space, an infinite swarm of tiny particles of matter, atoms, from whose different groupings the world with all its parts has been born. Atoms move by themselves, without any external force pushing them. The doctrine is now called atomism, and its view, which denies God and spirit, is still greatly favored by natural science.
In the middle stages of the 5th century, we notice some sort of turn in the other direction. No more thinking about supernatural problems. There seemed to be enough assumptions already; it is appropriate to already test their competence in different fields of science. We began to reconcile different directions and choose what was best in each place. At the forefront, however, specialized research was practiced, and to that extent, several branches of science diverged from their common mother, philosophy. First, mathematics began to take its own path, which the Pythagorean school had cultivated with tender care in the early days. Astronomy with 4 and 3 vs also performed brilliantly, teaching e.g. rotation of the earth around its axis. At first, medicine moved within the framework of natural philosophy, favoring some whimsy and dreams, until Hippocrates (c. 460 – 377 BCE) gave it its own unique essence. With accurate observations, he tried to find out the natural causes of diseases, although he also did not know how to avoid the doctrinal errors of his time.
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Along with the internal phases of science, major changes took place in the external conditions of scientific life at the end of the 5th century. The struggle for existence, which the Greek people had nobly waged against the superiority of Persia, had raised all the powers of the people to their highest height, while the national spirit grew and quickened. The products of spiritual life were understood to be common national property; from this strong national base sprouted Hellas' most advanced cultural creations. Science stepped out of the narrow circle of professionals into the public domain, to serve practical life, and to change the people's outlook in many respects.
This is how the era began, which has coincidentally been called the Age of Enlightenment. Its general characteristic was a lively desire to study and a hobby of culture, which enlivened the entire nation. Even the common man wondered what research had found out about nature and the gods. And we were no longer content to blindly believe in authorities, after the awakening of the critical spirit, we wanted to understand things ourselves, to consider only what reason accepted as right and true. That supremely prevailing rationality took to study all the fields of human knowledge and action and did not spare even religion and morality from its criticism. Behind Ehtimän, we asked what is right and how things should really be; grateful topics for questions were offered by the doctrine of state and chastity, while the doctrine of education was also diligently considered. It was seen that chastity rules, laws and institutions differed greatly in different times and in different nations, so that what one nation considered sacred was often almost an abomination to another. And how did you get out of that situation? A distinction was invented between natural and regulatory (historical) right. Only natural makes sense — that's what was decided, and the improvements were planned according to its basic instructions. And there was no lack of healers, if there were some, in each field, even then similar voices began to be heard that "slavery is gone", because all people are naturally equal (Hippias Eliiläinen, Euripides); but on the other hand, from the point of view of the same natural right, the answer was that in nature the stronger eats and oppresses the weaker, so from the point of view of nature, people's rule can be defended just as well as tyranny. For the improvement of social disabilities, some programs were drawn up: who, e.g. was a bolder reformer than Plato in his books?
The sophists were the most remarkable phenomena and actual representatives of the Enlightenment, who guided its opinions and aspirations, whether they wanted to destroy or build. They satisfied the public's thirst for knowledge by presenting the results of science in an easy-to-understand manner, for which they traveled throughout the Hellenic world, staying especially in Athena, the cradle of civilization and state life.
The work of these vagabond teachers aimed primarily at a practical purpose. In Greece, the popular democratic form of government required every citizen to participate in the management of public affairs, public discussions and decisions. He was capable of this, if he had intelligence and the skill to express his thoughts in speeches. As civilization rose, an increasingly sophisticated, more artistic way of presenting was demanded from those who entered the public eye. In this way, citizens were almost forced to improve their speaking skills through different kinds of teaching. The sophists satisfied that need as well, becoming teachers of the art of speech. They tried to develop their students' skills from the formal side, training them to be agile in arguing and otherwise sharpening their intellect, while giving them positive information with which they could spice up their speeches. This is how the sophists, such as Protagoras and Gorgias, scientifically and rhetorically nurtured political activity. When they took a large salary for their teaching — for which their opponents often called them names — usually only rich, upper-class youths could become their students.
They also kept an eye on the practical purpose in their own scientific works. They did not independently study nature and things beyond nature, but were content, if necessary, to beautifully and with common sense present the theorems invented by the knowledge wise before. Instead, in order to be able to convince and enchant people with their speeches, they needed to carefully study the soul side of a person, to know the birth of imaginations, etc. In addition to this, the cultivation of language form was important to them, and they were all, more or less, engaged in grammar and stylistics. It also included the basics of logic, from which they learned the art of arguing, proving and disproving.
And what did the Sophists think of human knowledge of truth? Their position was, like the era, realistically rational. In their opinion, the only way to know the truth was through sensory perception and a logical conclusion based on it. Protagoras e.g. started from the phenomena as far as he could from the root of the causes up to the root cause, and thus came to develop the inductive method. With his famous phrase: "man is the measure of all (truth)" he by no means meant to claim all universal truth as non-existent; — such extreme subjectivity, i.e. skepticism, would make all organized thought, all science impossible — but we know that Protagoras himself diligently pursued science in several fields. His claim that "there are two sides to each issue with opposites" is also not more dangerous, which has also been thought to be true of his doubts about general conclusions: he probably just wanted to show the emptiness of human knowledge, how few people grasp things other than half-heartedly, so that it is possible to appear to be opposites to conclusions.
Even Gorgias' thought sounds more questionable, expressed in those three statements:
1) nothing exists;
2) if it did exist, it would not be possible to obtain information about it;
3) if it was known, no one would be able to express it.
So was Gorgias a knowledge-nihilist, or what did he mean by his claims? It should be remembered that he is arguing against the Eleans' doctrine of essence. From the point of view of sensory information acquisition, he of course recognized the phenomenal world (empirical environment) as being. Maybe he got into it when he saw philosophers contradicting each other denying the multiplicity of something, the unity of something as non-existent. Therefore he said: if that pure being existed, our senses would not have clear knowledge of it; there is no bridge to transfer us to such a post-sensory state. In the main, Gorgias therefore supported Protagoras: he wanted to transfer thought from the imaginary fog circle to the bottom of reality, at the center of which he placed man. Here, however, he, like other sophists, noticed the emptiness of our means of knowledge, how all our knowledge is only relative. In order to achieve even something, they tried to define concepts even more precisely. Sentakia Prodikos compiled the synonymy. Thus equipped, they begin to study man in his various activities, leaving behind the purely mental observations of which they were already tired. Science takes a very practical direction, including education, rhetoric, political science, etc.
The sophists of Ylimalka, therefore, moved cautiously and did not guess at least to step into fields where sensory thinking did not guide them. It follows that they were doubters in religion. At most, they admitted that there might be a spirit world and gods, but that it is impossible for us to get certain information. Protagoras counted similar sentences in his book about the "gods", because of which he was sentenced to death, whereupon he, having escaped his sentence, met a sad end when he drowned in the waves of the sea.
What else is known is that the most prominent sophists were clean and honorable people in their lives, and even Plato does not deny this, although he is otherwise on a war footing against them. For their part, they did not favor impurity, and if their dogma contained dangers to chastity in their conclusions, they were superior to their own doctrine. When you read Prodicus's beautiful story "Heracles at the fork in the road", where the hero abandons the hekuma and decides to follow the path of virtue, you don't get a bad idea of the author's state of chastity.
And yet the sophists already got a bad shout early on, so that their name, at the beginning respectfully meaning only an enthusiast of wisdom, i.e. a teacher, "professor", soon came to mean empty sophistry, falsehood, distortion of the truth and all kinds of cataclysm in matters of knowledge. How was that possible? everyone asks. To some extent, they themselves were to blame for it, and they must be blamed for the same faults as the entire enlightenment movement. Their sensory theory of information acquisition limited the world of information too narrowly, leaving the mental environment open to the subject's will or doubt. If they themselves did not deny the universal truth, they nevertheless treated it with indifference. Soon it happened that the truth was no longer seriously questioned. The main thing was just to be able to fluently argue about any topic, both for and against. If some speech tricks were used to try to get the opponent confused and tied to his own words. Thus, sophistry evolved into eristics, i.e. the art of arguing. It is clear that such a prank was questionable for the success of science, whose roots live in the land of truth. Almost an even greater danger threatened chastity from the doctrine of the sophists, since it was capable of weaning people from the realm of the spirit and nobler pursuits and attaching them to the pursuit of material interests. It is true that they did not directly deny religious concepts and moral truths, but their apathetic indifference towards them seemed depressing, all the more so when they were otherwise listened to with admiration. This easily fueled the listeners and students' brazen contempt for religion and chastity. For a long time, the validity of chastity orders and state laws had been scientifically considered in Greece, but it was only in the age of Pericles that the individualism and rationality that developed strongly questioned whether these basic instructions were also binding for a free person, and it was often concluded that they did not have to be followed unless they were in accordance with nature. The individual man with his desires and lusts was thus set here as the measure of right and virtue, just as he was allowed to determine the truth according to his sensations and everyday understanding in the field of knowledge. From this sowing, chaste poverty and debauchery in life and manners soon appeared as fruit. Especially the private students of the sophists, those rich arrogant youths who wanted to learn from them the art of reaching power and greatness, preferred such ethical nihilism. (The great majority of the people were more old-fashioned in matters of faith and doctrine). The more serious sophists did try to find natural law and morality from under the regulatory (positive) law. So Protagoras taught that rectitude and modesty (conscience) are the gods' best gift to men; nor does the Hippias phrase that "the law compels man to do much contrary to nature" still contain anything objectionable if nature is properly understood. But the more nature meant human sensual pleasures, the more the law seemed oppressive to nature. From this point of view, several existing institutions in the state were opposed — including, in some cases, rightly, tyranny and slavery — and the freedom of the individual proclaimed by the Enlightenment threatened to destroy all authority and legal order. First, religious concepts were erased — Protagoras said he knew nothing about the gods, Diagoras was a public atheist — followed by chastity orders and state laws.
Such a result was by no means what the old sophists intended for their work. They got a bad reputation, partly to blame, because when the reaction came, the Enlightenment, with its sophists, got its verdict. But they still had the bad luck to be photographed by a giant genius who did not like them, and the picture he made of them, which presents them in a very unfavorable light, has been preserved for posterity. Plato built a large-scale program to improve humanity, but the Enlightenment way of looking at it got in his way. Its most prominent representatives, the sophists, were therefore to be crushed, and in the war against them, he does not leave any weapon behind: anger, scorn, mockery, mockery. As a result, a grinning image has been born of them, which is all the more effective when the image is made by the hand of a master: only enough real features that the persons appear to be clearly alive. And in a few dialogues, the old sophists, who had already gone to the motherland, are no longer presented, but Aristippus and the Cynics as their names.
A more delightful phenomenon and in many respects the opposite of the sophist is the great personality of Socrates (469 – 399 BCE). He too stood on the foundation of the Enlightenment — because of which his haters called him a sophist — he too wanted to think independently about what was the traditional way in the state and religion, but firmly believed in the universal truth and that this way, by thinking, could be found. A religious mind and lofty chastity animated him, and a love of truth inspired him to seek it. Without founding any real school, he was always ready to talk with anyone about the things he was interested in. His peculiar phenomenon, his hurtful words, and his deep jokes made him universally known; he especially attracted cultured youths with his lovable, selfless nature, spirited and at the same time simple being. At the age of 70, he was sentenced to death for "seducing the youth and bringing new gods into the country". He fell as an innocent martyr to the persecution that, due to the democratic reaction that happened at that time, faced the entire direction of enlightenment.
Socrates believed that truth can be reached through the intellect, or knowledge. Rejecting subjective beliefs (doxa), he looked for general information and thought that it could best be found by searching together, by discussing. In those who exchanged ideas and criticized each other, the false had to be removed from the true and the law of reason that determined the truth had to be found. Here one had to start from self-knowledge, to admit that one does not know anything about one's self. That's why Socrates' first job was to refute, even with Ivan's weapon ("Socratic irony"), whoever's false imaginations at any given time, for the search for the truth is the poetic knowledge of a semi-civilization as the worst obstacle; then he leads the conversation in the direction that the truth, through dialectic, is born of itself as if by itself (which is why he called it the "midwife" of truth). For this, he proceeds inductively, collects these private cases and searches for them a concept of quality under which they submit. In the general concept, he believed that he had met the heart of the matter itself, next to which the illustrations of individual perception are worthless.
With this weapon of logic, he now examined the various questions of life, primarily trying to find out moral relationships, what is right and wrong at any given time. His belief that this matter can be reached through the guidance of the intellect, through the path of knowledge, that knowledge and virtue are one, was peculiar. It shows the rationalism of the Enlightenment. As cultural relationships became more crooked, many people no longer felt they could follow the inherited rules of life: who knew what was right anymore, when one advised this way, the other that way? Only an enlightened review, clear information would get you there. From this, Socrates developed his basic sentence, adapting it to the field of chastity: right knowledge leads to right action, knowledge finds virtue. Intellectual Civilization gives rise to moral condition; when reason just figures it out, the will follows by itself. Crimes and bad habits only follow from lack of better knowledge.
This is how Socrates, that "greatest eye of mankind, erred in the strange error of setting a fraction of the truth as the whole truth". There is a lot of truth in that: a dark thought makes even the moral sense dark, "smite the transgressor, from which evil desires rush in." But Socrates' statement still has only limited validity. When the purpose of the action is at the same time in harmony with the individual's interest, he chooses the means that take the purpose there, as it really happens in the material areas of life. That's where intelligence and will are in harmony. But it is different in the tasks of chastity, which do not promise a person an immediate material benefit. How could Socrates come to that belief? He assumed moral good and happiness to be the same: a person becomes happy by being good. So who wouldn't want to be good and happy? Who would want to be bad and miserable on purpose, i.e. unhappy? The ambivalence of the words therefore also promoted the understanding in the direction that Socrates wanted. The question: what is good? he answered, what is expedient, what best benefits man and makes him happy.
Among Socrates' pupils, Xenophon by that "useful" understood almost only everyday utility; but Plato explained it more profoundly as a virtuous refinement that promotes the true best of the soul. In any case, however, virtue and happiness are made the same: a person strives to be good in order to become happy. So Socrates' position was "eudaimonistic"; so was Plato and antiquity in general.
Socrates' quest to morally renew life with science has produced its most prominent phenomena, Plato and Aristotle, with the pursuit of ancient civilization.
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Socrates' influence was more or less felt in the schools of thought that appeared after him, whose representatives were therefore called Socratic. However, several of them leaned more towards the sophistry. They are divided into four different sects:
1) Euclid, the founder of the Megara school, combined the Elean concept of being and the Socratic good. But neither ethics nor theoretical knowledge was greatly affected by the fact that the only truly good was decreed to be good, which still remains as one of its kind, even if people call it by different names, and if virtue is only one, viz. knowledge, of which the other virtues have different names. The abstract monotheism caused that all different knowledge was looked at with suspicion and a single-origin approach was generally preferred. With its fruitless abstraction, this school did not advance science, if it did develop the art of eristics (argument).
2) Even more insignificant was the Elilai-Eretrian school (Phaedo, Menedemus), which seems to have developed almost like the previous one.
More important was the school of the Cynians and Cyrenes. Both treated theoretical knowledge with indifference and pursued a philosophical way of life. But in understanding man's purpose and relationship to culture, they differed sharply from each other.
3) The masters of the Cynic school, Antisthenes (b. around 440 BCE) and Diogenes (d. 323 BCE) taught that the right content and quantity of life is virtue, which in Socrates' mind is knowledge as well, but primarily right action. Virtue in itself is enough for happiness: next to it, everything else — honor, wealth, joy, pain, shame, custom, even country and family — is worthless. The less a person depends on external good, the less he gets by, the more he is his own master, the closer he is to his ideal, the happier he is. Cynics return to the state of nature, rejecting civilization with its advantages and disadvantages. For a wise man, a regular law is unnecessary, even harmful. — Otherwise, their knowledge was quite skeptical.
In the 3rd and 2nd centuries, the doctrine of the Kyynians appeared, somewhat rejuvenated and renewed in its dress, the so-called In the Stoic school (Zeno, Khrysippos, etc.), which, practicing moral reform, deserves the highest value from the teachings of Socrates.
4) The opposite of the cynical doctrine of the Cynics is the cheerful wisdom of life of the Cyrenes. Relying on the relativity of the sophists' doctrine of perception, Aristippus said that sensory perception only expresses to us our own states of being, not the quality of the objects that are their subjects. We don't get to know living things, our knowledge only includes changes in our own being.
But the main question for the people of Cyrene is where human happiness lies. In that regard, they just look at how it feels in the mind. They distinguish between three types of emotions: sweet, gross (nasty) and intermediate. Only sweet feelings should be pursued, others should be avoided. There is happiness and virtue in that. This doctrine of pleasure or hekuma, hedonism (hedoné — hekuma), therefore also set, like Socrates, as the measure of human striving the good i.e. happiness, but made this content pleasure, sensual or spiritual hekuma. In that too, nature is placed above the law.
But in order to really enjoy yourself, you also have to restrain yourself. Enjoy, but enjoy sensibly so that enjoyment does not turn into its opposite. Even while enjoying pleasures, the wise man controls circumstances and does not lower himself to be controlled by them. Both the hedonist and the cynic try to secure the freedom of the individual along with the freedom of the world, one by denying pleasure, the other by exploiting and controlling it to their heart's content. A cynic shuns the world, a hedonist is a full-on worldly man, cheerfully enjoying the joys of the senses and the spirit, only restraining his desires from going too far. In his selfishness, he easily had to despise his civic duties and his country. Such a doctrine was before the end for Greece.
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The progress of natural science was hindered for a time by the fact that the reliability of human perception was doubted and science was about to become a servant of practical utility. On the other hand, the scope of science had expanded when, in addition to natural science (physics), logic and ethics had come. At the same time, it began to become clear to consciousness that science cannot satisfy unless it teaches to understand human life in unity with the outside world. When the subjective side, after being developed separately from the objective, was now united with it, Greek science grew greatly and ripened its best fruits, created its most extensive systems, represented by men like Democritus, Plato and Aristotle. Democritus' materialism and Plato's idealism appeared first, which Aristotle then combined in his system. Both are rational sciences. Based on Protagoras' theory of perception, Democritus returns to the old rationalism of the Eleans, but Plato created a new Eleanism from Socrates' theory. In metaphysics, a physical principle prevails on the one hand, and an ethical principle on the other. Plato's genius pointed the way for future philosophy.
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Demokritos Abderalainen (460 – 360 BCE), the greatest naturalist of ancient times, practiced a wide, versatile literary activity, of the fruits of which only fragmentary fragments have survived.
He inherited the basic foundation of his doctrine, atomistics, from Leucippus. In empty space — that's what he taught — there is an innumerable flock of tiny matter particles, atoms, from whose union and separation all living things are born. When the previous atomists could not explain the changes in the quality of the songs, Democritus explained them to Protagoras with the help of the theory of perception. The sensory properties of the songs do not belong to the songs themselves, but arise from their movements and follow along with imaginations. They have only a relative reality; absolutely real is only a swarm of atoms in space. Everything else is a flow of phases, lives only in our thoughts, in our way of imagining and is non-existent in itself. Everything starts from the movements of atoms, if blind chance brings them together; There is no God, no spirit in the world, only a machine-like force of nature. And yet Democritus himself marveled at the wise expediency in the structure of bodies! But the system did not allow a theological understanding, a rational rule of spirit in creation: everything is a random play of atoms! He tried to explain that order and beauty mechanically, by assuming vortex movements, etc. Form, order, position are only influenced by the weight, frequency, and hardness of the songs; other properties — color, taste, heat, etc. — are something that only seems so to us, living only in our sensations, and not in the songs themselves.
In such a case, new worlds may be born from the groupings of atoms: as the atoms spin, their center crystallizes into a star, whose movement spreads to ever wider circles, until the stars revolve around each other and, when they collide, shatter to be born again. This is how the life of matter in the universe lasts forever.
Even soul life is only atomic movements, even though soul atoms are the finest, fiery ones. When we see and hear different objects, they are miniatures that draw attention to the movements of our atoms. In this way, sensations are completely subjective, and do not inform us of the true being of things. True knowledge can only be obtained by thinking. But even thought is only atomic movement, which is stimulated in us by the images of exquisite objects from outer space. — Democritus' ethics, as well as his doctrine of knowledge, is rooted in his psychology. Like thoughts and feelings, feelings and desires are just vibrations of matter particles in us. Happiness is the goal of man. But the dizzying pleasures of the senses and the intense movements of the mind usually disturb the balance of the soul atoms in us, only the gentle exercise of thought action gives the soul a sweet feeling of well-being. Human happiness is the peace of the soul, whose image is the calm surface of the sea. So happiness does not follow from external advantages; sensual pleasure, the satisfaction of desires does not create it, but a pure intellectual life, mental composure, self-control and the resulting harmony of the soul. Thus, on the basis of materialistic psychology, morality is born, which seems to resonate with Socrates' doctrine of chastity.
Democritus' fame and importance soon dimmed after a new star rose to the sky of science. In Plato's idealistic doctrine, the materials inherited from the previous scientific development, under the influence of Socrates' basic idea, are combined into new associations. From the point of view of conceptual knowledge, Plato casts new, original compositions from old material.
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Plato's life and doctrine.
Plato, son of Ariston, was born in Athena in 427 BCE. [His real name is said to have been Aristocles; He got the name Plato because of his broad chest (platys = broad)]. He, supreme in the realm of thought, was also of noble birth; receiving a careful upbringing, he became familiar from a young age with everything that his people had created great, profound and beautiful in science and art. He was very attracted to poetry, even though he was inspired to write poetry himself; but on the other hand, the lively, turbulent political conditions of the time — after all, Plato's childhood was spent in the storms of the Peloponnesian War — drew his attention to them as well. Both hobbies, poetic as well as political, appear in the works of the opposite philosopher: the former created an artistic form for them, while he has carefully and comprehensively considered political issues in several of his books. But his development was more influenced by Socrates, whose great personality he vividly admired.
After Socrates died, Plato spent some time traveling — in Cyrene, Egypt, Great Greece and Sicily — exploring life and expanding his horizons. So in Italy he got to know the Pythagoreans and became their friend. On his travels, he also experienced the harshness of fate, when the ruler of Syracuse, Dionysos, first favored him, but later, when Plato tried to impose his state duties on him, suspecting him of being a schemer, expelled him from his court and he was in danger of his life, he was even about to be enslaved. After returning to Athena (v. 387 BCE), he began to present his learning to an ever-growing circle of students and friends in the gymnasium of the Academy. It can be seen that he has already started working as a writer. Its object was, firstly, the sophistry then popular in Greece, which he took different directions to sift through and refute, at the same time that he defended the doctrine of Socrates in opposition to it and began to develop his own broad-based system based on this. This teaching lasted all his life; it was interrupted only a few times when he went on travels, hoping somewhere to realize his ideals of state. However, after the death of the elder Dionysus, he tried to influence the younger one in vain: once again, after barely escaping the danger of his life, he had to throw those things away. He died at the age of 80. — Being the most prominent representative of the Hellenic spirit, Plato rises in the history of mankind as a genius who, with the light of his intellect, the depth of his thoughts, the charm of his ideas, has for the second millennium shown the way for the human perception of the world and essence.
He appears as dark in his books, which are as remarkable in form as in content. They have a moral tendency. The outlook and way of living, which reflects our philosopher's ideal of life, is sometimes presented in the light of some idea and taken to a battle against an opposing school of thought, from which it emerges victorious. The author's position is always represented by Socrates, whose moral ideal he fulfills. The opposing party's opinions have their own representatives. In this way, a dialogue, an exchange of words is born, and when this is done with the descriptive power of the poet, who makes the characters come alive, creates the vivid life and action of reality in the scenes, truly artistic dramas have sprung from the dialogues. When they are also at the height of the civilization of their time, even in terms of language and presentation, they show wisdom of knowledge in the charming veil of beauty. Stricter scientific systematicity is avoided; starting from the main subject, let's go to the reasons for the idea and move on until the concepts are clarified. No dialogue settles on a single, precisely defined theme; everywhere different ideas, general knowledge, ethical, physical and metaphysical, artistically interweave, one without taking priority over the other. And when we finally move on to areas that the poet-philosopher does not want or know how to fit into the formulas of concepts, he puts his ideas in the form of a story or a poetic narrative.
So those discussions are only an external structure in which Plato presents his ideas, I put his own thoughts into Socrates' mouth. But just as little as Plato's Socrates corresponds to his original image in every way, just as little these conversations with all their controversies and circumstances have really always happened. Their subjects most likely come from the philosopher's own classroom, from among his students.
Quite a series of dialogues have survived in Plato's name; among however, there are also unconventional ones. Certainly authentic are: Apology, Crito, Protagoras, Gorgias, Cratylus, Meno, Theaetetes, Phaedrus, Symposium (drinking), Phaedo, "State", Timaeus and probably also Philebus and "Laws". Certainly unoriginal: Alcibiades II, Anterastai, Demodorus, Axiochus, Epinomis, Eryxias, Hipparchus, Kleitophon, Minos, Sisyphus, Theages, etc. Important among the suspects are: Parmenides, Sophist and Politicus.
The mutual ordering relationship of the dialogues is most naturally determined by historical development. In most of them, you can see the same principle at the bottom, but changed in many ways, if the author's mental vision over time became clearer and wider, his convictions grew and became more certain. Today, Plato's works are divided into the following groups, taking into account all the different aspects:
1) The works of his youth, in which the influence of Socrates is still dominant: Lysis (about friendship), Laches (about bravery), and — if they are authentic — Charmides (about temperance), Hippias the Younger and Alcibiades I; further Apology (Socrates' defense speech), Crito (on legal obedience) and Euthyphro (on piety). All of these deal directly with Socrates-like topics or defend him from the attacks of his enemies.
2) Controversial writings against sophistry and excessive systems that stood in the way of Plato's doctrine: Protagoras, Gorgias, Euthydemus, Cratylus, Meno, Theaetetes, and probably also book I of the Republic. They are all (except Meno's) polemical writings, and do not aim for positive results, if even the rudiments of the philosopher's own doctrine are glimpsed. They systematically prove the doctrine of the Sophists to be false and invalid: Protagoras by examining the teachability of virtue; Gorgias criticizing their oratory; Euthydemus mocking their mode of argument; Cratylus by mocking their grammatical experiments, Theaetetes by criticizing their (or Aristippus') doctrine of knowledge acquisition. Gorgias is already more positive than others, presenting the philosopher's own ideal. Maybe it is later in age than the others and is, as it were, a bridge to transfer to the next group. I would naturally add State's first book, a dialogue about law, which also opposes the overly naturalistic state theory of the sophists. Meno also refers to the next episode, where Plato's doctrine of knowledge is already presented, albeit still unclearly and uncertainly. — What else is to be thought of the unfavorable light in which the sophists appear in these books, it has already been discussed.
3) Writings from the best period of teaching: Phaedrus, Symposium, the main part of "The State", and probably the dialogues Parmenides, Sophist and Politicus that came from Plato's circle (if not from his own hand) at the same time. Phaedrus presents Plato's doctrine of the supersensible world of ideas in the guise of a fable; The Symposium, with its love speeches, expresses the deepest spirit of his teachings in the most artistically advanced form. In his "State", the philosopher has composed an ideal state based on his doctrine of virtue, taking only a few of the conditions into account. It is a remarkable creation of genius, but in it we need a thread of principle that would connect the different parts together; therefore, it appears to have been created at different times and left unfinished. Parmenides ponders the doctrine of ideas, without reaching positive results; the immature way of understanding and the pieces of evidence taken from the Elean school seem to show that it was not made by Plato. Even the author of the Politicus and Sophist dialogues seems to have been a member of the Academy leaning towards Elea. Ion is not Platonic either.
4) Works in which Plato has taken Pythagorean elements into his teachings, i.e. theological idealism: Phaedo, (on immortality), Philebus, part of the State, Critias and Timaeus. At their core is the idea of good, which, when considering, the philosopher rises to the top of his metaphysics. Critias is some kind of draft of a philosophy of history, Timaeus a mythic doctrine of nature, both left unfinished.
5) The product of old age is Laws.
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Plato's doctrine.
The center of Plato's philosophy is the ingenious creation of the doctrine of ideas or basic images. He is driven by the moral need to find true virtue, and he thinks that can be found in the path of true knowledge. Like Socrates, Plato was not satisfied with the ordinary pursuit of human virtue, which, following the inherited custom, only aims at profit, or without principle marries according to the varying opinions of people. He was even less satisfied with sophistry, since he only wanted to please the lures of sensuality. The reason that neither of them found virtue was the lack of correct knowledge about him. Protagoras had argued that no general information can be obtained except from the world of the senses and on the basis of sensory observations; this sentence was translated by Plato so that it is sensory perception that does not guide us to the knowledge of the truth: sensations do not inform us of reality, the essence of things in themselves. And yet only through true knowledge can we get to the good, to practice it, to live in it. So how is that expensive information to be obtained, which does not depend on any chance of perception and belief?
That purpose can be reached - as Socrates already knew how to advise - with conceptual knowledge, by developing and clarifying concepts, i.e. with dialectics. This invents concepts and regulates their interrelationships, distributing everything by genera and species. It follows the inductive method, which also tests the validity of the invented concepts, deriving all the consequences from them and finding out whether they agree with the facts and with what is generally recognized as true. By distributing species concepts — which is Plato's own creation — we look at the interrelationships of different concepts, if they fit or don't fit with each other. Dialectic therefore aims at a logically regulated system of concepts according to the relations of parallelism and subjugation.
In Plato's opinion, these concepts now give completely different information about the state than sense observations: they reveal the true nature of states of being, but with the help of the senses we only perceive these changing states, if they appear as events develop. In other words, sensory information is only relative. In contrast, conceptual knowledge expresses the absolute truth: its objective content is an idea (basic image) that encompasses a reality independent of all phases. Both ways of obtaining information correspond to their own sphere of existence: the sphere of reality, or ideas, as an object of conceptual knowledge, and the sphere of relative reality, with its emerging and disappearing parts, as an object of sensory perception. The ideal world therefore exists in the mind of the Elean school, but the sensory world with its objects floats in the flow of all (Heraclitus') songs, always being born, changing, disappearing. So there are two worlds: the unchanging world of existence and the non-existent world of change, one as an object of rational knowledge, the other as an object of sensory knowledge; on the one hand, incorporeal ideas, on the other hand, sentient beings. Ideas are not in the realm of locality, but as comprehensible by pure thought, they are in their own sense-intelligible state. A rational, intellectually based knowledge theory therefore requires a purely mental state.
Ideas only have a logical meaning to begin with, when they present generic concepts, the common being of private entities, but they are not mere conceptual assumptions (abstractions), but real entities. In fact, the idea is not born from the analytical act of comparative abstraction, but when the soul looks at the reality reflected in different objects of existence. The idea itself does not live in the entities of the phenomenal world; these are just afterimages or shadows of ideas. That's why you can't find ideas in sense perceptions, you can't peel these out from under them; they can only give rise to ideas, if they show a similarity to ideas. So ideas are not born just by thinking; they are the original property of the soul, which is activated in it when it sees their afterimages in the world of the senses. Understanding ideas is remembering. Before coming to earth, the human soul saw and admired ideas with a supersensible eye, and their memory reawakens in him every time he sees phenomena hinting at them here below. Great, however, is the difference between the lofty idea and its earthly phenomenon; seeing this, the soul is confused and feels pain: out of fear arises in him a longing love for a supersensual idea, which hugs from the perishability to rise up to admire the age-old beauty of the ethereal world — the true mood of a philosopher. — These supersensible things cannot be represented in the forms of dialectics; therefore, when speaking about them, the poet-philosopher uses a mythical representation.
Since ideas are actually materialized generic concepts, Plato initially thought of ideas as much as generic concepts, i.e. almost to infinity: after all, each thing, property, relationship, object of nature and art, good as well as bad, had its own concept. In his later books, he reduces the number of ideas according to more general and valuable categories.
So there is similarity between the world of ideas and the world of phenomena, there is no sameness. The relationship is imitation, the sensuous object is an afterimage. Ideas alone have full reality, faculty only a small amount, and even more if sensuous entities are related to ideas. From the reality of these, sentient beings gradually get a little part in the process of birth, change and death. The idea comes and goes in them, hence the stages. In his Phaedo, Plato explains that only ideas are the cause of the phenomenal world and its stages, from which the sense organism gets its properties.
But the ideas are the cause of those stages only in the sense that they are the purposes that are realized in the phenomena. Plato was guided to this position by the nous doctrine of Anaxagoras, which he has further developed in the Philebus and the State; these present the systematic unity of the state and place the good idea as its leading principle. Since there is something good in everything, then everything submits to the good idea, it is the ultimate purpose, the sun in the kingdom of ideas, from which everything derives its reality and value. It is common sense, divinity. Thus, the world of ideas is at the same time the cause and purpose of the world of senses. Purpose is the reality according to which everything happens, no matter what impressive aspects the sense perception sees in it — they are only secondary causes. Plato's world view is teleological: good determines everything, because of that also births and changes take place.
But the idea is never fully realized in the sense world, the ideal world, the circle of the ideal, i.e. the perfect being, may not be the reason for the deficiency of the sense world, but the reason for it is — "nonexistent". This is emptiness, that formless and ghostless negation of being, which is nevertheless subject to mathematical regulations. According to Pythagoras, Plato established infinite formless space (apeiron) and its mathematical limitation and formation as the principles of the sensory world. From the mixture of these two, the infinite and the finite, the formless and the formal, the visible world is born. The reason for the mixture is the high principle of purpose, the idea of good, or common sense. Through mathematics, this from infinite space forms a finite state.
Thus, Plato's doctrine of ideas is ethical metaphysics, and therefore ethics, the doctrine of chastity, is the branch of philosophy that he has cultivated with the best success. Among the ideas, he primarily developed moral concepts; hence his doctrine of chastity took on an immaterial, non-sense, non-Hellenic character. Life on earth is full of evil, therefore it is best for the wise to shun the world and flee to the protection of the divinity (Theaetetus.). Phaedo broadly elaborates on this negative morality of worldliness: the whole life of a philosopher is dying from the world, cleansing the soul from the slag of sensual life. The soul is a prisoner in the body; he is freed only through knowledge and virtue.
For this doctrine of chastity, Plato also tried to create a psychological basis, which, however, could not happen without difficulties and contradictions, for the reason that the soul, through that doctrine of double worlds, came to have a strange intermediate position. According to its ideal purpose, the soul is capable of grasping ideas and is related to them; it is, like them, unborn, imperishable, unchanging, singular. But when it is a supporter of the idea of life and the cause of exercise itself is perpetual motion, then it is indeed very similar to ideas, but I don't think it is the same as them. So where does the soul's superiority and inferiority come from? Not from any external fate, but from the soul's own nature. Its upper ideational being is joined by a lower, sensuous part with sensual, perishable vibes. This is how Plato divides the soul into three:
1) logistician l. hegemonic s.o. rational, i.e. leading, idea-oriented part;
2) thymos l. thymoeidés, nobler affective side, vigorous willpower;
3) epithymétikon l. philokhraematon — sensual affect side, desire l. lust.
It is difficult for a philosopher to reconcile those three parts as belonging to a single soul: when are they indivisible, being different forms of phenomena or actions of the same soul, and all immortal, when are they different from each other and only reason (nous) is immortal. Sometimes it is assumed that the lower parts of the soul already existed before this life and therefore will remain forever, because otherwise it is not possible to explain the fall of the soul from ideas before this life; in between, it is assumed that they only started from corporeality and that they can finally be completely removed by living in accordance with virtue. This painful moment resulted from the fact that the two worlds were so sharply opposed. Otherwise, Plato's threefold division of the soul does not correspond to the usual division today (into intellect, feeling, desire l. will). The closest we come to his conception is if we think of three unequal layers in the life of the soul as ascendants, so that the lower layer can exist without the upper one, but not the other way around. So plants have that side of desire, besides that, animals have will and humans have reason.
The immortality of the soul definitely belongs to Plato's doctrine: the soul has existed before this earthly life and will always exist after it. Otherwise, it would not be possible to strive for perfection, in accordance with the idea malima, and without immortality, the moral payment of wages, which Plato firmly believes in and describes in myths, is unthinkable. Several proofs of immortality are presented by Phaedo.
Only a virtuous life, a life according to virtue, makes one happy here and beyond the grave — teaches Plato like Socrates. True happiness and bliss lies in the fact that the soul rises to the top of perfection, becoming a partaker of the divine world of ideas, so virtue does not have to be practiced just for ordinary benefit. Along with this, the noble joys that the soul freely enjoys while cultivating its powers are also granted as legitimate moments in the highest good. Happiness does not arise from the sources of wisdom alone. Not only the science of reason, but also the right imagination, every knowledge and art brings happiness to the soul. Maybe you can find pure pleasure for the senses. Above all others, however, is the determination of ideal proportions and their implementation in an individual's life. In this way, the whole beauty and vitality of Hellenism merges with the lofty ideal of the philosopher.
But in a very systematic way, Plato based his doctrine of virtue on the tripartite division of the soul. In his earlier discussions, he still derives the genesis of the virtues from the Socratic idea of knowledge. Later, he understood the matter so that each part of the soul corresponds to its own aids. Whoever has this or that side of the soul is more successful, he has a better tendency towards some virtues than others (so virtue is in a way innate). The side of reason is therefore answered by wisdom; bravery is noble volition, the part of desires is self-control, i.e. moderation. And since the soul is only then completely in order and perfect, when its different parts are in harmony with each other, when each one does its job properly and reason reigns supreme, then the fourth virtue becomes harmonious order, or justice. But this system of virtue can be better realized in society as a whole than in an individual. Plato has not so much tried to describe a perfect person as a perfect state, He has created his ideal state based on his doctrine of virtue.
The different parts of the soul each correspond to their different constitutions in the "State":
1) rulers of reason,
2) warriors and officials of the will,
3) people and artisans of lust.
Thus, each virtue has its own virtue: the virtue of the first virtue is wisdom and knowledge, the second is bravery, the third is self-control. The state as a whole implements the virtue of justice. Thus the state is the living embodiment of the virtues and the image of the human soul, Plato's state is a pure aristocracy, where the "wise", philosophers i.e. the scientifically civilized rule and regulate the law; the second constitution executes the orders; the third works and obeys.
The state does not secure the material benefits of its members, but wants to raise them to be good and happy. That's why the individual must sink into the state, be only a citizen whose whole life is regulated and determined by the state. It is not a private person who can marry as much as he likes, but by the state. Marriages are made so that the family remains healthy. Children's upbringing and the education of young people are also in the hands of the state. If the teaching progresses to higher degrees, those who cannot understand the subjects in it will be separated from it, and they will be subject to the 2nd rule. In the end, a small elite group remains, who become scientists or rulers. These two upper estates are like a big family with no private property. The state supplies them with all the needs for which the 3rd estate acquires funds through its work.
This is how Plato's state is a great educational institution, which should develop man from the sensual to the spiritual, from the earthly to the heavenly. The ideal is siveelhs-religious. That's why the state wants to take care of a person with all his relationships and conditions from the beginning, it claims the right to dictate education, scientific activity, religion, even art. It tolerates only such art as conforms to ideas, especially the idea of good; "only the good is beautiful", said Plato, when otherwise it was said the opposite: "beautiful is good". Let all indecent, derogatory things be removed from fables; let fables be only pictorial representations of moral truths. Let such a religion be proclaimed to the general public; The religion of civilized, philosophers is science and virtue, the highest amount of which is to become equal to the basic image of good, i.e. with the deity.
Plato did not want a dreamy castle in the air, but truly believed that his state ideal could be realized. And if that were to happen, he thought that a strong, victorious state that would make the citizens happy would emerge from it. That's why he partly built on the basis of the existing conditions, borrowing these features from the Dorians' silence institutions. We have already seen how unsuccessfully he tried to persuade the rulers of Syracuse.
When the philosopher saw with a gloomy mind that his ideals were not popular in real conditions, in his old age he planned a moral society organized according to another model, without relying on ideas and the power of their representatives. Instead of philosophy, we now put religion in a form that approaches the people's perception, and on the other hand, mathematics and music. In place of scientificity comes moral intelligence and lawfulness, in place of virtue is the strict observance of what already exists. Instead of a hegemonic republic, there has been a mixture of monarchical-hegemonic and populist elements. The whole company (in the Nómoi book) is a compromise with existing conditions, devoid of new enthusiasm and life. The author has fallen from his own doctrine and ideals.
From the point of view of the doctrine of ideas, the visible world, creation, is subject to birth and destruction. Even though the older Plato included nature in his studies (Timaeus), he nevertheless remained in his old mind that there can be no science of the creation and destruction of the elements, but only conjectural knowledge. His guess went like this. The elements of the sensuous world are infinite space and the mathematical forms that the former uses to express ideas. These lofty purposes are embodied by the mythical Demiurge, an elf who represents the creative force at the service of ideas. He has created a world of goodness, keeping an eye on ideas. Therefore, the world, being the product of divine reason and goodness, is perfect, best, most beautiful and unique. But the fact that it does not fully correspond to ideas is due to the principle of the sensory world: it is a created state of space.
Space, when it is not perceptible by Aatos or the senses, is non-existent (mé is), but without this non-existent reality could not appear. Creating, sinking an idea into manifestation requires an empty space, space, which is a contributing factor along with that reality.
Being the most perfect visible being, the cosmos (world) is rational and soulful. When creating the world, the demiurge created the world soul first. Being the life principle of all, the world soul combines with itself this rule of form, movement and consciousness. It is between the singular (idea) and the divisive (place), it has both sameness and otherness, it stays in place and varies, it encompasses all numbers and proportions, it has the shape of the cosmos and the planets and fixed stars that revolve around it in a circle, it itself sets the circles in motion . In these cycles, it gives rise to consciousness, perception and thought in itself and in all beings. In his study of nature, the philosopher has gotten lost in the endless paths of dreams. So still when he talks about the demiurge's other creations. He created private entities from empty space according to geometric patterns. The basic formula was a triangle, but with many combinations it resulted in polygons of some kind, according to which and on the basis the elements and living objects have merged. This is how the philosopher wanted to explain the transformation of empty space into sensual matter: it has happened through mathematics, and the physical and chemical properties of substances are also based on it.
According to Plato's view, the space of the world is an infinite round hole, in the center of which the spherical earth rests motionless, while the stars and the sun revolve around it and at the same time it itself rotates. The stars are living entities, "visible gods".
The thought activity initiated by Plato lasted for centuries. His own founded so-called The "academic" school tried to further develop their master's doctrine, in whatever direction; but its various periods of development did not significantly promote philosophy. Many in their dreams almost ruined what had already been achieved. so-called The "Older Academy" almost threw away its master's doctrine of ideas and replaced it with numbers and ratios, thus adopting Pythagorean elements. It was said, for example: the number one is the central fire, or: 1 Zeus or Nous, 2 Mother of the Gods, whose marriages the other numbers are i.e. the world is born (Speusippos, Xenokrates). Scientific Civilization and astronomy alone open the sky for us (Philippos) etc. The hallmark of more recent Academy schools is doubt (skepticism). Arkesilaos (d. 241 BCE) argued that it was impossible to gain knowledge through the senses or understanding. Karneades took an even stronger position, who claimed that it was basically impossible to know anything because we have no criterion of truth. However, in order to obtain some instructions for a chaste life, he admitted the probability of things, Academic Skepticism otherwise aimed its tip against the Stoic doctrine.
Plato's greatest student, Aristotle, went his own way. When he didn't want to separate concepts or ideas from the phenomena of the empirical world, where he just found their basis and basis, he tried to convert the Socratic-Platonic philosophy of concepts into a doctrine that would be able to clarify empirical reality. Thus he, the founder of the "peripatetic" school, although from the beginning from the point of view of his great teacher, came to create an independent larger system that was idealistic-realistic, just as Plato's system was purely idealistic in spirit. Aristotle took Greek thought to its highest peak.
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From Plato's Gorgias.
In addition to what has already been mentioned about Gorgias, in what is generally said about sophists, we must add some information which our dialogue of the same name seems to require.
Gorgias (492 – 384 BCE) appeared early as an orator and teacher with good success. His fame spread far and wide, even more so when he traveled to show his skills in acting. When Syracuse harassed his hometown Leontini, a delegation came from here to ask for help from Athens, led by Gorgias, who was hoped to be able to persuade the Athenians with his speeches. After getting his business done well, even after he really knew how to charm his listeners, Gorgias returned home. But he soon missed going back to Greece, where he had been so successful. There he was received everywhere with admiration; the people flocked to hear his presentations as if to a party and he was compared to the eloquent Nestor. Even the quality of Gorgias' speech was something new for the Athenians. Until then, they only knew state and district or judicial speech; Gorgias introduced them to the third kind, beautiful eloquence (génos epideictic), for which he created an actual art prose. In it, he very much pursued the beauty of language, even a poetic flight, abundantly using figurative language, sonorous words and cleverly composed sentence structure, while he peppered his speeches with abundant quotations and catchphrases, but he often went too far, becoming puffy. He talked about anything at any time, taking his subjects from literature, art, politics, even ordinary life. The main thing was not the subject, but the way of presentation. By dressing his thoughts in brilliant language, he arouses the public's interest and conquers its popularity. And wonderful! Sometimes he presented the matter like that, sometimes quite differently — and it always seemed that he was speaking correctly and believably. That's why the pleasure of the listeners reached the point of infatuation — and that's exactly what the sophist meant. It was the special skill of the sophists to excite the thoughts and imaginations in the souls of the hearers to the extent possible and thus lead them.
Soon Gorgias gathered around him a flock of admirers who wanted to learn the same wonderful and useful art. Sophisticated speech studies came into vogue at Athens. However, Gorgias did not stay in Athens permanently, if he still visited there in between his travels. At Olympia, he urged the Hellenes to a great national task: to put aside their quarrels and unite in a revenge war against the arch-enemy, the Persians - which task Alexander then fulfilled. Then we meet him in Thessaly, where the princes and the young superiors favored him and gladly listened to him. And not even the lack of funds prevented them from paying Gorgias the high price he often charged for his teaching. In accordance with his rank, he presented himself with external splendor, and for that he needed money.
Besides speeches, Gorgias left behind a philosophical work: "On nature, or non-existence". His philosophical position has already been discussed. However, he prioritized rhetoric, which for him was the skill of skills, also because of its practical utility. That's how one wise man can guide thousands of naughty ones, that's how he can rise to power and greatness. But this way of thinking was dangerous for the essence of the state and the freedom of citizens. After all, there was that sophist's naturalistic point of view, which denies the power of spirit and virtue. In the name of chastity, therefore, Plato stepped in to refute the same doctrine, while at the same time he had the opportunity to depress his scientific opponents. This is how he became a "singer in the swamp" even of the old Gorgias, or perhaps more correctly one of his students.
In his "Gorgias" dialogue, Plato oppresses the rhetoric of the sophist and the political doctrine based on it. If Gorgias gave rhetoric a dominant position in his state, now Plato shows how worthless rhetoric is when it aims to realize cheap state purposes, and how miserable a person is who spends his life on such things. Along with that, it is positively shown how decency, living for the benefit of virtue, gives value and meaning to the activities of citizens as well. Only a good person is fit to work in the state, because the state means a person's moral refinement and happiness.
As always, Plato presents his ideas in the form of a conversation. The characters appear so alive, with their peculiar character traits, and the action is somehow so lively that we are almost the ones who see the drama. Plato's own position is represented by Socrates as the main character; the opposite program is supported by Gorgias, his student Polus and Callicles, the fervent executor of the sophistic outlook in practical life. But even though Plato is able to depict excellently vividly, his images do not imitate rough reality, but get their character from their position in the dialogue, from the idea they support at any given time, so they are idealized. It also applies to Gorgias, whose personality Plato otherwise treats with complete respect. After listening to him, however, such consequences are developed from his doctrine, which he would hardly have adopted in reality.
There is no more information about Polus than that he accompanied his teacher on his travels, even giving presentations, and that he already composed a textbook on the art of speech at a young age, which was probably not worth much. He doesn't know any real theory of his art, for him, rhetoric is just a habit of speaking fluently and placing his words nicely, thus pleasing and slying the audience. He is unable to think long-term logically, but stumbles along the thorny path of a single dialectic. In short: Polus is still immature; however, he thinks highly of himself and his abilities, and behaves arrogantly accordingly. Even worse, Socrates embarrasses him.
Callicles, on the other hand, is already a full-fledged man who clearly knows what he wants and has already formed his own position for himself for some time. Although standing at the top of the civilization of his time and fully familiar with the literature of his people, he has not drawn his life wisdom from books, but has acquired it in the battles of reality. His whole direction is moral, his position materialistic. He strives for a dominant position in society, in order to fully enjoy the good of this world; and from that point of view, he accepts the art of speech, if it is a means to achieve this purpose. But he despises moral principles as a "won position" and sneers at philosophical studies as the dreams of a fool. However, his materialistic opinion does not come across as grossly naked or lascivious, but knows how to put on the gloss of fine civilization, so his speeches have a lot of sharp wit and occasional jokes. This intelligence and, in addition, a ruthless force of will raise his character above the level of the everyday. In a word: Callicles is a fine, arrogant worldly man, a manifested representative of the Enlightenment, and perfectly portrayed as such. Zealously and skilfully he defends his position, and it takes a lot of effort for Socrates to get him overturned. In the end, he won't admit his defeat.
Chaerephon appears as Socrates' student, playing a minor side role. Otherwise, it is known that he was dreamy and glowing with enthusiasm by nature, and one of the most devoted admirers of his great teacher.
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In several of the dialogues of Plato, doubts have arisen among his interpreters as to which of the various subjects discussed in them is the main thesis. The speakers have the freedom of conversation; no severe rules of art restrict them, and sometimes we are inclined to think, with one of the dramatis personae in the Theaetetus, that the digressions have the greater interest. Yet in the most irregular of the dialogues there is also a certain natural growth or unity; the beginning is not forgotten at the end, and numerous allusions and references are interspersed, which form the loose connecting links of the whole. We must not neglect this unity, but neither must we attempt to confine the Platonic dialogue on the Procrustean bed of a single idea. (Compare Introduction to the Phaedrus.)
Two tendencies seem to have beset the interpreters of Plato in this matter. First, they have endeavoured to hang the dialogues upon one another by the slightest threads; and have thus been led to opposite and contradictory assertions respecting their order and sequence. The mantle of Schleiermacher has descended upon his successors, who have applied his method with the most various results. The value and use of the method has been hardly, if at all, examined either by him or them. Secondly, they have extended almost indefinitely the scope of each separate dialogue; in this way they think that they have escaped all difficulties, not seeing that what they have gained in generality they have lost in truth and distinctness. Metaphysical conceptions easily pass into one another; and the simpler notions of antiquity, which we can only realize by an effort, imperceptibly blend with the more familiar theories of modern philosophers. An eye for proportion is needed (his own art of measuring) in the study of Plato, as well as of other great artists. We may hardly admit that the moral antithesis of good and pleasure, or the intellectual antithesis of knowledge and opinion, being and appearance, are never far off in a Platonic discussion. But because they are in the background, we should not bring them into the foreground, or expect to discern them equally in all the dialogues.
There may be some advantage in drawing out a little the main outlines of the building; but the use of this is limited, and may be easily exaggerated. We may give Plato too much system, and alter the natural form and connection of his thoughts. Under the idea that his dialogues are finished works of art, we may find a reason for everything, and lose the highest characteristic of art, which is simplicity. Most great works receive a new light from a new and original mind. But whether these new lights are true or only suggestive, will depend on their agreement with the spirit of Plato, and the amount of direct evidence which can be urged in support of them. When a theory is running away with us, criticism does a friendly office in counselling moderation, and recalling us to the indications of the text.
Like the Phaedrus, the Gorgias has puzzled students of Plato by the appearance of two or more subjects. Under the cover of rhetoric higher themes are introduced; the argument expands into a general view of the good and evil of man. After making an ineffectual attempt to obtain a sound definition of his art from Gorgias, Socrates assumes the existence of a universal art of flattery or simulation having several branches:—this is the genus of which rhetoric is only one, and not the highest species. To flattery is opposed the true and noble art of life which he who possesses seeks always to impart to others, and which at last triumphs, if not here, at any rate in another world. These two aspects of life and knowledge appear to be the two leading ideas of the dialogue. The true and the false in individuals and states, in the treatment of the soul as well as of the body, are conceived under the forms of true and false art. In the development of this opposition there arise various other questions, such as the two famous paradoxes of Socrates (paradoxes as they are to the world in general, ideals as they may be more worthily called):
(1) that to do is worse than to suffer evil; and
(2) that when a man has done evil he had better be punished than unpunished; to which may be added
(3) a third Socratic paradox or ideal, that bad men do what they think best, but not what they desire, for the desire of all is towards the good.
That pleasure is to be distinguished from good is proved by the simultaneousness of pleasure and pain, and by the possibility of the bad having in certain cases pleasures as great as those of the good, or even greater. Not merely rhetoricians, but poets, musicians, and other artists, the whole tribe of statesmen, past as well as present, are included in the class of flatterers. The true and false finally appear before the judgment-seat of the gods below.
The dialogue naturally falls into three divisions, to which the three characters of Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles respectively correspond; and the form and manner change with the stages of the argument. Socrates is deferential towards Gorgias, playful and yet cutting in dealing with the youthful Polus, ironical and sarcastic in his encounter with Callicles. In the first division the question is asked—What is rhetoric? To this there is no answer given, for Gorgias is soon made to contradict himself by Socrates, and the argument is transferred to the hands of his disciple Polus, who rushes to the defence of his master. The answer has at last to be given by Socrates himself, but before he can even explain his meaning to Polus, he must enlighten him upon the great subject of shams or flatteries. When Polus finds his favourite art reduced to the level of cookery, he replies that at any rate rhetoricians, like despots, have great power. Socrates denies that they have any real power, and hence arise the three paradoxes already mentioned. Although they are strange to him, Polus is at last convinced of their truth; at least, they seem to him to follow legitimately from the premises. Thus the second act of the dialogue closes. Then Callicles appears on the scene, at first maintaining that pleasure is good, and that might is right, and that law is nothing but the combination of the many weak against the few strong. When he is confuted he withdraws from the argument, and leaves Socrates to arrive at the conclusion by himself. The conclusion is that there are two kinds of statesmanship, a higher and a lower—that which makes the people better, and that which only flatters them, and he exhorts Callicles to choose the higher. The dialogue terminates with a mythus of a final judgment, in which there will be no more flattery or disguise, and no further use for the teaching of rhetoric.
The characters of the three interlocutors also correspond to the parts which are assigned to them. Gorgias is the great rhetorician, now advanced in years, who goes from city to city displaying his talents, and is celebrated throughout Greece. Like all the Sophists in the dialogues of Plato, he is vain and boastful, yet he has also a certain dignity, and is treated by Socrates with considerable respect. But he is no match for him in dialectics. Although he has been teaching rhetoric all his life, he is still incapable of defining his own art. When his ideas begin to clear up, he is unwilling to admit that rhetoric can be wholly separated from justice and injustice, and this lingering sentiment of morality, or regard for public opinion, enables Socrates to detect him in a contradiction. Like Protagoras, he is described as of a generous nature; he expresses his approbation of Socrates’ manner of approaching a question; he is quite “one of Socrates’ sort, ready to be refuted as well as to refute,” and very eager that Callicles and Socrates should have the game out. He knows by experience that rhetoric exercises great influence over other men, but he is unable to explain the puzzle how rhetoric can teach everything and know nothing.
Polus is an impetuous youth, a runaway “colt,” as Socrates describes him, who wanted originally to have taken the place of Gorgias under the pretext that the old man was tired, and now avails himself of the earliest opportunity to enter the lists. He is said to be the author of a work on rhetoric, and is again mentioned in the Phaedrus, as the inventor of balanced or double forms of speech (compare Gorgias; Symposium). At first he is violent and ill-mannered, and is angry at seeing his master overthrown. But in the judicious hands of Socrates he is soon restored to good-humour, and compelled to assent to the required conclusion. Like Gorgias, he is overthrown because he compromises; he is unwilling to say that to do is fairer or more honourable than to suffer injustice. Though he is fascinated by the power of rhetoric, and dazzled by the splendour of success, he is not insensible to higher arguments. Plato may have felt that there would be an incongruity in a youth maintaining the cause of injustice against the world. He has never heard the other side of the question, and he listens to the paradoxes, as they appear to him, of Socrates with evident astonishment. He can hardly understand the meaning of Archelaus being miserable, or of rhetoric being only useful in self-accusation. When the argument with him has fairly run out.
Callicles, in whose house they are assembled, is introduced on the stage: he is with difficulty convinced that Socrates is in earnest; for if these things are true, then, as he says with real emotion, the foundations of society are upside down. In him another type of character is represented; he is neither sophist nor philosopher, but man of the world, and an accomplished Athenian gentleman. He might be described in modern language as a cynic or materialist, a lover of power and also of pleasure, and unscrupulous in his means of attaining both. There is no desire on his part to offer any compromise in the interests of morality; nor is any concession made by him. Like Thrasymachus in the Republic, though he is not of the same weak and vulgar class, he consistently maintains that might is right. His great motive of action is political ambition; in this he is characteristically Greek. Like Anytus in the Meno, he is the enemy of the Sophists; but favours the new art of rhetoric, which he regards as an excellent weapon of attack and defence. He is a despiser of mankind as he is of philosophy, and sees in the laws of the state only a violation of the order of nature, which intended that the stronger should govern the weaker (compare Republic). Like other men of the world who are of a speculative turn of mind, he generalizes the bad side of human nature, and has easily brought down his principles to his practice. Philosophy and poetry alike supply him with distinctions suited to his view of human life. He has a good will to Socrates, whose talents he evidently admires, while he censures the puerile use which he makes of them. He expresses a keen intellectual interest in the argument. Like Anytus, again, he has a sympathy with other men of the world; the Athenian statesmen of a former generation, who showed no weakness and made no mistakes, such as Miltiades, Themistocles, Pericles, are his favourites. His ideal of human character is a man of great passions and great powers, which he has developed to the utmost, and which he uses in his own enjoyment and in the government of others. Had Critias been the name instead of Callicles, about whom we know nothing from other sources, the opinions of the man would have seemed to reflect the history of his life.
And now the combat deepens. In Callicles, far more than in any sophist or rhetorician, is concentrated the spirit of evil against which Socrates is contending, the spirit of the world, the spirit of the many contending against the one wise man, of which the Sophists, as he describes them in the Republic, are the imitators rather than the authors, being themselves carried away by the great tide of public opinion. Socrates approaches his antagonist warily from a distance, with a sort of irony which touches with a light hand both his personal vices (probably in allusion to some scandal of the day) and his servility to the populace. At the same time, he is in most profound earnest, as Chaerephon remarks. Callicles soon loses his temper, but the more he is irritated, the more provoking and matter of fact does Socrates become. A repartee of his which appears to have been really made to the “omniscient” Hippias, according to the testimony of Xenophon (Memorabilia), is introduced. He is called by Callicles a popular declaimer, and certainly shows that he has the power, in the words of Gorgias, of being “as long as he pleases,” or “as short as he pleases” (compare Protagoras). Callicles exhibits great ability in defending himself and attacking Socrates, whom he accuses of trifling and word-splitting; he is scandalized that the legitimate consequences of his own argument should be stated in plain terms; after the manner of men of the world, he wishes to preserve the decencies of life. But he cannot consistently maintain the bad sense of words; and getting confused between the abstract notions of better, superior, stronger, he is easily turned round by Socrates, and only induced to continue the argument by the authority of Gorgias. Once, when Socrates is describing the manner in which the ambitious citizen has to identify himself with the people, he partially recognizes the truth of his words.
The Socrates of the Gorgias may be compared with the Socrates of the Protagoras and Meno. As in other dialogues, he is the enemy of the Sophists and rhetoricians; and also of the statesmen, whom he regards as another variety of the same species. His behaviour is governed by that of his opponents; the least forwardness or egotism on their part is met by a corresponding irony on the part of Socrates. He must speak, for philosophy will not allow him to be silent. He is indeed more ironical and provoking than in any other of Plato’s writings: for he is “fooled to the top of his bent” by the worldliness of Callicles. But he is also more deeply in earnest. He rises higher than even in the Phaedo and Crito: at first enveloping his moral convictions in a cloud of dust and dialectics, he ends by losing his method, his life, himself, in them. As in the Protagoras and Phaedrus, throwing aside the veil of irony, he makes a speech, but, true to his character, not until his adversary has refused to answer any more questions. The presentiment of his own fate is hanging over him. He is aware that Socrates, the single real teacher of politics, as he ventures to call himself, cannot safely go to war with the whole world, and that in the courts of earth he will be condemned. But he will be justified in the world below. Then the position of Socrates and Callicles will be reversed; all those things “unfit for ears polite” which Callicles has prophesied as likely to happen to him in this life, the insulting language, the box on the ears, will recoil upon his assailant. (Compare Republic, and the similar reversal of the position of the lawyer and the philosopher in the Theaetetus).
There is an interesting allusion to his own behaviour at the trial of the generals after the battle of Arginusae, which he ironically attributes to his ignorance of the manner in which a vote of the assembly should be taken. This is said to have happened “last year” (406 BCE), and therefore the assumed date of the dialogue has been fixed at 405 BCE, when Socrates would already have been an old man. The date is clearly marked, but is scarcely reconcilable with another indication of time, viz. the “recent” usurpation of Archelaus, which occurred in the year 413 BCE; and still less with the “recent” death of Pericles, who really died twenty-four years previously (429 BCE) and is afterwards reckoned among the statesmen of a past age; or with the mention of Nicias, who died in 413 BCE, and is nevertheless spoken of as a living witness. But we shall hereafter have reason to observe, that although there is a general consistency of times and persons in the Dialogues of Plato, a precise dramatic date is an invention of his commentators (Preface to Republic).
The conclusion of the Dialogue is remarkable,
(1) for the truly characteristic declaration of Socrates that he is ignorant of the true nature and bearing of these things, while he affirms at the same time that no one can maintain any other view without being ridiculous. The profession of ignorance reminds us of the earlier and more exclusively Socratic Dialogues. But neither in them, nor in the Apology, nor in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, does Socrates express any doubt of the fundamental truths of morality. He evidently regards this “among the multitude of questions” which agitate human life “as the principle which alone remains unshaken.” He does not insist here, any more than in the Phaedo, on the literal truth of the myth, but only on the soundness of the doctrine which is contained in it, that doing wrong is worse than suffering, and that a man should be rather than seem; for the next best thing to a man’s being just is that he should be corrected and become just; also that he should avoid all flattery, whether of himself or of others; and that rhetoric should be employed for the maintenance of the right only. The revelation of another life is a recapitulation of the argument in a figure.
(2) Socrates makes the singular remark, that he is himself the only true politician of his age. In other passages, especially in the Apology, he disclaims being a politician at all. There he is convinced that he or any other good man who attempted to resist the popular will would be put to death before he had done any good to himself or others. Here he anticipates such a fate for himself, from the fact that he is “the only man of the present day who performs his public duties at all.” The two points of view are not really inconsistent, but the difference between them is worth noticing: Socrates is and is not a public man. Not in the ordinary sense, like Alcibiades or Pericles, but in a higher one; and this will sooner or later entail the same consequences on him. He cannot be a private man if he would; neither can he separate morals from politics. Nor is he unwilling to be a politician, although he foresees the dangers which await him; but he must first become a better and wiser man, for he as well as Callicles is in a state of perplexity and uncertainty. And yet there is an inconsistency: for should not Socrates too have taught the citizens better than to put him to death?
And now, as he himself says, we will “resume the argument from the beginning.”
Socrates, who is attended by his inseparable disciple, Chaerephon, meets Callicles in the streets of Athens. He is informed that he has just missed an exhibition of Gorgias, which he regrets, because he was desirous, not of hearing Gorgias display his rhetoric, but of interrogating him concerning the nature of his art. Callicles proposes that they shall go with him to his own house, where Gorgias is staying. There they find the great rhetorician and his younger friend and disciple Polus.
SOCRATES: Put the question to him, Chaerephon.
CHAEREPHON: What question?
SOCRATES: Who is he?—such a question as would elicit from a man the answer, “I am a cobbler.”
Polus suggests that Gorgias may be tired, and desires to answer for him. “Who is Gorgias?” asks Chaerephon, imitating the manner of his master Socrates. “One of the best of men, and a proficient in the best and noblest of experimental arts,” etc., replies Polus, in rhetorical and balanced phrases. Socrates is dissatisfied at the length and unmeaningness of the answer; he tells the disconcerted volunteer that he has mistaken the quality for the nature of the art, and remarks to Gorgias, that Polus has learnt how to make a speech, but not how to answer a question. He wishes that Gorgias would answer him. Gorgias is willing enough, and replies to the question asked by Chaerephon,—that he is a rhetorician, and in Homeric language, “boasts himself to be a good one.” At the request of Socrates he promises to be brief; for “he can be as long as he pleases, and as short as he pleases.” Socrates would have him bestow his length on others, and proceeds to ask him a number of questions, which are answered by him to his own great satisfaction, and with a brevity which excites the admiration of Socrates. The result of the discussion may be summed up as follows:—
Rhetoric treats of discourse; but music and medicine, and other particular arts, are also concerned with discourse; in what way then does rhetoric differ from them? Gorgias draws a distinction between the arts which deal with words, and the arts which have to do with external actions. Socrates extends this distinction further, and divides all productive arts into two classes:
(1) arts which may be carried on in silence; and
(2) arts which have to do with words, or in which words are coextensive with action, such as arithmetic, geometry, rhetoric.
But still Gorgias could hardly have meant to say that arithmetic was the same as rhetoric. Even in the arts which are concerned with words there are differences. What then distinguishes rhetoric from the other arts which have to do with words? “The words which rhetoric uses relate to the best and greatest of human things.” But tell me, Gorgias, what are the best? “Health first, beauty next, wealth third,” in the words of the old song, or how would you rank them? The arts will come to you in a body, each claiming precedence and saying that her own good is superior to that of the rest—How will you choose between them? “I should say, Socrates, that the art of persuasion, which gives freedom to all men, and to individuals power in the state, is the greatest good.” But what is the exact nature of this persuasion?—is the persevering retort: You could not describe Zeuxis as a painter, or even as a painter of figures, if there were other painters of figures; neither can you define rhetoric simply as an art of persuasion, because there are other arts which persuade, such as arithmetic, which is an art of persuasion about odd and even numbers. Gorgias is made to see the necessity of a further limitation, and he now defines rhetoric as the art of persuading in the law courts, and in the assembly, about the just and unjust. But still there are two sorts of persuasion: one which gives knowledge, and another which gives belief without knowledge; and knowledge is always true, but belief may be either true or false,—there is therefore a further question: which of the two sorts of persuasion does rhetoric effect in courts of law and assemblies? Plainly that which gives belief and not that which gives knowledge; for no one can impart a real knowledge of such matters to a crowd of persons in a few minutes. And there is another point to be considered:—when the assembly meets to advise about walls or docks or military expeditions, the rhetorician is not taken into counsel, but the architect, or the general. How would Gorgias explain this phenomenon? All who intend to become disciples, of whom there are several in the company, and not Socrates only, are eagerly asking:—About what then will rhetoric teach us to persuade or advise the state?
Gorgias illustrates the nature of rhetoric by adducing the example of Themistocles, who persuaded the Athenians to build their docks and walls, and of Pericles, whom Socrates himself has heard speaking about the middle wall of the Piraeus. He adds that he has exercised a similar power over the patients of his brother Herodicus. He could be chosen a physician by the assembly if he pleased, for no physician could compete with a rhetorician in popularity and influence. He could persuade the multitude of anything by the power of his rhetoric; not that the rhetorician ought to abuse this power any more than a boxer should abuse the art of self-defence. Rhetoric is a good thing, but, like all good things, may be unlawfully used. Neither is the teacher of the art to be deemed unjust because his pupils are unjust and make a bad use of the lessons which they have learned from him.
Socrates would like to know before he replies, whether Gorgias will quarrel with him if he points out a slight inconsistency into which he has fallen, or whether he, like himself, is one who loves to be refuted. Gorgias declares that he is quite one of his sort, but fears that the argument may be tedious to the company. The company cheer, and Chaerephon and Callicles exhort them to proceed. Socrates gently points out the supposed inconsistency into which Gorgias appears to have fallen, and which he is inclined to think may arise out of a misapprehension of his own. The rhetorician has been declared by Gorgias to be more persuasive to the ignorant than the physician, or any other expert. And he is said to be ignorant, and this ignorance of his is regarded by Gorgias as a happy condition, for he has escaped the trouble of learning. But is he as ignorant of just and unjust as he is of medicine or building? Gorgias is compelled to admit that if he did not know them previously he must learn them from his teacher as a part of the art of rhetoric. But he who has learned carpentry is a carpenter, and he who has learned music is a musician, and he who has learned justice is just. The rhetorician then must be a just man, and rhetoric is a just thing. But Gorgias has already admitted the opposite of this, viz. that rhetoric may be abused, and that the rhetorician may act unjustly. How is the inconsistency to be explained?
The fallacy of this argument is twofold; for in the first place, a man may know justice and not be just—here is the old confusion of the arts and the virtues;—nor can any teacher be expected to counteract wholly the bent of natural character; and secondly, a man may have a degree of justice, but not sufficient to prevent him from ever doing wrong. Polus is naturally exasperated at the sophism, which he is unable to detect; of course, he says, the rhetorician, like every one else, will admit that he knows justice (how can he do otherwise when pressed by the interrogations of Socrates?), but he thinks that great want of manners is shown in bringing the argument to such a pass. Socrates ironically replies, that when old men trip, the young set them on their legs again; and he is quite willing to retract, if he can be shown to be in error, but upon one condition, which is that Polus studies brevity. Polus is in great indignation at not being allowed to use as many words as he pleases in the free state of Athens. Socrates retorts, that yet harder will be his own case, if he is compelled to stay and listen to them. After some altercation they agree (compare Protagoras), that Polus shall ask and Socrates answer.
“What is the art of Rhetoric?” says Polus. Not an art at all, replies Socrates, but a thing which in your book you affirm to have created art. Polus asks, “What thing?” and Socrates answers, An experience or routine of making a sort of delight or gratification. “But is not rhetoric a fine thing?” I have not yet told you what rhetoric is. Will you ask me another question—What is cookery? “What is cookery?” An experience or routine of making a sort of delight or gratification. Then they are the same, or rather fall under the same class, and rhetoric has still to be distinguished from cookery. “What is rhetoric?” asks Polus once more. A part of a not very creditable whole, which may be termed flattery, is the reply. “But what part?” A shadow of a part of politics. This, as might be expected, is wholly unintelligible, both to Gorgias and Polus; and, in order to explain his meaning to them, Socrates draws a distinction between shadows or appearances and realities; e.g. there is real health of body or soul, and the appearance of them; real arts and sciences, and the simulations of them. Now the soul and body have two arts waiting upon them, first the art of politics, which attends on the soul, having a legislative part and a judicial part; and another art attending on the body, which has no generic name, but may also be described as having two divisions, one of which is medicine and the other gymnastic. Corresponding with these four arts or sciences there are four shams or simulations of them, mere experiences, as they may be termed, because they give no reason of their own existence. The art of dressing up is the sham or simulation of gymnastic, the art of cookery, of medicine; rhetoric is the simulation of justice, and sophistic of legislation. They may be summed up in an arithmetical formula:—
Tiring: gymnastic:: cookery: medicine:: sophistic: legislation.
And,
Cookery: medicine:: rhetoric: the art of justice.
And this is the true scheme of them, but when measured only by the gratification which they procure, they become jumbled together and return to their aboriginal chaos. Socrates apologizes for the length of his speech, which was necessary to the explanation of the subject, and begs Polus not unnecessarily to retaliate on him.
“Do you mean to say that the rhetoricians are esteemed flatterers?” They are not esteemed at all. “Why, have they not great power, and can they not do whatever they desire?” They have no power, and they only do what they think best, and never what they desire; for they never attain the true object of desire, which is the good. “As if you, Socrates, would not envy the possessor of despotic power, who can imprison, exile, kill any one whom he pleases.” But Socrates replies that he has no wish to put any one to death; he who kills another, even justly, is not to be envied, and he who kills him unjustly is to be pitied; it is better to suffer than to do injustice. He does not consider that going about with a dagger and putting men out of the way, or setting a house on fire, is real power. To this Polus assents, on the ground that such acts would be punished, but he is still of opinion that evil-doers, if they are unpunished, may be happy enough. He instances Archelaus, son of Perdiccas, the usurper of Macedonia. Does not Socrates think him happy?—Socrates would like to know more about him; he cannot pronounce even the great king to be happy, unless he knows his mental and moral condition. Polus explains that Archelaus was a slave, being the son of a woman who was the slave of Alcetas, brother of Perdiccas king of Macedon—and he, by every species of crime, first murdering his uncle and then his cousin and half-brother, obtained the kingdom. This was very wicked, and yet all the world, including Socrates, would like to have his place. Socrates dismisses the appeal to numbers; Polus, if he will, may summon all the rich men of Athens, Nicias and his brothers, Aristocrates, the house of Pericles, or any other great family—this is the kind of evidence which is adduced in courts of justice, where truth depends upon numbers. But Socrates employs proof of another sort; his appeal is to one witness only,—that is to say, the person with whom he is speaking; him he will convict out of his own mouth. And he is prepared to show, after his manner, that Archelaus cannot be a wicked man and yet happy.
The evil-doer is deemed happy if he escapes, and miserable if he suffers punishment; but Socrates thinks him less miserable if he suffers than if he escapes. Polus is of opinion that such a paradox as this hardly deserves refutation, and is at any rate sufficiently refuted by the fact. Socrates has only to compare the lot of the successful tyrant who is the envy of the world, and of the wretch who, having been detected in a criminal attempt against the state, is crucified or burnt to death. Socrates replies, that if they are both criminal they are both miserable, but that the unpunished is the more miserable of the two. At this Polus laughs outright, which leads Socrates to remark that laughter is a new species of refutation. Polus replies, that he is already refuted; for if he will take the votes of the company, he will find that no one agrees with him. To this Socrates rejoins, that he is not a public man, and (referring to his own conduct at the trial of the generals after the battle of Arginusae) is unable to take the suffrages of any company, as he had shown on a recent occasion; he can only deal with one witness at a time, and that is the person with whom he is arguing. But he is certain that in the opinion of any man to do is worse than to suffer evil.
Polus, though he will not admit this, is ready to acknowledge that to do evil is considered the more foul or dishonourable of the two. But what is fair and what is foul; whether the terms are applied to bodies, colours, figures, laws, habits, studies, must they not be defined with reference to pleasure and utility? Polus assents to this latter doctrine, and is easily persuaded that the fouler of two things must exceed either in pain or in hurt. But the doing cannot exceed the suffering of evil in pain, and therefore must exceed in hurt. Thus doing is proved by the testimony of Polus himself to be worse or more hurtful than suffering.
There remains the other question: Is a guilty man better off when he is punished or when he is unpunished? Socrates replies, that what is done justly is suffered justly: if the act is just, the effect is just; if to punish is just, to be punished is just, and therefore fair, and therefore beneficent; and the benefit is that the soul is improved. There are three evils from which a man may suffer, and which affect him in estate, body, and soul;—these are, poverty, disease, injustice; and the foulest of these is injustice, the evil of the soul, because that brings the greatest hurt. And there are three arts which heal these evils—trading, medicine, justice—and the fairest of these is justice. Happy is he who has never committed injustice, and happy in the second degree he who has been healed by punishment. And therefore the criminal should himself go to the judge as he would to the physician, and purge away his crime. Rhetoric will enable him to display his guilt in proper colours, and to sustain himself and others in enduring the necessary penalty. And similarly if a man has an enemy, he will desire not to punish him, but that he shall go unpunished and become worse and worse, taking care only that he does no injury to himself. These are at least conceivable uses of the art, and no others have been discovered by us.
Here Callicles, who has been listening in silent amazement, asks Chaerephon whether Socrates is in earnest, and on receiving the assurance that he is, proceeds to ask the same question of Socrates himself. For if such doctrines are true, life must have been turned upside down, and all of us are doing the opposite of what we ought to be doing.
Socrates replies in a style of playful irony, that before men can understand one another they must have some common feeling. And such a community of feeling exists between himself and Callicles, for both of them are lovers, and they have both a pair of loves; the beloved of Callicles are the Athenian Demos and Demos the son of Pyrilampes; the beloved of Socrates are Alcibiades and philosophy. The peculiarity of Callicles is that he can never contradict his loves; he changes as his Demos changes in all his opinions; he watches the countenance of both his loves, and repeats their sentiments, and if any one is surprised at his sayings and doings, the explanation of them is, that he is not a free agent, but must always be imitating his two loves. And this is the explanation of Socrates’ peculiarities also. He is always repeating what his mistress, Philosophy, is saying to him, who unlike his other love, Alcibiades, is ever the same, ever true. Callicles must refute her, or he will never be at unity with himself; and discord in life is far worse than the discord of musical sounds.
Callicles answers, that Gorgias was overthrown because, as Polus said, in compliance with popular prejudice he had admitted that if his pupil did not know justice the rhetorician must teach him; and Polus has been similarly entangled, because his modesty led him to admit that to suffer is more honourable than to do injustice. By custom “yes,” but not by nature, says Callicles. And Socrates is always playing between the two points of view, and putting one in the place of the other. In this very argument, what Polus only meant in a conventional sense has been affirmed by him to be a law of nature. For convention says that “injustice is dishonourable,” but nature says that “might is right.” And we are always taming down the nobler spirits among us to the conventional level. But sometimes a great man will rise up and reassert his original rights, trampling under foot all our formularies, and then the light of natural justice shines forth. Pindar says, “Law, the king of all, does violence with high hand;” as is indeed proved by the example of Heracles, who drove off the oxen of Geryon and never paid for them.
This is the truth, Socrates, as you will be convinced, if you leave philosophy and pass on to the real business of life. A little philosophy is an excellent thing; too much is the ruin of a man. He who has not “passed his metaphysics” before he has grown up to manhood will never know the world. Philosophers are ridiculous when they take to politics, and I dare say that politicians are equally ridiculous when they take to philosophy: “Every man,” as Euripides says, “is fondest of that in which he is best.” Philosophy is graceful in youth, like the lisp of infancy, and should be cultivated as a part of education; but when a grown-up man lisps or studies philosophy, I should like to beat him. None of those over-refined natures ever come to any good; they avoid the busy haunts of men, and skulk in corners, whispering to a few admiring youths, and never giving utterance to any noble sentiments.
For you, Socrates, I have a regard, and therefore I say to you, as Zethus says to Amphion in the play, that you have “a noble soul disguised in a puerile exterior.” And I would have you consider the danger which you and other philosophers incur. For you would not know how to defend yourself if any one accused you in a law-court,—there you would stand, with gaping mouth and dizzy brain, and might be murdered, robbed, boxed on the ears with impunity. Take my advice, then, and get a little common sense; leave to others these frivolities; walk in the ways of the wealthy and be wise.
Socrates professes to have found in Callicles the philosopher’s touchstone; and he is certain that any opinion in which they both agree must be the very truth. Callicles has all the three qualities which are needed in a critic—knowledge, good-will, frankness; Gorgias and Polus, although learned men, were too modest, and their modesty made them contradict themselves. But Callicles is well-educated; and he is not too modest to speak out (of this he has already given proof), and his good-will is shown both by his own profession and by his giving the same caution against philosophy to Socrates, which Socrates remembers hearing him give long ago to his own clique of friends. He will pledge himself to retract any error into which he may have fallen, and which Callicles may point out. But he would like to know first of all what he and Pindar mean by natural justice. Do they suppose that the rule of justice is the rule of the stronger or of the better?” “There is no difference.” Then are not the many superior to the one, and the opinions of the many better? And their opinion is that justice is equality, and that to do is more dishonourable than to suffer wrong. And as they are the superior or stronger, this opinion of theirs must be in accordance with natural as well as conventional justice. “Why will you continue splitting words? Have I not told you that the superior is the better?” But what do you mean by the better? Tell me that, and please to be a little milder in your language, if you do not wish to drive me away. “I mean the worthier, the wiser.” You mean to say that one man of sense ought to rule over ten thousand fools? “Yes, that is my meaning.” Ought the physician then to have a larger share of meats and drinks? or the weaver to have more coats, or the cobbler larger shoes, or the farmer more seed? “You are always saying the same things, Socrates.” Yes, and on the same subjects too; but you are never saying the same things. For, first, you defined the superior to be the stronger, and then the wiser, and now something else;—what DO you mean? “I mean men of political ability, who ought to govern and to have more than the governed.” Than themselves? “What do you mean?” I mean to say that every man is his own governor. “I see that you mean those dolts, the temperate. But my doctrine is, that a man should let his desires grow, and take the means of satisfying them. To the many this is impossible, and therefore they combine to prevent him. But if he is a king, and has power, how base would he be in submitting to them! To invite the common herd to be lord over him, when he might have the enjoyment of all things! For the truth is, Socrates, that luxury and self-indulgence are virtue and happiness; all the rest is mere talk.”
Socrates compliments Callicles on his frankness in saying what other men only think. According to his view, those who want nothing are not happy. “Why,” says Callicles, “if they were, stones and the dead would be happy.” Socrates in reply is led into a half-serious, half-comic vein of reflection. “Who knows,” as Euripides says, “whether life may not be death, and death life?” Nay, there are philosophers who maintain that even in life we are dead, and that the body (soma) is the tomb (sema) of the soul. And some ingenious Sicilian has made an allegory, in which he represents fools as the uninitiated, who are supposed to be carrying water to a vessel, which is full of holes, in a similarly holey sieve, and this sieve is their own soul. The idea is fanciful, but nevertheless is a figure of a truth which I want to make you acknowledge, viz. that the life of contentment is better than the life of indulgence. Are you disposed to admit that? “Far otherwise.” Then hear another parable. The life of self-contentment and self-indulgence may be represented respectively by two men, who are filling jars with streams of wine, honey, milk,—the jars of the one are sound, and the jars of the other leaky; the first fills his jars, and has no more trouble with them; the second is always filling them, and would suffer extreme misery if he desisted. Are you of the same opinion still? “Yes, Socrates, and the figure expresses what I mean. For true pleasure is a perpetual stream, flowing in and flowing out. To be hungry and always eating, to be thirsty and always drinking, and to have all the other desires and to satisfy them, that, as I admit, is my idea of happiness.” And to be itching and always scratching? “I do not deny that there may be happiness even in that.” And to indulge unnatural desires, if they are abundantly satisfied? Callicles is indignant at the introduction of such topics. But he is reminded by Socrates that they are introduced, not by him, but by the maintainer of the identity of pleasure and good. Will Callicles still maintain this? “Yes, for the sake of consistency, he will.” The answer does not satisfy Socrates, who fears that he is losing his touchstone. A profession of seriousness on the part of Callicles reassures him, and they proceed with the argument. Pleasure and good are the same, but knowledge and courage are not the same either with pleasure or good, or with one another. Socrates disproves the first of these statements by showing that two opposites cannot coexist, but must alternate with one another—to be well and ill together is impossible. But pleasure and pain are simultaneous, and the cessation of them is simultaneous; e.g. in the case of drinking and thirsting, whereas good and evil are not simultaneous, and do not cease simultaneously, and therefore pleasure cannot be the same as good.
Callicles has already lost his temper, and can only be persuaded to go on by the interposition of Gorgias. Socrates, having already guarded against objections by distinguishing courage and knowledge from pleasure and good, proceeds:—The good are good by the presence of good, and the bad are bad by the presence of evil. And the brave and wise are good, and the cowardly and foolish are bad. And he who feels pleasure is good, and he who feels pain is bad, and both feel pleasure and pain in nearly the same degree, and sometimes the bad man or coward in a greater degree. Therefore the bad man or coward is as good as the brave or may be even better.
Callicles endeavours now to avert the inevitable absurdity by affirming that he and all mankind admitted some pleasures to be good and others bad. The good are the beneficial, and the bad are the hurtful, and we should choose the one and avoid the other. But this, as Socrates observes, is a return to the old doctrine of himself and Polus, that all things should be done for the sake of the good.
Callicles assents to this, and Socrates, finding that they are agreed in distinguishing pleasure from good, returns to his old division of empirical habits, or shams, or flatteries, which study pleasure only, and the arts which are concerned with the higher interests of soul and body. Does Callicles agree to this division? Callicles will agree to anything, in order that he may get through the argument. Which of the arts then are flatteries? Flute-playing, harp-playing, choral exhibitions, the dithyrambics of Cinesias are all equally condemned on the ground that they give pleasure only; and Meles the harp-player, who was the father of Cinesias, failed even in that. The stately muse of Tragedy is bent upon pleasure, and not upon improvement. Poetry in general is only a rhetorical address to a mixed audience of men, women, and children. And the orators are very far from speaking with a view to what is best; their way is to humour the assembly as if they were children.
Callicles replies, that this is only true of some of them; others have a real regard for their fellow-citizens. Granted; then there are two species of oratory; the one a flattery, another which has a real regard for the citizens. But where are the orators among whom you find the latter? Callicles admits that there are none remaining, but there were such in the days when Themistocles, Cimon, Miltiades, and the great Pericles were still alive. Socrates replies that none of these were true artists, setting before themselves the duty of bringing order out of disorder. The good man and true orator has a settled design, running through his life, to which he conforms all his words and actions; he desires to implant justice and eradicate injustice, to implant all virtue and eradicate all vice in the minds of his citizens. He is the physician who will not allow the sick man to indulge his appetites with a variety of meats and drinks, but insists on his exercising self-restraint. And this is good for the soul, and better than the unrestrained indulgence which Callicles was recently approving.
Here Callicles, who had been with difficulty brought to this point, turns restive, and suggests that Socrates shall answer his own questions. “Then,” says Socrates, “one man must do for two;” and though he had hoped to have given Callicles an “Amphion” in return for his “Zethus,” he is willing to proceed; at the same time, he hopes that Callicles will correct him, if he falls into error. He recapitulates the advantages which he has already won:—
The pleasant is not the same as the good—Callicles and I are agreed about that,—but pleasure is to be pursued for the sake of the good, and the good is that of which the presence makes us good; we and all things good have acquired some virtue or other. And virtue, whether of body or soul, of things or persons, is not attained by accident, but is due to order and harmonious arrangement. And the soul which has order is better than the soul which is without order, and is therefore temperate and is therefore good, and the intemperate is bad. And he who is temperate is also just and brave and pious, and has attained the perfection of goodness and therefore of happiness, and the intemperate whom you approve is the opposite of all this and is wretched. He therefore who would be happy must pursue temperance and avoid intemperance, and if possible escape the necessity of punishment, but if he have done wrong he must endure punishment. In this way states and individuals should seek to attain harmony, which, as the wise tell us, is the bond of heaven and earth, of gods and men. Callicles has never discovered the power of geometrical proportion in both worlds; he would have men aim at disproportion and excess. But if he be wrong in this, and if self-control is the true secret of happiness, then the paradox is true that the only use of rhetoric is in self-accusation, and Polus was right in saying that to do wrong is worse than to suffer wrong, and Gorgias was right in saying that the rhetorician must be a just man. And you were wrong in taunting me with my defenceless condition, and in saying that I might be accused or put to death or boxed on the ears with impunity. For I may repeat once more, that to strike is worse than to be stricken—to do than to suffer. What I said then is now made fast in adamantine bonds. I myself know not the true nature of these things, but I know that no one can deny my words and not be ridiculous. To do wrong is the greatest of evils, and to suffer wrong is the next greatest evil. He who would avoid the last must be a ruler, or the friend of a ruler; and to be the friend he must be the equal of the ruler, and must also resemble him. Under his protection he will suffer no evil, but will he also do no evil? Nay, will he not rather do all the evil which he can and escape? And in this way the greatest of all evils will befall him. “But this imitator of the tyrant,” rejoins Callicles, “will kill any one who does not similarly imitate him.” Socrates replies that he is not deaf, and that he has heard that repeated many times, and can only reply, that a bad man will kill a good one. “Yes, and that is the provoking thing.” Not provoking to a man of sense who is not studying the arts which will preserve him from danger; and this, as you say, is the use of rhetoric in courts of justice. But how many other arts are there which also save men from death, and are yet quite humble in their pretensions—such as the art of swimming, or the art of the pilot? Does not the pilot do men at least as much service as the rhetorician, and yet for the voyage from Aegina to Athens he does not charge more than two obols, and when he disembarks is quite unassuming in his demeanour? The reason is that he is not certain whether he has done his passengers any good in saving them from death, if one of them is diseased in body, and still more if he is diseased in mind—who can say? The engineer too will often save whole cities, and yet you despise him, and would not allow your son to marry his daughter, or his son to marry yours. But what reason is there in this? For if virtue only means the saving of life, whether your own or another’s, you have no right to despise him or any practiser of saving arts. But is not virtue something different from saving and being saved? I would have you rather consider whether you ought not to disregard length of life, and think only how you can live best, leaving all besides to the will of Heaven. For you must not expect to have influence either with the Athenian Demos or with Demos the son of Pyrilampes, unless you become like them. What do you say to this?
“There is some truth in what you are saying, but I do not entirely believe you.”
That is because you are in love with Demos. But let us have a little more conversation. You remember the two processes—one which was directed to pleasure, the other which was directed to making men as good as possible. And those who have the care of the city should make the citizens as good as possible. But who would undertake a public building, if he had never had a teacher of the art of building, and had never constructed a building before? or who would undertake the duty of state-physician, if he had never cured either himself or any one else? Should we not examine him before we entrusted him with the office? And as Callicles is about to enter public life, should we not examine him? Whom has he made better? For we have already admitted that this is the statesman’s proper business. And we must ask the same question about Pericles, and Cimon, and Miltiades, and Themistocles. Whom did they make better? Nay, did not Pericles make the citizens worse? For he gave them pay, and at first he was very popular with them, but at last they condemned him to death. Yet surely he would be a bad tamer of animals who, having received them gentle, taught them to kick and butt, and man is an animal; and Pericles who had the charge of man only made him wilder, and more savage and unjust, and therefore he could not have been a good statesman. The same tale might be repeated about Cimon, Themistocles, Miltiades. But the charioteer who keeps his seat at first is not thrown out when he gains greater experience and skill. The inference is, that the statesman of a past age were no better than those of our own. They may have been cleverer constructors of docks and harbours, but they did not improve the character of the citizens. I have told you again and again (and I purposely use the same images) that the soul, like the body, may be treated in two ways—there is the meaner and the higher art. You seemed to understand what I said at the time, but when I ask you who were the really good statesmen, you answer—as if I asked you who were the good trainers, and you answered, Thearion, the baker, Mithoecus, the author of the Sicilian cookery-book, Sarambus, the vintner. And you would be affronted if I told you that these are a parcel of cooks who make men fat only to make them thin. And those whom they have fattened applaud them, instead of finding fault with them, and lay the blame of their subsequent disorders on their physicians. In this respect, Callicles, you are like them; you applaud the statesmen of old, who pandered to the vices of the citizens, and filled the city with docks and harbours, but neglected virtue and justice. And when the fit of illness comes, the citizens who in like manner applauded Themistocles, Pericles, and others, will lay hold of you and my friend Alcibiades, and you will suffer for the misdeeds of your predecessors. The old story is always being repeated—“after all his services, the ungrateful city banished him, or condemned him to death.” As if the statesman should not have taught the city better! He surely cannot blame the state for having unjustly used him, any more than the sophist or teacher can find fault with his pupils if they cheat him. And the sophist and orator are in the same case; although you admire rhetoric and despise sophistic, whereas sophistic is really the higher of the two. The teacher of the arts takes money, but the teacher of virtue or politics takes no money, because this is the only kind of service which makes the disciple desirous of requiting his teacher.
Socrates concludes by finally asking, to which of the two modes of serving the state Callicles invites him:—“to the inferior and ministerial one,” is the ingenuous reply. That is the only way of avoiding death, replies Socrates; and he has heard often enough, and would rather not hear again, that the bad man will kill the good. But he thinks that such a fate is very likely reserved for him, because he remarks that he is the only person who teaches the true art of politics. And very probably, as in the case which he described to Polus, he may be the physician who is tried by a jury of children. He cannot say that he has procured the citizens any pleasure, and if any one charges him with perplexing them, or with reviling their elders, he will not be able to make them understand that he has only been actuated by a desire for their good. And therefore there is no saying what his fate may be. “And do you think that a man who is unable to help himself is in a good condition?” Yes, Callicles, if he have the true self-help, which is never to have said or done any wrong to himself or others. If I had not this kind of self-help, I should be ashamed; but if I die for want of your flattering rhetoric, I shall die in peace. For death is no evil, but to go to the world below laden with offences is the worst of evils. In proof of which I will tell you a tale:—
Under the rule of Cronos, men were judged on the day of their death, and when judgment had been given upon them they departed—the good to the islands of the blest, the bad to the house of vengeance. But as they were still living, and had their clothes on at the time when they were being judged, there was favouritism, and Zeus, when he came to the throne, was obliged to alter the mode of procedure, and try them after death, having first sent down Prometheus to take away from them the foreknowledge of death. Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus were appointed to be the judges; Rhadamanthus for Asia, Aeacus for Europe, and Minos was to hold the court of appeal. Now death is the separation of soul and body, but after death soul and body alike retain their characteristics; the fat man, the dandy, the branded slave, are all distinguishable. Some prince or potentate, perhaps even the great king himself, appears before Rhadamanthus, and he instantly detects him, though he knows not who he is; he sees the scars of perjury and iniquity, and sends him away to the house of torment.
For there are two classes of souls who undergo punishment—the curable and the incurable. The curable are those who are benefited by their punishment; the incurable are such as Archelaus, who benefit others by becoming a warning to them. The latter class are generally kings and potentates; meaner persons, happily for themselves, have not the same power of doing injustice. Sisyphus and Tityus, not Thersites, are supposed by Homer to be undergoing everlasting punishment. Not that there is anything to prevent a great man from being a good one, as is shown by the famous example of Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus. But to Rhadamanthus the souls are only known as good or bad; they are stripped of their dignities and preferments; he despatches the bad to Tartarus, labelled either as curable or incurable, and looks with love and admiration on the soul of some just one, whom he sends to the islands of the blest. Similar is the practice of Aeacus; and Minos overlooks them, holding a golden sceptre, as Odysseus in Homer saw him
“Wielding a sceptre of gold, and giving laws to the dead.”
My wish for myself and my fellow-men is, that we may present our souls undefiled to the judge in that day; my desire in life is to be able to meet death. And I exhort you, and retort upon you the reproach which you cast upon me,—that you will stand before the judge, gaping, and with dizzy brain, and any one may box you on the ear, and do you all manner of evil.
Perhaps you think that this is an old wives’ fable. But you, who are the three wisest men in Hellas, have nothing better to say, and no one will ever show that to do is better than to suffer evil. A man should study to be, and not merely to seem. If he is bad, he should become good, and avoid all flattery, whether of the many or of the few.
Follow me, then; and if you are looked down upon, that will do you no harm. And when we have practised virtue, we will betake ourselves to politics, but not until we are delivered from the shameful state of ignorance and uncertainty in which we are at present. Let us follow in the way of virtue and justice, and not in the way to which you, Callicles, invite us; for that way is nothing worth.
We will now consider in order some of the principal points of the dialogue. Having regard
(1) to the age of Plato and the ironical character of his writings, we may compare him with himself, and with other great teachers, and we may note in passing the objections of his critics. And then
(2) casting one eye upon him, we may cast another upon ourselves, and endeavour to draw out the great lessons which he teaches for all time, stripped of the accidental form in which they are enveloped.
(1) In the Gorgias, as in nearly all the other dialogues of Plato, we are made aware that formal logic has as yet no existence. The old difficulty of framing a definition recurs. The illusive analogy of the arts and the virtues also continues. The ambiguity of several words, such as nature, custom, the honourable, the good, is not cleared up. The Sophists are still floundering about the distinction of the real and seeming. Figures of speech are made the basis of arguments. The possibility of conceiving a universal art or science, which admits of application to a particular subject-matter, is a difficulty which remains unsolved, and has not altogether ceased to haunt the world at the present day (compare Charmides). The defect of clearness is also apparent in Socrates himself, unless we suppose him to be practising on the simplicity of his opponent, or rather perhaps trying an experiment in dialectics. Nothing can be more fallacious than the contradiction which he pretends to have discovered in the answers of Gorgias (see above). The advantages which he gains over Polus are also due to a false antithesis of pleasure and good, and to an erroneous assertion that an agent and a patient may be described by similar predicates;—a mistake which Aristotle partly shares and partly corrects in the Nicomachean Ethics. Traces of a “robust sophistry” are likewise discernible in his argument with Callicles.
(2) Although Socrates professes to be convinced by reason only, yet the argument is often a sort of dialectical fiction, by which he conducts himself and others to his own ideal of life and action. And we may sometimes wish that we could have suggested answers to his antagonists, or pointed out to them the rocks which lay concealed under the ambiguous terms good, pleasure, and the like. But it would be as useless to examine his arguments by the requirements of modern logic, as to criticise this ideal from a merely utilitarian point of view. If we say that the ideal is generally regarded as unattainable, and that mankind will by no means agree in thinking that the criminal is happier when punished than when unpunished, any more than they would agree to the stoical paradox that a man may be happy on the rack, Plato has already admitted that the world is against him. Neither does he mean to say that Archelaus is tormented by the stings of conscience; or that the sensations of the impaled criminal are more agreeable than those of the tyrant drowned in luxurious enjoyment. Neither is he speaking, as in the Protagoras, of virtue as a calculation of pleasure, an opinion which he afterwards repudiates in the Phaedo. What then is his meaning? His meaning we shall be able to illustrate best by parallel notions, which, whether justifiable by logic or not, have always existed among mankind. We must remind the reader that Socrates himself implies that he will be understood or appreciated by very few.
He is speaking not of the consciousness of happiness, but of the idea of happiness. When a martyr dies in a good cause, when a soldier falls in battle, we do not suppose that death or wounds are without pain, or that their physical suffering is always compensated by a mental satisfaction. Still we regard them as happy, and we would a thousand times rather have their death than a shameful life. Nor is this only because we believe that they will obtain an immortality of fame, or that they will have crowns of glory in another world, when their enemies and persecutors will be proportionably tormented. Men are found in a few instances to do what is right, without reference to public opinion or to consequences. And we regard them as happy on this ground only, much as Socrates’ friends in the opening of the Phaedo are described as regarding him; or as was said of another, “they looked upon his face as upon the face of an angel.” We are not concerned to justify this idealism by the standard of utility or public opinion, but merely to point out the existence of such a sentiment in the better part of human nature.
The idealism of Plato is founded upon this sentiment. He would maintain that in some sense or other truth and right are alone to be sought, and that all other goods are only desirable as means towards these. He is thought to have erred in “considering the agent only, and making no reference to the happiness of others, as affected by him.” But the happiness of others or of mankind, if regarded as an end, is really quite as ideal and almost as paradoxical to the common understanding as Plato’s conception of happiness. For the greatest happiness of the greatest number may mean also the greatest pain of the individual which will procure the greatest pleasure of the greatest number. Ideas of utility, like those of duty and right, may be pushed to unpleasant consequences. Nor can Plato in the Gorgias be deemed purely self-regarding, considering that Socrates expressly mentions the duty of imparting the truth when discovered to others. Nor must we forget that the side of ethics which regards others is by the ancients merged in politics. Both in Plato and Aristotle, as well as in the Stoics, the social principle, though taking another form, is really far more prominent than in most modern treatises on ethics.
The idealizing of suffering is one of the conceptions which have exercised the greatest influence on mankind. Into the theological import of this, or into the consideration of the errors to which the idea may have given rise, we need not now enter. All will agree that the ideal of the Divine Sufferer, whose words the world would not receive, the man of sorrows of whom the Hebrew prophets spoke, has sunk deep into the heart of the human race. It is a similar picture of suffering goodness which Plato desires to pourtray, not without an allusion to the fate of his master Socrates. He is convinced that, somehow or other, such an one must be happy in life or after death. In the Republic, he endeavours to show that his happiness would be assured here in a well-ordered state. But in the actual condition of human things the wise and good are weak and miserable; such an one is like a man fallen among wild beasts, exposed to every sort of wrong and obloquy.
Plato, like other philosophers, is thus led on to the conclusion, that if “the ways of God” to man are to be “justified,” the hopes of another life must be included. If the question could have been put to him, whether a man dying in torments was happy still, even if, as he suggests in the Apology, “death be only a long sleep,” we can hardly tell what would have been his answer. There have been a few, who, quite independently of rewards and punishments or of posthumous reputation, or any other influence of public opinion, have been willing to sacrifice their lives for the good of others. It is difficult to say how far in such cases an unconscious hope of a future life, or a general faith in the victory of good in the world, may have supported the sufferers. But this extreme idealism is not in accordance with the spirit of Plato. He supposes a day of retribution, in which the good are to be rewarded and the wicked punished. Though, as he says in the Phaedo, no man of sense will maintain that the details of the stories about another world are true, he will insist that something of the kind is true, and will frame his life with a view to this unknown future. Even in the Republic he introduces a future life as an afterthought, when the superior happiness of the just has been established on what is thought to be an immutable foundation. At the same time he makes a point of determining his main thesis independently of remoter consequences.
(3) Plato’s theory of punishment is partly vindictive, partly corrective. In the Gorgias, as well as in the Phaedo and Republic, a few great criminals, chiefly tyrants, are reserved as examples. But most men have never had the opportunity of attaining this pre-eminence of evil. They are not incurable, and their punishment is intended for their improvement. They are to suffer because they have sinned; like sick men, they must go to the physician and be healed. On this representation of Plato’s the criticism has been made, that the analogy of disease and injustice is partial only, and that suffering, instead of improving men, may have just the opposite effect.
Like the general analogy of the arts and the virtues, the analogy of disease and injustice, or of medicine and justice, is certainly imperfect. But ideas must be given through something; the nature of the mind which is unseen can only be represented under figures derived from visible objects. If these figures are suggestive of some new aspect under which the mind may be considered, we cannot find fault with them for not exactly coinciding with the ideas represented. They partake of the imperfect nature of language, and must not be construed in too strict a manner. That Plato sometimes reasons from them as if they were not figures but realities, is due to the defective logical analysis of his age.
Nor does he distinguish between the suffering which improves and the suffering which only punishes and deters. He applies to the sphere of ethics a conception of punishment which is really derived from criminal law. He does not see that such punishment is only negative, and supplies no principle of moral growth or development. He is not far off the higher notion of an education of man to be begun in this world, and to be continued in other stages of existence, which is further developed in the Republic. And Christian thinkers, who have ventured out of the beaten track in their meditations on the “last things,” have found a ray of light in his writings. But he has not explained how or in what way punishment is to contribute to the improvement of mankind. He has not followed out the principle which he affirms in the Republic, that “God is the author of evil only with a view to good,” and that “they were the better for being punished.” Still his doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments may be compared favourably with that perversion of Christian doctrine which makes the everlasting punishment of human beings depend on a brief moment of time, or even on the accident of an accident. And he has escaped the difficulty which has often beset divines, respecting the future destiny of the meaner sort of men (Thersites and the like), who are neither very good nor very bad, by not counting them worthy of eternal damnation.
We do Plato violence in pressing his figures of speech or chains of argument; and not less so in asking questions which were beyond the horizon of his vision, or did not come within the scope of his design. The main purpose of the Gorgias is not to answer questions about a future world, but to place in antagonism the true and false life, and to contrast the judgments and opinions of men with judgment according to the truth. Plato may be accused of representing a superhuman or transcendental virtue in the description of the just man in the Gorgias, or in the companion portrait of the philosopher in the Theaetetus; and at the same time may be thought to be condemning a state of the world which always has existed and always will exist among men. But such ideals act powerfully on the imagination of mankind. And such condemnations are not mere paradoxes of philosophers, but the natural rebellion of the higher sense of right in man against the ordinary conditions of human life. The greatest statesmen have fallen very far short of the political ideal, and are therefore justly involved in the general condemnation.
Subordinate to the main purpose of the dialogue are some other questions, which may be briefly considered:—
a. The antithesis of good and pleasure, which as in other dialogues is supposed to consist in the permanent nature of the one compared with the transient and relative nature of the other. Good and pleasure, knowledge and sense, truth and opinion, essence and generation, virtue and pleasure, the real and the apparent, the infinite and finite, harmony or beauty and discord, dialectic and rhetoric or poetry, are so many pairs of opposites, which in Plato easily pass into one another, and are seldom kept perfectly distinct. And we must not forget that Plato’s conception of pleasure is the Heracleitean flux transferred to the sphere of human conduct. There is some degree of unfairness in opposing the principle of good, which is objective, to the principle of pleasure, which is subjective. For the assertion of the permanence of good is only based on the assumption of its objective character. Had Plato fixed his mind, not on the ideal nature of good, but on the subjective consciousness of happiness, that would have been found to be as transient and precarious as pleasure.
b. The arts or sciences, when pursued without any view to truth, or the improvement of human life, are called flatteries. They are all alike dependent upon the opinion of mankind, from which they are derived. To Plato the whole world appears to be sunk in error, based on self-interest. To this is opposed the one wise man hardly professing to have found truth, yet strong in the conviction that a virtuous life is the only good, whether regarded with reference to this world or to another. Statesmen, Sophists, rhetoricians, poets, are alike brought up for judgment. They are the parodies of wise men, and their arts are the parodies of true arts and sciences. All that they call science is merely the result of that study of the tempers of the Great Beast, which he describes in the Republic.
c. Various other points of contact naturally suggest themselves between the Gorgias and other dialogues, especially the Republic, the Philebus, and the Protagoras. There are closer resemblances both of spirit and language in the Republic than in any other dialogue, the verbal similarity tending to show that they were written at the same period of Plato’s life. For the Republic supplies that education and training of which the Gorgias suggests the necessity. The theory of the many weak combining against the few strong in the formation of society (which is indeed a partial truth), is similar in both of them, and is expressed in nearly the same language. The sufferings and fate of the just man, the powerlessness of evil, and the reversal of the situation in another life, are also points of similarity. The poets, like the rhetoricians, are condemned because they aim at pleasure only, as in the Republic they are expelled by the State, because they are imitators, and minister to the weaker side of human nature. That poetry is akin to rhetoric may be compared with the analogous notion, which occurs in the Protagoras, that the ancient poets were the Sophists of their day. In some other respects the Protagoras rather offers a contrast than a parallel. The character of Protagoras may be compared with that of Gorgias, but the conception of happiness is different in the two dialogues; being described in the former, according to the old Socratic notion, as deferred or accumulated pleasure, while in the Gorgias, and in the Phaedo, pleasure and good are distinctly opposed.
This opposition is carried out from a speculative point of view in the Philebus. There neither pleasure nor wisdom are allowed to be the chief good, but pleasure and good are not so completely opposed as in the Gorgias. For innocent pleasures, and such as have no antecedent pains, are allowed to rank in the class of goods. The allusion to Gorgias’ definition of rhetoric (Philebus; compare Gorgias), as the art of persuasion, of all arts the best, for to it all things submit, not by compulsion, but of their own free will—marks a close and perhaps designed connection between the two dialogues. In both the ideas of measure, order, harmony, are the connecting links between the beautiful and the good.
In general spirit and character, that is, in irony and antagonism to public opinion, the Gorgias most nearly resembles the Apology, Crito, and portions of the Republic, and like the Philebus, though from another point of view, may be thought to stand in the same relation to Plato’s theory of morals which the Theaetetus bears to his theory of knowledge.
d. A few minor points still remain to be summed up:
(1) The extravagant irony in the reason which is assigned for the pilot’s modest charge; and in the proposed use of rhetoric as an instrument of self-condemnation; and in the mighty power of geometrical equality in both worlds.
(2) The reference of the mythus to the previous discussion should not be overlooked: the fate reserved for incurable criminals such as Archelaus; the retaliation of the box on the ears; the nakedness of the souls and of the judges who are stript of the clothes or disguises which rhetoric and public opinion have hitherto provided for them (compare Swift’s notion that the universe is a suit of clothes, Tale of a Tub). The fiction seems to have involved Plato in the necessity of supposing that the soul retained a sort of corporeal likeness after death.
(3) The appeal of the authority of Homer, who says that Odysseus saw Minos in his court “holding a golden sceptre,” which gives verisimilitude to the tale.
It is scarcely necessary to repeat that Plato is playing “both sides of the game,” and that in criticising the characters of Gorgias and Polus, we are not passing any judgment on historical individuals, but only attempting to analyze the “dramatis personae’ as they were conceived by him. Neither is it necessary to enlarge upon the obvious fact that Plato is a dramatic writer, whose real opinions cannot always be assumed to be those which he puts into the mouth of Socrates, or any other speaker who appears to have the best of the argument; or to repeat the observation that he is a poet as well as a philosopher; or to remark that he is not to be tried by a modern standard, but interpreted with reference to his place in the history of thought and the opinion of his time.
It has been said that the most characteristic feature of the Gorgias is the assertion of the right of dissent, or private judgment. But this mode of stating the question is really opposed both to the spirit of Plato and of ancient philosophy generally. For Plato is not asserting any abstract right or duty of toleration, or advantage to be derived from freedom of thought; indeed, in some other parts of his writings (e.g. Laws), he has fairly laid himself open to the charge of intolerance. No speculations had as yet arisen respecting the “liberty of prophesying;’ and Plato is not affirming any abstract right of this nature: but he is asserting the duty and right of the one wise and true man to dissent from the folly and falsehood of the many. At the same time he acknowledges the natural result, which he hardly seeks to avert, that he who speaks the truth to a multitude, regardless of consequences, will probably share the fate of Socrates.
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The irony of Plato sometimes veils from us the height of idealism to which he soars. When declaring truths which the many will not receive, he puts on an armour which cannot be pierced by them. The weapons of ridicule are taken out of their hands and the laugh is turned against themselves. The disguises which Socrates assumes are like the parables of the New Testament, or the oracles of the Delphian God; they half conceal, half reveal, his meaning. The more he is in earnest, the more ironical he becomes; and he is never more in earnest or more ironical than in the Gorgias. He hardly troubles himself to answer seriously the objections of Gorgias and Polus, and therefore he sometimes appears to be careless of the ordinary requirements of logic. Yet in the highest sense he is always logical and consistent with himself. The form of the argument may be paradoxical; the substance is an appeal to the higher reason. He is uttering truths before they can be understood, as in all ages the words of philosophers, when they are first uttered, have found the world unprepared for them. A further misunderstanding arises out of the wildness of his humour; he is supposed not only by Callicles, but by the rest of mankind, to be jesting when he is profoundly serious. At length he makes even Polus in earnest. Finally, he drops the argument, and heedless any longer of the forms of dialectic, he loses himself in a sort of triumph, while at the same time he retaliates upon his adversaries. From this confusion of jest and earnest, we may now return to the ideal truth, and draw out in a simple form the main theses of the dialogue.
First Thesis:—
It is a greater evil to do than to suffer injustice.
Compare the New Testament—
“It is better to suffer for well doing than for evil doing.”—1 Pet.
And the Sermon on the Mount—
“Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.”—Matt.
The words of Socrates are more abstract than the words of Christ, but they equally imply that the only real evil is moral evil. The righteous may suffer or die, but they have their reward; and even if they had no reward, would be happier than the wicked. The world, represented by Polus, is ready, when they are asked, to acknowledge that injustice is dishonourable, and for their own sakes men are willing to punish the offender (compare Republic). But they are not equally willing to acknowledge that injustice, even if successful, is essentially evil, and has the nature of disease and death. Especially when crimes are committed on the great scale—the crimes of tyrants, ancient or modern—after a while, seeing that they cannot be undone, and have become a part of history, mankind are disposed to forgive them, not from any magnanimity or charity, but because their feelings are blunted by time, and “to forgive is convenient to them.” The tangle of good and evil can no longer be unravelled; and although they know that the end cannot justify the means, they feel also that good has often come out of evil. But Socrates would have us pass the same judgment on the tyrant now and always; though he is surrounded by his satellites, and has the applauses of Europe and Asia ringing in his ears; though he is the civilizer or liberator of half a continent, he is, and always will be, the most miserable of men. The greatest consequences for good or for evil cannot alter a hair’s breadth the morality of actions which are right or wrong in themselves. This is the standard which Socrates holds up to us. Because politics, and perhaps human life generally, are of a mixed nature we must not allow our principles to sink to the level of our practice.
And so of private individuals—to them, too, the world occasionally speaks of the consequences of their actions:—if they are lovers of pleasure, they will ruin their health; if they are false or dishonest, they will lose their character. But Socrates would speak to them, not of what will be, but of what is—of the present consequence of lowering and degrading the soul. And all higher natures, or perhaps all men everywhere, if they were not tempted by interest or passion, would agree with him—they would rather be the victims than the perpetrators of an act of treachery or of tyranny. Reason tells them that death comes sooner or later to all, and is not so great an evil as an unworthy life, or rather, if rightly regarded, not an evil at all, but to a good man the greatest good. For in all of us there are slumbering ideals of truth and right, which may at any time awaken and develop a new life in us.
Second Thesis:—
It is better to suffer for wrong doing than not to suffer.
There might have been a condition of human life in which the penalty followed at once, and was proportioned to the offence. Moral evil would then be scarcely distinguishable from physical; mankind would avoid vice as they avoid pain or death. But nature, with a view of deepening and enlarging our characters, has for the most part hidden from us the consequences of our actions, and we can only foresee them by an effort of reflection. To awaken in us this habit of reflection is the business of early education, which is continued in maturer years by observation and experience. The spoilt child is in later life said to be unfortunate—he had better have suffered when he was young, and been saved from suffering afterwards. But is not the sovereign equally unfortunate whose education and manner of life are always concealing from him the consequences of his own actions, until at length they are revealed to him in some terrible downfall, which may, perhaps, have been caused not by his own fault? Another illustration is afforded by the pauper and criminal classes, who scarcely reflect at all, except on the means by which they can compass their immediate ends. We pity them, and make allowances for them; but we do not consider that the same principle applies to human actions generally. Not to have been found out in some dishonesty or folly, regarded from a moral or religious point of view, is the greatest of misfortunes. The success of our evil doings is a proof that the gods have ceased to strive with us, and have given us over to ourselves. There is nothing to remind us of our sins, and therefore nothing to correct them. Like our sorrows, they are healed by time;
“While rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen.”
The “accustomed irony” of Socrates adds a corollary to the argument:—“Would you punish your enemy, you should allow him to escape unpunished”—this is the true retaliation. (Compare the obscure verse of Proverbs, “Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him,” etc., quoted in Romans.)
Men are not in the habit of dwelling upon the dark side of their own lives: they do not easily see themselves as others see them. They are very kind and very blind to their own faults; the rhetoric of self-love is always pleading with them on their own behalf. Adopting a similar figure of speech, Socrates would have them use rhetoric, not in defence but in accusation of themselves. As they are guided by feeling rather than by reason, to their feelings the appeal must be made. They must speak to themselves; they must argue with themselves; they must paint in eloquent words the character of their own evil deeds. To any suffering which they have deserved, they must persuade themselves to submit. Under the figure there lurks a real thought, which, expressed in another form, admits of an easy application to ourselves. For do not we too accuse as well as excuse ourselves? And we call to our aid the rhetoric of prayer and preaching, which the mind silently employs while the struggle between the better and the worse is going on within us. And sometimes we are too hard upon ourselves, because we want to restore the balance which self-love has overthrown or disturbed; and then again we may hear a voice as of a parent consoling us. In religious diaries a sort of drama is often enacted by the consciences of men “accusing or else excusing them.” For all our life long we are talking with ourselves:—What is thought but speech? What is feeling but rhetoric? And if rhetoric is used on one side only we shall be always in danger of being deceived. And so the words of Socrates, which at first sounded paradoxical, come home to the experience of all of us.
Third Thesis:—
We do not what we will, but what we wish.
Socrates would teach us a lesson which we are slow to learn—that good intentions, and even benevolent actions, when they are not prompted by wisdom, are of no value. We believe something to be for our good which we afterwards find out not to be for our good. The consequences may be inevitable, for they may follow an invariable law, yet they may often be the very opposite of what is expected by us. When we increase pauperism by almsgiving; when we tie up property without regard to changes of circumstances; when we say hastily what we deliberately disapprove; when we do in a moment of passion what upon reflection we regret; when from any want of self-control we give another an advantage over us—we are doing not what we will, but what we wish. All actions of which the consequences are not weighed and foreseen, are of this impotent and paralytic sort; and the author of them has “the least possible power” while seeming to have the greatest. For he is actually bringing about the reverse of what he intended. And yet the book of nature is open to him, in which he who runs may read if he will exercise ordinary attention; every day offers him experiences of his own and of other men’s characters, and he passes them unheeded by. The contemplation of the consequences of actions, and the ignorance of men in regard to them, seems to have led Socrates to his famous thesis:—“Virtue is knowledge;” which is not so much an error or paradox as a half truth, seen first in the twilight of ethical philosophy, but also the half of the truth which is especially needed in the present age. For as the world has grown older men have been too apt to imagine a right and wrong apart from consequences; while a few, on the other hand, have sought to resolve them wholly into their consequences. But Socrates, or Plato for him, neither divides nor identifies them; though the time has not yet arrived either for utilitarian or transcendental systems of moral philosophy, he recognizes the two elements which seem to lie at the basis of morality. (Compare the following: “Now, and for us, it is a time to Hellenize and to praise knowing; for we have Hebraized too much and have overvalued doing. But the habits and discipline received from Hebraism remain for our race an eternal possession. And as humanity is constituted, one must never assign the second rank to-day without being ready to restore them to the first to-morrow.” Sir William W. Hunter, Preface to Orissa.)
Fourth Thesis:—
To be and not to seem is the end of life.
The Greek in the age of Plato admitted praise to be one of the chief incentives to moral virtue, and to most men the opinion of their fellows is a leading principle of action. Hence a certain element of seeming enters into all things; all or almost all desire to appear better than they are, that they may win the esteem or admiration of others. A man of ability can easily feign the language of piety or virtue; and there is an unconscious as well as a conscious hypocrisy which, according to Socrates, is the worst of the two. Again, there is the sophistry of classes and professions. There are the different opinions about themselves and one another which prevail in different ranks of society. There is the bias given to the mind by the study of one department of human knowledge to the exclusion of the rest; and stronger far the prejudice engendered by a pecuniary or party interest in certain tenets. There is the sophistry of law, the sophistry of medicine, the sophistry of politics, the sophistry of theology. All of these disguises wear the appearance of the truth; some of them are very ancient, and we do not easily disengage ourselves from them; for we have inherited them, and they have become a part of us. The sophistry of an ancient Greek sophist is nothing compared with the sophistry of a religious order, or of a church in which during many ages falsehood has been accumulating, and everything has been said on one side, and nothing on the other. The conventions and customs which we observe in conversation, and the opposition of our interests when we have dealings with one another (“the buyer saith, it is nought—it is nought,” etc.), are always obscuring our sense of truth and right. The sophistry of human nature is far more subtle than the deceit of any one man. Few persons speak freely from their own natures, and scarcely any one dares to think for himself: most of us imperceptibly fall into the opinions of those around us, which we partly help to make. A man who would shake himself loose from them, requires great force of mind; he hardly knows where to begin in the search after truth. On every side he is met by the world, which is not an abstraction of theologians, but the most real of all things, being another name for ourselves when regarded collectively and subjected to the influences of society.
Then comes Socrates, impressed as no other man ever was, with the unreality and untruthfulness of popular opinion, and tells mankind that they must be and not seem. How are they to be? At any rate they must have the spirit and desire to be. If they are ignorant, they must acknowledge their ignorance to themselves; if they are conscious of doing evil, they must learn to do well; if they are weak, and have nothing in them which they can call themselves, they must acquire firmness and consistency; if they are indifferent, they must begin to take an interest in the great questions which surround them. They must try to be what they would fain appear in the eyes of their fellow-men. A single individual cannot easily change public opinion; but he can be true and innocent, simple and independent; he can know what he does, and what he does not know; and though not without an effort, he can form a judgment of his own, at least in common matters. In his most secret actions he can show the same high principle (compare Republic) which he shows when supported and watched by public opinion. And on some fitting occasion, on some question of humanity or truth or right, even an ordinary man, from the natural rectitude of his disposition, may be found to take up arms against a whole tribe of politicians and lawyers, and be too much for them.
Who is the true and who the false statesman?—
The true statesman is he who brings order out of disorder; who first organizes and then administers the government of his own country; and having made a nation, seeks to reconcile the national interests with those of Europe and of mankind. He is not a mere theorist, nor yet a dealer in expedients; the whole and the parts grow together in his mind; while the head is conceiving, the hand is executing. Although obliged to descend to the world, he is not of the world. His thoughts are fixed not on power or riches or extension of territory, but on an ideal state, in which all the citizens have an equal chance of health and life, and the highest education is within the reach of all, and the moral and intellectual qualities of every individual are freely developed, and “the idea of good” is the animating principle of the whole. Not the attainment of freedom alone, or of order alone, but how to unite freedom with order is the problem which he has to solve.
The statesman who places before himself these lofty aims has undertaken a task which will call forth all his powers. He must control himself before he can control others; he must know mankind before he can manage them. He has no private likes or dislikes; he does not conceal personal enmity under the disguise of moral or political principle: such meannesses, into which men too often fall unintentionally, are absorbed in the consciousness of his mission, and in his love for his country and for mankind. He will sometimes ask himself what the next generation will say of him; not because he is careful of posthumous fame, but because he knows that the result of his life as a whole will then be more fairly judged. He will take time for the execution of his plans; not hurrying them on when the mind of a nation is unprepared for them; but like the Ruler of the Universe Himself, working in the appointed time, for he knows that human life, “if not long in comparison with eternity” (Republic), is sufficient for the fulfilment of many great purposes. He knows, too, that the work will be still going on when he is no longer here; and he will sometimes, especially when his powers are failing, think of that other “city of which the pattern is in heaven” (Republic).
The false politician is the serving-man of the state. In order to govern men he becomes like them; their “minds are married in conjunction;” they “bear themselves” like vulgar and tyrannical masters, and he is their obedient servant. The true politician, if he would rule men, must make them like himself; he must “educate his party” until they cease to be a party; he must breathe into them the spirit which will hereafter give form to their institutions. Politics with him are not a mechanism for seeming what he is not, or for carrying out the will of the majority. Himself a representative man, he is the representative not of the lower but of the higher elements of the nation. There is a better (as well as a worse) public opinion of which he seeks to lay hold; as there is also a deeper current of human affairs in which he is borne up when the waves nearer the shore are threatening him. He acknowledges that he cannot take the world by force—two or three moves on the political chess board are all that he can fore see—two or three weeks moves on the political chessboard are all that he can foresee—two or three weeks or months are granted to him in which he can provide against a coming struggle. But he knows also that there are permanent principles of politics which are always tending to the well-being of states—better administration, better education, the reconciliation of conflicting elements, increased security against external enemies. These are not “of to-day or yesterday,” but are the same in all times, and under all forms of government. Then when the storm descends and the winds blow, though he knows not beforehand the hour of danger, the pilot, not like Plato’s captain in the Republic, half-blind and deaf, but with penetrating eye and quick ear, is ready to take command of the ship and guide her into port.
The false politician asks not what is true, but what is the opinion of the world—not what is right, but what is expedient. The only measures of which he approves are the measures which will pass. He has no intention of fighting an uphill battle; he keeps the roadway of politics. He is unwilling to incur the persecution and enmity which political convictions would entail upon him. He begins with popularity, and in fair weather sails gallantly along. But unpopularity soon follows him. For men expect their leaders to be better and wiser than themselves: to be their guides in danger, their saviours in extremity; they do not really desire them to obey all the ignorant impulses of the popular mind; and if they fail them in a crisis they are disappointed. Then, as Socrates says, the cry of ingratitude is heard, which is most unreasonable; for the people, who have been taught no better, have done what might be expected of them, and their statesmen have received justice at their hands.
The true statesman is aware that he must adapt himself to times and circumstances. He must have allies if he is to fight against the world; he must enlighten public opinion; he must accustom his followers to act together. Although he is not the mere executor of the will of the majority, he must win over the majority to himself. He is their leader and not their follower, but in order to lead he must also follow. He will neither exaggerate nor undervalue the power of a statesman, neither adopting the “laissez faire” nor the “paternal government” principle; but he will, whether he is dealing with children in politics, or with full-grown men, seek to do for the people what the government can do for them, and what, from imperfect education or deficient powers of combination, they cannot do for themselves. He knows that if he does too much for them they will do nothing; and that if he does nothing for them they will in some states of society be utterly helpless. For the many cannot exist without the few, if the material force of a country is from below, wisdom and experience are from above. It is not a small part of human evils which kings and governments make or cure. The statesman is well aware that a great purpose carried out consistently during many years will at last be executed. He is playing for a stake which may be partly determined by some accident, and therefore he will allow largely for the unknown element of politics. But the game being one in which chance and skill are combined, if he plays long enough he is certain of victory. He will not be always consistent, for the world is changing; and though he depends upon the support of a party, he will remember that he is the minister of the whole. He lives not for the present, but for the future, and he is not at all sure that he will be appreciated either now or then. For he may have the existing order of society against him, and may not be remembered by a distant posterity.
There are always discontented idealists in politics who, like Socrates in the Gorgias, find fault with all statesmen past as well as present, not excepting the greatest names of history. Mankind have an uneasy feeling that they ought to be better governed than they are. Just as the actual philosopher falls short of the one wise man, so does the actual statesman fall short of the ideal. And so partly from vanity and egotism, but partly also from a true sense of the faults of eminent men, a temper of dissatisfaction and criticism springs up among those who are ready enough to acknowledge the inferiority of their own powers. No matter whether a statesman makes high professions or none at all—they are reduced sooner or later to the same level. And sometimes the more unscrupulous man is better esteemed than the more conscientious, because he has not equally deceived expectations. Such sentiments may be unjust, but they are widely spread; we constantly find them recurring in reviews and newspapers, and still oftener in private conversation.
We may further observe that the art of government, while in some respects tending to improve, has in others a tendency to degenerate, as institutions become more popular. Governing for the people cannot easily be combined with governing by the people: the interests of classes are too strong for the ideas of the statesman who takes a comprehensive view of the whole. According to Socrates the true governor will find ruin or death staring him in the face, and will only be induced to govern from the fear of being governed by a worse man than himself (Republic). And in modern times, though the world has grown milder, and the terrible consequences which Plato foretells no longer await an English statesman, any one who is not actuated by a blind ambition will only undertake from a sense of duty a work in which he is most likely to fail; and even if he succeed, will rarely be rewarded by the gratitude of his own generation.
Socrates, who is not a politician at all, tells us that he is the only real politician of his time. Let us illustrate the meaning of his words by applying them to the history of our own country. He would have said that not Pitt or Fox, or Canning or Sir R. Peel, are the real politicians of their time, but Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Bentham, Ricardo. These during the greater part of their lives occupied an inconsiderable space in the eyes of the public. They were private persons; nevertheless they sowed in the minds of men seeds which in the next generation have become an irresistible power. “Herein is that saying true, One soweth and another reapeth.” We may imagine with Plato an ideal statesman in whom practice and speculation are perfectly harmonized; for there is no necessary opposition between them. But experience shows that they are commonly divorced—the ordinary politician is the interpreter or executor of the thoughts of others, and hardly ever brings to the birth a new political conception. One or two only in modern times, like the Italian statesman Cavour, have created the world in which they moved. The philosopher is naturally unfitted for political life; his great ideas are not understood by the many; he is a thousand miles away from the questions of the day. Yet perhaps the lives of thinkers, as they are stiller and deeper, are also happier than the lives of those who are more in the public eye. They have the promise of the future, though they are regarded as dreamers and visionaries by their own contemporaries. And when they are no longer here, those who would have been ashamed of them during their lives claim kindred with them, and are proud to be called by their names. (Compare Thucydides)
Who is the true poet?
Plato expels the poets from his Republic because they are allied to sense; because they stimulate the emotions; because they are thrice removed from the ideal truth. And in a similar spirit he declares in the Gorgias that the stately muse of tragedy is a votary of pleasure and not of truth. In modern times we almost ridicule the idea of poetry admitting of a moral. The poet and the prophet, or preacher, in primitive antiquity are one and the same; but in later ages they seem to fall apart. The great art of novel writing, that peculiar creation of our own and the last century, which, together with the sister art of review writing, threatens to absorb all literature, has even less of seriousness in her composition. Do we not often hear the novel writer censured for attempting to convey a lesson to the minds of his readers?
Yet the true office of a poet or writer of fiction is not merely to give amusement, or to be the expression of the feelings of mankind, good or bad, or even to increase our knowledge of human nature. There have been poets in modern times, such as Goethe or Wordsworth, who have not forgotten their high vocation of teachers; and the two greatest of the Greek dramatists owe their sublimity to their ethical character. The noblest truths, sung of in the purest and sweetest language, are still the proper material of poetry. The poet clothes them with beauty, and has a power of making them enter into the hearts and memories of men. He has not only to speak of themes above the level of ordinary life, but to speak of them in a deeper and tenderer way than they are ordinarily felt, so as to awaken the feeling of them in others. The old he makes young again; the familiar principle he invests with a new dignity; he finds a noble expression for the common-places of morality and politics. He uses the things of sense so as to indicate what is beyond; he raises us through earth to heaven. He expresses what the better part of us would fain say, and the half-conscious feeling is strengthened by the expression. He is his own critic, for the spirit of poetry and of criticism are not divided in him. His mission is not to disguise men from themselves, but to reveal to them their own nature, and make them better acquainted with the world around them. True poetry is the remembrance of youth, of love, the embodiment in words of the happiest and holiest moments of life, of the noblest thoughts of man, of the greatest deeds of the past. The poet of the future may return to his greater calling of the prophet or teacher; indeed, we hardly know what may not be effected for the human race by a better use of the poetical and imaginative faculty. The reconciliation of poetry, as of religion, with truth, may still be possible. Neither is the element of pleasure to be excluded. For when we substitute a higher pleasure for a lower we raise men in the scale of existence. Might not the novelist, too, make an ideal, or rather many ideals of social life, better than a thousand sermons? Plato, like the Puritans, is too much afraid of poetic and artistic influences. But he is not without a true sense of the noble purposes to which art may be applied (Republic).
Modern poetry is often a sort of plaything, or, in Plato’s language, a flattery, a sophistry, or sham, in which, without any serious purpose, the poet lends wings to his fancy and exhibits his gifts of language and metre. Such an one seeks to gratify the taste of his readers; he has the “savoir faire,” or trick of writing, but he has not the higher spirit of poetry. He has no conception that true art should bring order out of disorder; that it should make provision for the soul’s highest interest; that it should be pursued only with a view to “the improvement of the citizens.” He ministers to the weaker side of human nature (Republic); he idealizes the sensual; he sings the strain of love in the latest fashion; instead of raising men above themselves he brings them back to the “tyranny of the many masters,” from which all his life long a good man has been praying to be delivered. And often, forgetful of measure and order, he will express not that which is truest, but that which is strongest. Instead of a great and nobly-executed subject, perfect in every part, some fancy of a heated brain is worked out with the strangest incongruity. He is not the master of his words, but his words—perhaps borrowed from another—the faded reflection of some French or German or Italian writer, have the better of him. Though we are not going to banish the poets, how can we suppose that such utterances have any healing or life-giving influence on the minds of men?
“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:” Art then must be true, and politics must be true, and the life of man must be true and not a seeming or sham. In all of them order has to be brought out of disorder, truth out of error and falsehood. This is what we mean by the greatest improvement of man. And so, having considered in what way “we can best spend the appointed time, we leave the result with God.” Plato does not say that God will order all things for the best (compare Phaedo), but he indirectly implies that the evils of this life will be corrected in another. And as we are very far from the best imaginable world at present, Plato here, as in the Phaedo and Republic, supposes a purgatory or place of education for mankind in general, and for a very few a Tartarus or hell. The myth which terminates the dialogue is not the revelation, but rather, like all similar descriptions, whether in the Bible or Plato, the veil of another life. For no visible thing can reveal the invisible. Of this Plato, unlike some commentators on Scripture, is fully aware. Neither will he dogmatize about the manner in which we are “born again” (Republic). Only he is prepared to maintain the ultimate triumph of truth and right, and declares that no one, not even the wisest of the Greeks, can affirm any other doctrine without being ridiculous.
There is a further paradox of ethics, in which pleasure and pain are held to be indifferent, and virtue at the time of action and without regard to consequences is happiness. From this elevation or exaggeration of feeling Plato seems to shrink: he leaves it to the Stoics in a later generation to maintain that when impaled or on the rack the philosopher may be happy (compare Republic). It is observable that in the Republic he raises this question, but it is not really discussed; the veil of the ideal state, the shadow of another life, are allowed to descend upon it and it passes out of sight. The martyr or sufferer in the cause of right or truth is often supposed to die in raptures, having his eye fixed on a city which is in heaven. But if there were no future, might he not still be happy in the performance of an action which was attended only by a painful death? He himself may be ready to thank God that he was thought worthy to do Him the least service, without looking for a reward; the joys of another life may not have been present to his mind at all. Do we suppose that the mediaeval saint, St. Bernard, St. Francis, St. Catharine of Sienna, or the Catholic priest who lately devoted himself to death by a lingering disease that he might solace and help others, was thinking of the “sweets” of heaven? No; the work was already heaven to him and enough. Much less will the dying patriot be dreaming of the praises of man or of an immortality of fame: the sense of duty, of right, and trust in God will be sufficient, and as far as the mind can reach, in that hour. If he were certain that there were no life to come, he would not have wished to speak or act otherwise than he did in the cause of truth or of humanity. Neither, on the other hand, will he suppose that God has forsaken him or that the future is to be a mere blank to him. The greatest act of faith, the only faith which cannot pass away, is his who has not known, but yet has believed. A very few among the sons of men have made themselves independent of circumstances, past, present, or to come. He who has attained to such a temper of mind has already present with him eternal life; he needs no arguments to convince him of immortality; he has in him already a principle stronger than death. He who serves man without the thought of reward is deemed to be a more faithful servant than he who works for hire. May not the service of God, which is the more disinterested, be in like manner the higher? And although only a very few in the course of the world’s history—Christ himself being one of them—have attained to such a noble conception of God and of the human soul, yet the ideal of them may be present to us, and the remembrance of them be an example to us, and their lives may shed a light on many dark places both of philosophy and theology.
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The myths of Plato are a phenomenon unique in literature. There are four longer ones: these occur in the Phaedrus, Phaedo, Gorgias, and Republic. That in the Republic is the most elaborate and finished of them. Three of these greater myths, namely those contained in the Phaedo, the Gorgias and the Republic, relate to the destiny of human souls in a future life. The magnificent myth in the Phaedrus treats of the immortality, or rather the eternity of the soul, in which is included a former as well as a future state of existence. To these may be added,
(1) the myth, or rather fable, occurring in the Statesman, in which the life of innocence is contrasted with the ordinary life of man and the consciousness of evil:
(2) the legend of the Island of Atlantis, an imaginary history, which is a fragment only, commenced in the Timaeus and continued in the Critias:
(3) the much less artistic fiction of the foundation of the Cretan colony which is introduced in the preface to the Laws, but soon falls into the background:
(4) the beautiful but rather artificial tale of Prometheus and Epimetheus narrated in his rhetorical manner by Protagoras in the dialogue called after him:
(5) the speech at the beginning of the Phaedrus, which is a parody of the orator Lysias; the rival speech of Socrates and the recantation of it. To these may be added
(6) the tale of the grasshoppers, and
(7) the tale of Thamus and of Theuth, both in the Phaedrus:
(8) the parable of the Cave (Republic), in which the previous argument is recapitulated, and the nature and degrees of knowledge having been previously set forth in the abstract are represented in a picture:
(9) the fiction of the earth-born men (Republic; compare Laws), in which by the adaptation of an old tradition Plato makes a new beginning for his society:
(10) the myth of Aristophanes respecting the division of the sexes, Symposium:
(11) the parable of the noble captain, the pilot, and the mutinous sailors (Republic), in which is represented the relation of the better part of the world, and of the philosopher, to the mob of politicians:
(12) the ironical tale of the pilot who plies between Athens and Aegina charging only a small payment for saving men from death, the reason being that he is uncertain whether to live or die is better for them (Gorgias):
(13) the treatment of freemen and citizens by physicians and of slaves by their apprentices,—a somewhat laboured figure of speech intended to illustrate the two different ways in which the laws speak to men (Laws).
There also occur in Plato continuous images; some of them extend over several pages, appearing and reappearing at intervals: such as the bees stinging and stingless (paupers and thieves) in the Eighth Book of the Republic, who are generated in the transition from timocracy to oligarchy: the sun, which is to the visible world what the idea of good is to the intellectual, in the Sixth Book of the Republic: the composite animal, having the form of a man, but containing under a human skin a lion and a many-headed monster (Republic): the great beast, i.e. the populace: and the wild beast within us, meaning the passions which are always liable to break out: the animated comparisons of the degradation of philosophy by the arts to the dishonoured maiden, and of the tyrant to the parricide, who “beats his father, having first taken away his arms”: the dog, who is your only philosopher: the grotesque and rather paltry image of the argument wandering about without a head (Laws), which is repeated, not improved, from the Gorgias: the argument personified as veiling her face (Republic), as engaged in a chase, as breaking upon us in a first, second and third wave:—on these figures of speech the changes are rung many times over. It is observable that nearly all these parables or continuous images are found in the Republic; that which occurs in the Theaetetus, of the midwifery of Socrates, is perhaps the only exception. To make the list complete, the mathematical figure of the number of the state (Republic), or the numerical interval which separates king from tyrant, should not be forgotten.
The myth in the Gorgias is one of those descriptions of another life which, like the Sixth Aeneid of Virgil, appear to contain reminiscences of the mysteries. It is a vision of the rewards and punishments which await good and bad men after death. It supposes the body to continue and to be in another world what it has become in this. It includes a Paradiso, Purgatorio, and Inferno, like the sister myths of the Phaedo and the Republic. The Inferno is reserved for great criminals only. The argument of the dialogue is frequently referred to, and the meaning breaks through so as rather to destroy the liveliness and consistency of the picture. The structure of the fiction is very slight, the chief point or moral being that in the judgments of another world there is no possibility of concealment: Zeus has taken from men the power of foreseeing death, and brings together the souls both of them and their judges naked and undisguised at the judgment-seat. Both are exposed to view, stripped of the veils and clothes which might prevent them from seeing into or being seen by one another.
The myth of the Phaedo is of the same type, but it is more cosmological, and also more poetical. The beautiful and ingenious fancy occurs to Plato that the upper atmosphere is an earth and heaven in one, a glorified earth, fairer and purer than that in which we dwell. As the fishes live in the ocean, mankind are living in a lower sphere, out of which they put their heads for a moment or two and behold a world beyond. The earth which we inhabit is a sediment of the coarser particles which drop from the world above, and is to that heavenly earth what the desert and the shores of the ocean are to us. A part of the myth consists of description of the interior of the earth, which gives the opportunity of introducing several mythological names and of providing places of torment for the wicked. There is no clear distinction of soul and body; the spirits beneath the earth are spoken of as souls only, yet they retain a sort of shadowy form when they cry for mercy on the shores of the lake; and the philosopher alone is said to have got rid of the body. All the three myths in Plato which relate to the world below have a place for repentant sinners, as well as other homes or places for the very good and very bad. It is a natural reflection which is made by Plato elsewhere, that the two extremes of human character are rarely met with, and that the generality of mankind are between them. Hence a place must be found for them. In the myth of the Phaedo they are carried down the river Acheron to the Acherusian lake, where they dwell, and are purified of their evil deeds, and receive the rewards of their good. There are also incurable sinners, who are cast into Tartarus, there to remain as the penalty of atrocious crimes; these suffer everlastingly. And there is another class of hardly-curable sinners who are allowed from time to time to approach the shores of the Acherusian lake, where they cry to their victims for mercy; which if they obtain they come out into the lake and cease from their torments.
Neither this, nor any of the three greater myths of Plato, nor perhaps any allegory or parable relating to the unseen world, is consistent with itself. The language of philosophy mingles with that of mythology; abstract ideas are transformed into persons, figures of speech into realities. These myths may be compared with the Pilgrim’s Progress of Bunyan, in which discussions of theology are mixed up with the incidents of travel, and mythological personages are associated with human beings: they are also garnished with names and phrases taken out of Homer, and with other fragments of Greek tradition.
The myth of the Republic is more subtle and also more consistent than either of the two others. It has a greater verisimilitude than they have, and is full of touches which recall the experiences of human life. It will be noticed by an attentive reader that the twelve days during which Er lay in a trance after he was slain coincide with the time passed by the spirits in their pilgrimage. It is a curious observation, not often made, that good men who have lived in a well-governed city (shall we say in a religious and respectable society?) are more likely to make mistakes in their choice of life than those who have had more experience of the world and of evil. It is a more familiar remark that we constantly blame others when we have only ourselves to blame; and the philosopher must acknowledge, however reluctantly, that there is an element of chance in human life with which it is sometimes impossible for man to cope. That men drink more of the waters of forgetfulness than is good for them is a poetical description of a familiar truth. We have many of us known men who, like Odysseus, have wearied of ambition and have only desired rest. We should like to know what became of the infants “dying almost as soon as they were born,” but Plato only raises, without satisfying, our curiosity. The two companies of souls, ascending and descending at either chasm of heaven and earth, and conversing when they come out into the meadow, the majestic figures of the judges sitting in heaven, the voice heard by Ardiaeus, are features of the great allegory which have an indescribable grandeur and power. The remark already made respecting the inconsistency of the two other myths must be extended also to this: it is at once an orrery, or model of the heavens, and a picture of the Day of Judgment.
The three myths are unlike anything else in Plato. There is an Oriental, or rather an Egyptian element in them, and they have an affinity to the mysteries and to the Orphic modes of worship. To a certain extent they are un-Greek; at any rate there is hardly anything like them in other Greek writings which have a serious purpose; in spirit they are mediaeval. They are akin to what may be termed the underground religion in all ages and countries. They are presented in the most lively and graphic manner, but they are never insisted on as true; it is only affirmed that nothing better can be said about a future life. Plato seems to make use of them when he has reached the limits of human knowledge; or, to borrow an expression of his own, when he is standing on the outside of the intellectual world. They are very simple in style; a few touches bring the picture home to the mind, and make it present to us. They have also a kind of authority gained by the employment of sacred and familiar names, just as mere fragments of the words of Scripture, put together in any form and applied to any subject, have a power of their own. They are a substitute for poetry and mythology; and they are also a reform of mythology. The moral of them may be summed up in a word or two: After death the Judgment; and “there is some better thing remaining for the good than for the evil.”
All literature gathers into itself many elements of the past: for example, the tale of the earth-born men in the Republic appears at first sight to be an extravagant fancy, but it is restored to propriety when we remember that it is based on a legendary belief. The art of making stories of ghosts and apparitions credible is said to consist in the manner of telling them. The effect is gained by many literary and conversational devices, such as the previous raising of curiosity, the mention of little circumstances, simplicity, picturesqueness, the naturalness of the occasion, and the like. This art is possessed by Plato in a degree which has never been equalled.
The myth in the Phaedrus is even greater than the myths which have been already described, but is of a different character. It treats of a former rather than of a future life. It represents the conflict of reason aided by passion or righteous indignation on the one hand, and of the animal lusts and instincts on the other. The soul of man has followed the company of some god, and seen truth in the form of the universal before it was born in this world. Our present life is the result of the struggle which was then carried on. This world is relative to a former world, as it is often projected into a future. We ask the question, Where were men before birth? As we likewise enquire, What will become of them after death? The first question is unfamiliar to us, and therefore seems to be unnatural; but if we survey the whole human race, it has been as influential and as widely spread as the other. In the Phaedrus it is really a figure of speech in which the “spiritual combat” of this life is represented. The majesty and power of the whole passage—especially of what may be called the theme or proem (beginning “The mind through all her being is immortal”)—can only be rendered very inadequately in another language.
The myth in the Statesman relates to a former cycle of existence, in which men were born of the earth, and by the reversal of the earth’s motion had their lives reversed and were restored to youth and beauty: the dead came to life, the old grew middle-aged, and the middle-aged young; the youth became a child, the child an infant, the infant vanished into the earth. The connection between the reversal of the earth’s motion and the reversal of human life is of course verbal only, yet Plato, like theologians in other ages, argues from the consistency of the tale to its truth. The new order of the world was immediately under the government of God; it was a state of innocence in which men had neither wants nor cares, in which the earth brought forth all things spontaneously, and God was to man what man now is to the animals. There were no great estates, or families, or private possessions, nor any traditions of the past, because men were all born out of the earth. This is what Plato calls the “reign of Cronos;” and in like manner he connects the reversal of the earth’s motion with some legend of which he himself was probably the inventor.
The question is then asked, under which of these two cycles of existence was man the happier,—under that of Cronos, which was a state of innocence, or that of Zeus, which is our ordinary life? For a while Plato balances the two sides of the serious controversy, which he has suggested in a figure. The answer depends on another question: What use did the children of Cronos make of their time? They had boundless leisure and the faculty of discoursing, not only with one another, but with the animals. Did they employ these advantages with a view to philosophy, gathering from every nature some addition to their store of knowledge? or, Did they pass their time in eating and drinking and telling stories to one another and to the beasts?—in either case there would be no difficulty in answering. But then, as Plato rather mischievously adds, “Nobody knows what they did,” and therefore the doubt must remain undetermined.
To the first there succeeds a second epoch. After another natural convulsion, in which the order of the world and of human life is once more reversed, God withdraws his guiding hand, and man is left to the government of himself. The world begins again, and arts and laws are slowly and painfully invented. A secular age succeeds to a theocratical. In this fanciful tale Plato has dropped, or almost dropped, the garb of mythology. He suggests several curious and important thoughts, such as the possibility of a state of innocence, the existence of a world without traditions, and the difference between human and divine government. He has also carried a step further his speculations concerning the abolition of the family and of property, which he supposes to have no place among the children of Cronos any more than in the ideal state.
It is characteristic of Plato and of his age to pass from the abstract to the concrete, from poetry to reality. Language is the expression of the seen, and also of the unseen, and moves in a region between them. A great writer knows how to strike both these chords, sometimes remaining within the sphere of the visible, and then again comprehending a wider range and soaring to the abstract and universal. Even in the same sentence he may employ both modes of speech not improperly or inharmoniously. It is useless to criticise the broken metaphors of Plato, if the effect of the whole is to create a picture not such as can be painted on canvas, but which is full of life and meaning to the reader. A poem may be contained in a word or two, which may call up not one but many latent images; or half reveal to us by a sudden flash the thoughts of many hearts. Often the rapid transition from one image to another is pleasing to us: on the other hand, any single figure of speech if too often repeated, or worked out too much at length, becomes prosy and monotonous. In theology and philosophy we necessarily include both “the moral law within and the starry heaven above,” and pass from one to the other (compare for examples Psalms xviii. and xix.). Whether such a use of language is puerile or noble depends upon the genius of the writer or speaker, and the familiarity of the associations employed.
In the myths and parables of Plato the ease and grace of conversation is not forgotten: they are spoken, not written words, stories which are told to a living audience, and so well told that we are more than half-inclined to believe them (compare Phaedrus). As in conversation too, the striking image or figure of speech is not forgotten, but is quickly caught up, and alluded to again and again; as it would still be in our own day in a genial and sympathetic society. The descriptions of Plato have a greater life and reality than is to be found in any modern writing. This is due to their homeliness and simplicity. Plato can do with words just as he pleases; to him they are indeed “more plastic than wax” (Republic). We are in the habit of opposing speech and writing, poetry and prose. But he has discovered a use of language in which they are united; which gives a fitting expression to the highest truths; and in which the trifles of courtesy and the familiarities of daily life are not overlooked.
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The Gorgias (Γοργίας) is a Socratic dialogue depicts a conversation between Socrates and a small group at a dinner gathering. Socrates debates with self-proclaimed rhetoricians seeking the true definition of rhetoric, attempting to pinpoint the essence of rhetoric and unveil the flaws of the sophistic oratory popular in Athens at the time. The art of persuasion was widely considered necessary for political and legal advantage in classical Athens, and rhetoricians promoted themselves as teachers of this fundamental skill. Some, like Gorgias, were foreigners attracted to Athens because of its reputation for intellectual and cultural sophistication.
The Gorgias is a vivid and dramatic introduction to central problems of moral and political philosophy, and to Plato's views on them. In reply to an eloquent and persuasive attack on ordinary morality as a conspiracy of the weak and inferior against the interests of the stronger and superior, Plato develops his own doctrine of the nature of morality. He rejects any conflict between morality and self-interest, and insist that the benefits of being moral always outweigh any benefits to be won from immorality. He applies his views to moral and political questions — the errors of democracy; the failure of democratic politicians and leaders of public opinion; the role of the moral and political expert in society; the justification of punishment.
Film adaptation :
Socrates (1971)
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Persons of the dialogue :
- Callicles (Καλλικλῆς) [c. 484 – late 5th century BCE] : thought to have been an ancient Athenian political philosopher. He figures prominently in Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, where he "presents himself as a no-holds-barred, bare-knuckled, clear-headed advocate of Realpolitik".
- Chaerephon (Χαιρεφῶν) [c. 470/460 – 403/399 BCE] : of the Athenian deme Sphettus, an ancient Greek best remembered as a loyal friend and follower of Socrates.
- Gorgias (Γοργίας) [483 – 375 BCE] : an ancient Greek sophist, pre-Socratic philosopher, and rhetorician who was a native of Leontinoi in Sicily. Along with Protagoras, he forms the first generation of Sophists.
- Polus (Πῶλος) [c. 5th century BCE] : an ancient Greek philosophical figure best remembered for his depiction in the writing of Plato. He was a pupil of the famous orator Gorgias, and teacher of oratory from the city of Acragas, Sicily.
- Socrates (Σωκράτης) [c. 470 – 399 BCE] : a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure.
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Persons mentioned in Gorgias dialogue :
- Aglaophon (Ἀγλαοφῶν) : an ancient Greek painter, born on the island of Thasos. He was the father and instructor of Polygnotus and Aristophon.
- Alcetas (Ἀλκέτας) [died 448 BCE] : king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia, and brother of Perdiccas.
- Alcibiades (Ἀλκιβιάδης) [c. 450 – 404 BCE] : an Athenian statesman and general. The last of the Alcmaeonidae, he played a major role in the second half of the Peloponnesian War as a strategic advisor, military commander, and politician, but subsequently fell from prominence.
- Alexander (Ἀλέξανδρος) : a son of Alcetas.
- Anaxagoras ( Ἀναξαγόρας) [c. 500 – c. 428 BCE] : a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae at a time when Asia Minor was under the control of the Persian Empire, Anaxagoras came to Athens. In later life he was charged with impiety and went into exile in Lampsacus.
- Andron : a friend of Callicles, and son of Androtion.
- Androtion (Ἀνδροτίων) : a father of Andron.
- Archelaus (Ἀρχέλαος) [died 399 BCE] : king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia from 413 to 399 BCE. He was a capable and beneficent ruler, known for the sweeping changes he made in state administration, the military, and commerce. By the time that he died, Archelaus had succeeded in converting Macedon into a significantly stronger power.
- Aristeides (Ἀριστείδης) [530 – 468 BCE] : an ancient Athenian statesman. He flourished at the beginning of Athens' Classical period and is remembered for his generalship in the Persian War.
- Aristocrates (Ἀριστοκράτης) [died 406 BCE] : an ancient Athenian of wealth and influence, the son of Scellias, who attached himself to the oligarchical party that attained power in the anti-democratic coup in 411 BCE, and was a member of its government, the Four Hundred.
- Aristophon : a Greek painter, son and pupil of the elder Aglaophon, and brother of Polygnotus.
- Cimon (Κίμων) [c. 510 – 450 BCE] : an Athenian strategos (general and admiral) and politician.
- Cinesias (Κινησίας) [c. 450 – 390 BCE] : an innovative dithyrambic poet (an exponent of the "new music") in classical Athens.
- Cleinias (Κλεινίας) : a brother of Axiochus, and member of the Alcmaeonidae family, was an Athenian who married Deinomache, the daughter of Megacles, and became the father of the famous Alcibiades.
- Cleopatra : one of the wife of Perdiccas, the king of Macedonia. She bore one unnamed son to Perdiccas.
- Demus : a son of Pyrilampes, he was famous for his beauty.
- Epicharmus (Ἐπίχαρμος) [c. 550 - c. 460 BCE] : a Greek dramatist and philosopher who is often credited with being one of the first comic writers, having originated the Doric or Sicilian comedic form
- Euripides (Εὐριπίδης) [c. 480 – c. 406 BCE] : : a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.
- Herodicus (Ἡρóδιĸος) : a Greek physician, brother of Gorgias.
- Homer (Ὅμηρος) [born c. 8th century BCE] : a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history.
- Lysimachus : the father of the Athenian politician Aristides.
- Meles : a harp player, and father of Cinesias.
- Miltiades (Μιλτιάδης) [c. 550 – 489 BCE] : a Greek Athenian citizen known mostly for his role in the Battle of Marathon, as well as for his downfall afterwards. He was the son of Cimon Coalemos, a renowned Olympic chariot-racer, and the father of Cimon, the noted Athenian statesman.
- Mithoecus (Μίθαικος) : a cook and cookbook author of the late 5th century BCE. A Greek-speaking native of Sicily, Magna Graecia, at a time when the island was rich and highly civilized, Mithaecus is credited with having brought knowledge of Sicilian gastronomy to Greece.
- Nausicydes : a friend of Callicles.
- Niceratus : a father of Nicias.
- Nicias (Νικίας) [c. 470 – 413 BCE] : an Athenian politician and general during the period of the Peloponnesian War.
- Odysseus (Ὀδυσσεύς) : a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in that same epic cycle.
- Perdiccas (Περδίκκας) : the king of Macedonia from 454 BCE until his death in 413 BCE. During the Peloponnesian War, he frequently switched sides between Sparta and Athens.
- Pericles (Περικλῆς) [c. 495 – 429 BCE] : a Greek politician and general during the Golden Age of Athens. He was prominent and influential in Ancient Athenian politics, particularly between the Greco-Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War.
- Pindar (Πίνδαρος) [c. 518 BCE – c. 438 BCE] : an Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece.
- Polygnotus (Πολύγνωτος) : an ancient Greek painter from the middle of the 5th century BCE.
- Pyrilampes (Πυριλάμπης) : an ancient Athenian politician and stepfather of the philosopher Plato.
- Sarambus : a tavern-keeper in Athens, famous for the quality of his wine.
- Scellius : a father of Aristocrates.
- Sisyphus (Σίσυφος) : the founder and king of Ephyra (now known as Corinth). He was a devious tyrant who killed visitors to show off his power. This violation of the sacred hospitality tradition greatly angered the gods. They punished him for trickery of others, including his cheating death twice. The gods forced him to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down every time it neared the top, repeating this action for eternity.
- Tantalus (Τάνταλος) : a son of Zeus and a woman named Plouto. He was a Greek mythological figure, most famous for his punishment in Tartarus: for trying to trick the gods into eating his son, he was made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding before he could take a drink.
- Thearion : the baker as an Athenian novelty who sells goods that could be made at home.
- Themistocles (Θεμιστοκλῆς) [c. 524 – c. 459 BCE] : an Athenian politician and general. He was one of a new breed of non-aristocratic politicians who rose to prominence in the early years of the Athenian democracy. As a politician, Themistocles was a populist, having the support of lower-class Athenians, and generally being at odds with the Athenian nobility.
- Thersites (Θερσίτης) : a soldier of the Greek army during the Trojan War. He is said to be bow-legged and lame, to have shoulders that cave inward, and a head which is covered in tufts of hair and comes to a point. This deformity has even given rise to a medical eponym. Vulgar, obscene, and somewhat dull-witted, Thersites disrupts the rallying of the Greek army.
- Tisander (Τίσανδρος) : a friend of Callicles.
- Xerxes [c. 518 – August 465 BCE] : commonly known as Xerxes the Great, a Persian ruler who served as the fourth King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 486 BCE until his assassination in 465 BCE. He was the son of Darius the Great and Atossa, a daughter of Cyrus the Great. In Western history, Xerxes is best known for his invasion of Greece in 480 BCE, which ended in Persian defeat.
- Zethus (Ζῆθος) and Amphion (Ἀμφίων) : the twin sons of Zeus (or Theobus) by Antiope. They are important characters in one of the two founding myths of the city of Thebes.
- Zeuxis (Ζεῦξις) : a late 5th-century- early 4th-century BCE Greek artist famed for his ability to create images that appeared highly realistic.
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Deities mentioned in Gorgias dialogue :
- Aeacus (Αἰακός) : a mythological king of the island of Aegina in the Saronic Gulf. He was a son of Zeus and the nymph Aegina, and the father of the heroes Peleus and Telamon. According to legend, he was famous for his justice, and after he died he became one of the three judges in Hades alongside Minos and Rhadamanthos.
- Aegina (Αἴγινα) : a figure of Greek mythology, the nymph of the island that bears her name, Aegina, lying in the Saronic Gulf between Attica and the Peloponnesos. Aegina bore at least two children: Menoetius by Actor, and Aeacus by Zeus, both of whom became kings.
- Cronos (Κρόνος) : the leader and youngest of the first generation of Titans, the divine descendants of the primordial Gaia (Mother Earth) and Uranus (Father Sky). He overthrew his father and ruled during the mythological Golden Age, until he was overthrown by his own son Zeus and imprisoned in Tartarus. According to Plato, however, the deities Phorcys, Cronus, and Rhea were the eldest children of Oceanus and Tethys.
- Dionysus (Διόνυσος) : the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre.
- Heracles (Ἡρακλῆς) : a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon. He was a descendant and half-brother (as they are both sired by the god Zeus) of Perseus. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae (Ἡρακλεῖδαι), and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters.
- Minos (Μίνως) : a king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. Every nine years, he made King Aegeus pick seven young boys and seven young girls to be sent to Daedalus's creation, the labyrinth, to be eaten by the Minotaur. After his death, King Minos became a judge of the dead in the underworld.
- Muse of Tragedy : refering to Melpomene (Μελπομένη), daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne (and therefore of power and memory) along with the other Muses, and she is often portrayed with a tragic theatrical mask.
- Pluto (Πλούτων) : the ruler of the Greek underworld. The earlier name for the god was Hades, which became more common as the name of the underworld itself. Pluto represents a more positive concept of the god who presides over the afterlife.
- Poseidon (Ποσειδῶν) : one of the Twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and mythology, presiding over the sea, storms, earthquakes and horses. He was the protector of seafarers and the guardian of many Hellenic cities and colonies. In pre-Olympian Bronze Age Greece, Poseidon was venerated as a chief deity at Pylos and Thebes, with the cult title "earth shaker"; in the myths of isolated Arcadia, he is related to Demeter and Persephone and was venerated as a horse, and as a god of the waters.
- Prometheus (Προμηθεύς) : one of the Titans and a god of fire. Prometheus is best known for defying the Olympian gods by stealing fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge, and more generally, civilization.
- Rhadamanthus (Ῥαδάμανθυς) : a wise king of Crete. As the son of Zeus and Europa he was considered a demigod. He later became one of the judges of the dead and an important figure in Greek mythology.
- Tityus (Τιτυός) : the son of the mortal princess Elara and the god Zeus. Zeus hid Elara from his wife, Hera, by placing her deep beneath the earth. Tityos grew so large that he split his mother's womb, and he was carried to term by Gaia, the Earth. Once grown, Tityos attempted to rape Leto at the behest of Hera. He was slain by Leto's protective children Artemis and Apollo. As punishment, he was stretched out in Tartarus and tortured by two vultures who fed on his liver, which grew back every night.
- Zeus (Ζεύς) : the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion and mythology, who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus.
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Other Being mentioned in Gorgias dialogue:
- Geryon (Γηρυών) : son of Chrysaor and Callirrhoe, the grandson of Medusa and the nephew of Pegasus, was a fearsome giant who dwelt on the island Erytheia of the mythic Hesperides in the far west of the Mediterranean. Geryon was often described as a monster with either three bodies and three heads, or three heads and one body, or three bodies and one head. He is commonly accepted as being mostly humanoid, with some distinguishing features (such as wings, or multiple bodies etc.) and in mythology, famed for his cattle.
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Places mentioned in Gorgias dialogue :
- Aegina (Αίγινα) : one of the Saronic Islands of Greece in the Saronic Gulf. Tradition derives the name from Aegina, the mother of the mythological hero Aeacus, who was born on the island and became its king.
- Agora (ἀγορά) : a central public space in ancient Greek city-states. It is the best representation of a city-state's response to accommodate the social and political order of the polis. The literal meaning of the word "agora" is "gathering place" or "assembly". The agora was the center of the athletic, artistic, business, social, spiritual, and political life in the city.
- Aphidnae (Ἀφίδναι) : one of the twelve ancient towns of ancient Attica.
- Asia : the largest continent in the world by both land area and population.
- Athens (Ἀθῆναι) : the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years, and its earliest human presence beginning somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BCE.
- Delphi (Δελφοί) : an ancient sacred precinct and the seat of Pythia, the major oracle who was consulted about important decisions throughout the ancient classical world. The ancient Greeks considered the centre of the world to be in Delphi, marked by the stone monument known as the Omphalos of Delphi (navel).
- Ecclesia (ἐκκλησία) : the assembly of the citizens in city-states of ancient Greece.
- Egypt : a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and the Sinai Peninsula in the southwest corner of Asia. Egypt has one of the longest histories of any country, tracing its heritage along the Nile Delta back to the 6th–4th millennia BCE. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government.
- Europe : a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east.
- Hellas (Ellás) : a name for all lands inhabited by Hellenes, i.e. all of ancient Greece, including the Greek colonies.
- Islands of the Blessed (μακάρων νῆσοι) : semi-legendary islands in the Atlantic Ocean, variously treated as a simple geographical location and as a winterless earthly paradise inhabited by the heroes of Greek mythology. In the time of Hesiod, the Fortunate Isles were associated with the concept of Elysium, a utopian location in the Greek underworld thought to be found in the Western ocean on the margin of the known world. The number of the islands would later be reduced to one by the poet Pindar.
- Macedonia (Μακεδονία) : an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, which later became the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece.
- Marathon (Μαραθών) : a town in Greece and the site of the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE, in which the heavily outnumbered Athenian army defeated the Persians. Legend has it that Pheidippides, a Greek herald at the battle, was sent running from Marathon to Athens to announce the victory, which is how the marathon running race was conceived in modern times.
- Palestra (παλαίστρα) : any site of an ancient Greek wrestling school. Events requiring little space, such as boxing and wrestling, took place there. Palaestrae functioned both independently and as a part of public gymnasia; a palaestra could exist without a gymnasium, but no gymnasium existed without a palaestra.
- Piraeus (Πειραιεύς) : a port city within the Athens urban area ("Greater Athens"), in the Attica region of Greece.
- Pontus (Πόντος) : a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea, located in the modern-day eastern Black Sea Region of Turkey.
- Tartarus (Τάρταρος) : the deep abyss that is used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked and as the prison for the Titans.
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Terms mentioned in Gorgias dialogue :
- Acharnian : pertaining to Acharnae (Ἀχαρναί), a deme of ancient Athens.
- Arithmetic : an elementary branch of mathematics that studies numerical operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. In a wider sense, it also includes exponentiation, extraction of roots, and taking logarithms.
- Athenians : pertaining to Athens (Ἀθῆναι), the capital and largest city of Greece.
- By the dog of Egypt : an oath apparently unique to Socrates. "The dog" may be Anubis (Ἄνουβις), the god of funerary rites, protector of graves, and guide to the underworld, in ancient Egyptian religion, usually depicted as a canine or a man with a canine head, whose Greek counterpart is Hermes (Ἑρμῆς).
- Cholarges (Χολαργός) : the name of a deme of ancient Attica.
- Cosmos (κόσμος) : an alternative name for the universe or its nature or order. Usage of the word cosmos implies viewing the universe as a complex and orderly system or entity.
- Demus [or Demos] : the ruling body of free citizens in ancient Greek city-states, such as Athens, a root of the word democracy.
- Dithyrambic (διθύραμβος) : an ancient Greek hymn sung and danced in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility; the term was also used as an epithet of the god.
- Drachmae (δραχμή) : an ancient currency unit issued by many city-states during a period of ten centuries, from the Archaic period throughout the Classical period, the Hellenistic period up to the Roman period. The ancient drachmae originated in the Greece around the 6th century BCE. The coin, usually made of silver or sometimes gold had its origins in a bartering system that referred to a drachmae as a handful of wooden spits or arrows. The drachmae was unique to each city state that minted them, and were sometimes circulated all over the Mediterranean. The coinage of Athens was considered to be the strongest and became the most popular.
- Foxton : a word that Callicles came up intends to mock Socrates, by a childish echoing that seizes upon the name of the other’s deme, Ἀλωπεκή from ἀλώπηξ “fox”: “Foxton,” as it were. Socrates, he means, is foxy, an opinion he has already expressed at length in other terms.
- Geometry (γεωμετρία) : a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures.
- Gods : in monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the universe or life, for which such a deity is often worshipped".
- Greeks (Έλληνες) : an ethnic group and nation native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Albania, Anatolia, parts of Italy and Egypt, and to a lesser extent, other countries surrounding the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea.
- Heaven : a common religious cosmological or transcendent supernatural place where beings such as deities, angels, souls, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or reside. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to Earth or incarnate and earthly beings can ascend to Heaven in the afterlife or, in exceptional cases, enter Heaven without dying.
- Homeric language : the form of the Greek language that was used in the Iliad, Odyssey, and Homeric Hymns. It is a literary dialect of Ancient Greek consisting mainly of Ionic, with some Aeolic forms, a few from Arcadocypriot, and a written form influenced by Attic. It was later named Epic Greek because it was used as the language of epic poetry, typically in dactylic hexameter, by poets such as Hesiod and Theognis of Megara.
- Ipsissima verba : Latin for "the very words," is a legal term referring to material, usually established authority, that a writer or speaker is quoting or referring to.
- Italian : a nation and ethnic group native to the Italian geographical region. Italians share a common core of culture, history, ancestry, and often the usage of Italian language or regional Italian languages.
- Macedonians : pertaining to Macedonia (Μακεδονία), an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, which later became the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece.
- Mysian (Μυσοί) : the inhabitants of Mysia, a region in northwestern Asia Minor.
- Obol (ὀβολός) : a form of ancient Greek currency and weight, six obols make a drachmae.
- Ophthalmia : inflammation of the eye. It results in congestion of the eyeball, often eye-watering, redness and swelling, itching and burning, and a general feeling of irritation under the eyelids.
- Prytanes (πρυτάνεις) : or Prytanis, the executives of the boule of ancient Athens.
- Scythians : an ancient Eastern Iranic equestrian nomadic people who had migrated during the 9th to 8th centuries BCE from Central Asia to the Pontic Steppe in modern-day Ukraine and Southern Russia, where they remained established from the 7th century BCE until the 3rd century BCE. Skilled in mounted warfare, the Scythians replaced the Agathyrsi and the Cimmerians as the dominant power on the western Eurasian Steppe in the 8th century BCE. In the 7th century BCE, the Scythians crossed the Caucasus Mountains and frequently raided West Asia along with the Cimmerians.
- Sicilian : a Romance-speaking ethnic group who are indigenous to the island of Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.
- Sicilian : a Romance language that is spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands. It belongs to the broader Extreme Southern Italian language group.
- Sophist (σοφιστής) : a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics and mathematics. They taught arete, "virtue" or "excellence", predominantly to young statesmen and nobility.
- State : a political entity that regulates society and the population within a territory. Government is considered to form the fundamental apparatus of contemporary states.
- Thessalian : native of Thessaly, one of the traditional regions of Ancient Greece.
- Thessalian enchantresses : refering to some unnamed ancient Greek female astronomer in Thessaly, who was thoroughly acquainted with the periods of the full moon when it is subject to eclipse, and, knowing beforehand the time when the moon was due to be overtaken by the earth’s shadow, imposed upon the women, and made them all believe that she was bringing down the moon.
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