Gorgias preens himself as a teacher of virtue because he teaches men how to speak persuasively on “the most important of human concerns,” as he calls it—namely, politics. However, harried by Socrates’s polite but relentless questions, Gorgias has to admit that as a political consultant, he is concerned only with presenting a persuasive message, even if that message is evil rather than good. “On Gorgias’s own admission,” as A. E. Taylor explains, “oratory is a device by which an ignorant man persuades an audience equally ignorant” as himself, especially in democratic Athens.6 It is precisely
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