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Gorgias gave us an admirable, varied presentation2
Gorgias is staying with me
I’d like to find out from the man what his craft4
GORGIAS:
POLUS:
By Zeus, Chaerephon! Try me,
CHAEREPHON:
experience,
Our Gorgias is indeed in this group; he partakes of the most admirable of the crafts.
He hardly seems to me to be answering the question.
No, I won’t,
Polus has devoted himself more to what is called oratory than to discussing.
you sing its praises as though someone were discrediting it. But you haven’t answered what it is.
supposed to call Gorgias.
GORGIAS: It’s oratory, Socrates.
GORGIAS: Yes, Socrates, I daresay I’m doing it quite nicely.
About speeches.
Speeches about diseases, that is? GORGIAS: Exactly.
the expertise consists almost completely in working with your hands
oratory, on the other hand, there isn’t any such manual work.
crafts at our disposal, aren’t there? GORGIAS: Yes.
other crafts, the ones that perform their whole task by means of speeches and that call for practically no physical work besides,
arithmetic or computation or geometry, even checkers and many
oratory is the craft that exercises its influence through speech.
oratory is one of those crafts which mostly uses speech, and since there are also others of that sort, try to say what it is that oratory, which exercises its influence through speeches, is about.
SOCRATES: Tell us then: what are they crafts about?
GORGIAS: The greatest of human concerns, Socrates, and the best.
But that statement, too, is debatable,
What is this thing that you claim is the greatest good for mankind, a thing you claim to be a producer of?
It is the source of freedom for mankind itself and at the same time it is for each person the source of rule over others
ability to persuade by speeches
I follow you at all, you’re saying that oratory is a producer of persuasion.
Or can you mention anything else oratory can do besides instilling persuasion in the souls of an audience? GORGIAS: None at all, Socrates.
you’re defining it quite ...
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Does a person who teaches some subject or other persuade people about what he’s teaching, or not?
arithmetic or the arithmetician
SOCRATES: And he also persuades? GORGIAS: Yes.
So arithmetic is also a producer of persuasion. GORGIAS: Apparently.
SOCRATES: So oratory isn’t the only producer of persuasion.
The persuasion I mean, Socrates, is the kind that takes place in law courts
And it’s concerned with those matters that are just and unjust.
suspected that this was the persuasion you meant, and that these are the matters it’s persuasion about.
conduct an orderly discussion.
to prevent our getting in the habit of second-guessing and snatching each other’s statements away ahead of time. It’s to allow you to work out your assumption in any way you want to.
true and false conviction,
true and false knowledge?
two types of persuasion, one providing conviction without knowledge, the other providing knowledge? GORGIAS: Yes, I would.
it’s the one that results in conviction.
orator is not a teacher of law courts and other gatherings about things that are just and unjust, either, but merely a persuader,
advice of Themistocles and in some cases through that of Pericles, but not through that of the craftsmen?
