Gorgias
Callicles: The wise man, as the proverb says, is late for a fray, but not for a feast.
Socrates: And are we late for a feast?
Callicles: Yes, and a delightful feast. Gorgias has just been showing us many fine things.
Socrates: It is not my fault, Callicles. Our friend Chaerephon is to blame: he kept us lingering in the Agora.
Chaerephon: Never mind, Socrates. I caused the trouble, and I will put it right. Gorgias is a friend of mine, and I will get him to give the demonstration again, either now or, if you prefer, some other time.
Callicles: What is it, Chaerephon? Does Socrates want to hear Gorgias?
Chaerephon: Yes, that is why we came.
Callicles: Come into my house, then. Gorgias is staying with me, and he will give you a demonstration.
Socrates: Very good, Callicles. But will he answer our questions? I want to hear from him what his art is, and what he claims to practice and teach. As you [Chaerephon] suggest, he can put off the demonstration until another time.
Callicles: The best thing is to ask him, Socrates. Answering questions is part of his demonstration. Just now he was saying that anyone in my house could ask him any question, and he would answer.
Socrates: How fortunate! Will you ask him, Chaerephon?
Chaerephon: What should I ask him?
Socrates: Ask him who he is.
Chaerephon: What do you mean?
Socrates: I mean the sort of question that, if he made shoes, would get him to answer that he is a shoemaker. Do you understand?
Chaerephon: I understand, and I will ask him. Tell me, Gorgias, is our friend Callicles right in saying that you undertake to answer any question you are asked?
Gorgias: Quite right, Chaerephon. I was saying just that a moment ago. And I may add that it has been many years since anyone asked me a new one.
Chaerephon: Then you must be well prepared, Gorgias.
Gorgias: You can put that to the test, Chaerephon.
Polus: Yes, indeed. And if you like, Chaerephon, you can put me to the test too. Gorgias has been talking for a long time, and I think he is tired.
Chaerephon: And do you think you can answer better than Gorgias, Polus?
Polus: What does that matter if I answer well enough for you?
Chaerephon: It does not matter at all. You can answer if you like.
Polus: Ask.
Chaerephon: Here is my question. If Gorgias had the skill of his brother Herodicus, what should we call him? Should we not give him the same name we give his brother?
Polus: Certainly.
Chaerephon: Then we would be right to call him a physician?
Polus: Yes.
Chaerephon: And if he had the skill of Aristophon, the son of Aglaophon, or of his brother Polygnotus, what should we call him?
Polus: Clearly, a painter.
Chaerephon: But as things stand, what should we call him? What art is he skilled in?
Polus: Chaerephon, people practice many arts that arise from experience and rely on it. Experience makes human lives proceed according to art, and inexperience according to chance. Different people are skilled in different arts in different ways, and the best people in the best arts. Our friend Gorgias is one of the best, and the art he is skilled in is the noblest.
Socrates: Polus has been taught to make an excellent speech, Gorgias. But he is not keeping the promise he made to Chaerephon.
Gorgias: What do you mean, Socrates?
Socrates: I mean that he has not really answered the question he was asked.
Gorgias: Then why not ask him yourself?
Socrates: I would much rather ask you, if you are willing to answer. From the few words Polus has spoken, I can see that he has paid more attention to the art called rhetoric than to dialectic.
Polus: What makes you say that, Socrates?
Socrates: Because, Polus, when Chaerephon asked what art Gorgias knows, you praised it as though you were answering someone who criticized it. But you never said what the art was.
Polus: Did I not say that it was the noblest of arts?
Socrates: Yes, indeed, but that did not answer the question. Nobody asked how good the art was, but what it was, and what name we should give Gorgias. I would still ask you to tell us briefly and clearly what this art is and what we should call Gorgias, just as you answered Chaerephon’s first questions. Or rather, Gorgias, let me turn to you and ask the same question: what should we call you, and what art do you claim to practice?
Gorgias: Rhetoric, Socrates, is my art.
Socrates: Then I should call you a rhetorician?
Gorgias: Yes, Socrates, and a good one too, if you would call me what, in Homer’s words, “I boast myself to be.”
Socrates: I would like to do that.
Gorgias: Then please do.
Socrates: And should we say that you can make other people rhetoricians?
Gorgias: Yes, that is exactly what I claim to make them, in Athens and everywhere else.
Socrates: And will you keep asking and answering questions, Gorgias, as we are doing now, and save the longer speeches Polus was attempting for another occasion? Will you keep your promise and give short answers to the questions you are asked?
Gorgias: Some answers necessarily take longer, Socrates. But I will do my best to make them as short as possible. Part of my claim is that I can be as brief as anyone.
Socrates: That is what we want, Gorgias. Show us the shorter method now, and the longer one some other time.
Gorgias: I will. And you will certainly say that you have never heard anyone use fewer words.
Socrates: Very good, then. Since you claim to be a rhetorician and to make others rhetoricians, let me ask what rhetoric deals with. I might ask what weaving deals with, and you would answer, would you not, that it deals with making clothes?
Gorgias: Yes.
Socrates: And music deals with composing melodies?
Gorgias: It does.
Socrates: By Hera, Gorgias, I admire the extraordinary brevity of your answers.
Gorgias: Yes, Socrates, I do think I am good at that.
Socrates: I am glad to hear it. Answer me in the same way about rhetoric: what does rhetoric deal with?
Gorgias: Speech.
Socrates: What sort of speech, Gorgias? The sort that would teach sick people what treatment could make them well?
Gorgias: No.
Socrates: Then rhetoric does not deal with every kind of speech?
Gorgias: Certainly not.
Socrates: And yet rhetoric makes people able to speak?
Gorgias: Yes.
Socrates: And to understand what they speak about?
Gorgias: Of course.
Socrates: But does the art of medicine, which we just mentioned, not also make people able to understand and speak about the sick?
Gorgias: Certainly.
Socrates: Then medicine also deals with speech?
Gorgias: Yes.
Socrates: Speech about diseases?
Gorgias: Exactly.
Socrates: And does physical training not also deal with speech about the good or bad condition of the body?
Gorgias: Very true.
Socrates: And the same is true of the other arts, Gorgias. They all deal with speech about their own subjects.
Gorgias: Clearly.
Socrates: Then if you call rhetoric the art that deals with speech, and all the other arts deal with speech, why do you not call them arts of rhetoric?
Gorgias: Because, Socrates, knowledge in the other arts has to do only with some kind of external action, such as work done by hand. But rhetoric involves no such work of the hands. It works and produces its effects only through speech. So I am justified in saying that rhetoric deals with speech.
Socrates: I am not sure I understand you completely, but I expect I will soon understand better. Please answer a question: you would agree that there are arts?
Gorgias: Yes.
Socrates: Most arts are concerned with doing things and require little or no speaking. Painting, sculpture, and many other arts can be practiced in silence. I suppose you would say that arts like these fall outside the field of rhetoric.
Gorgias: You understand my meaning perfectly, Socrates.
Socrates: But other arts work entirely through language and require little or no action, such as arithmetic, calculation, geometry, and playing checkers. In some of these, speech and action cover almost the same ground. But in most, the verbal element is greater: their effectiveness and power depend entirely on words. I take you to mean that rhetoric is an art of this second kind?
Gorgias: Exactly.
Socrates: Yet I do not believe you really mean to call any of these arts rhetoric. Your exact words were that rhetoric is an art that works and produces its effects only through speech. An opponent who wanted to quibble might say, “So, Gorgias, you call arithmetic rhetoric.” But I do not think you really call arithmetic rhetoric, any more than you would call geometry rhetoric.
Gorgias: You understand my meaning quite correctly, Socrates.
Socrates: Well, then, let me have the rest of my answer. Rhetoric is one of the arts that works mainly through words, and other arts also use words. So tell me what subject the words used in rhetoric deal with.
Suppose someone asks me about some of the arts I just mentioned. He might say, “Socrates, what is arithmetic?” I would answer, as you answered me, that arithmetic is one of the arts that produces its effects through words. Then he would ask, “Words about what?” I would answer, “Words about odd and even numbers, and how many there are of each.”
If he asked again, “What is the art of calculation?” I would say, “That too is one of the arts concerned entirely with words.” And if he went on, “Concerned with what?” I would say, like the clerks in the assembly, “As stated above” about arithmetic, but with a difference. The difference is that calculation considers not only the quantities of odd and even numbers, but also their numerical relations to themselves and to one another.
And suppose, again, I said that astronomy consists only of words. He would ask, “Words about what, Socrates?” I would answer that astronomy tells us about the movements of the stars, sun, and moon, and their relative speeds.
Gorgias: You would be quite right, Socrates.
Socrates: And now, Gorgias, tell us the truth about rhetoric. You would admit, would you not, that it is one of the arts that always acts and accomplishes all its purposes through words?
Gorgias: True.
Socrates: “Words that do what?” I would ask. What kind of things do the words used in rhetoric relate to?
Gorgias: The greatest and best things in human life, Socrates.
Socrates: That is ambiguous again, Gorgias. I am still in the dark. Which are the greatest and best things in human life? I expect you have heard people singing the old drinking song at feasts. In it, the singers list the good things in life: first health, next beauty, and third, as the songwriter says, wealth honestly obtained.
Gorgias: Yes, I know the song. But what are you getting at?
Socrates: I mean that the people who produce the things the songwriter praises, the physician, the trainer, and the money-maker, will immediately come to you. First the physician will say, “Socrates, Gorgias is deceiving you. My art deals with the greatest human good, not his.”
When I ask, “Who are you?” he will answer, “I am a physician.”
“What do you mean?” I will say. “Do you mean that your art produces the greatest good?”
“Certainly,” he will answer. “Is health not the greatest good? What greater good can people have, Socrates?”
After him, the trainer will come and say, “I too, Socrates, will be very surprised if Gorgias can show that his art does more good than mine.”
I will ask him in turn, “Who are you, my good friend, and what do you do?”
“I am a trainer,” he will answer, “and my work is to make people’s bodies beautiful and strong.”
When I have finished with the trainer, the money-maker arrives. I expect him to look down on them all. “Consider, Socrates,” he will say, “whether Gorgias or anyone else can produce any greater good than wealth.”
“Well,” you and I say to him, “do you produce wealth?”
“Yes,” he answers.
“And who are you?”
“A money-maker.”
“And do you consider wealth the greatest human good?”
“Of course,” he will answer.
And we will reply, “Yes, but our friend Gorgias maintains that his art produces a greater good than yours.”
Then he is sure to go on and ask, “What good? Let Gorgias answer.”
Now, Gorgias, I want you to imagine that they and I are asking you this question: what is this thing that you say is the greatest human good, and that you produce? Answer us.
Gorgias: The good that truly is the greatest, Socrates: it gives people personal freedom and gives individuals the power to rule over others in their own states.
Socrates: And what would you say that is?
Gorgias: What is greater than speech that persuades judges in the courts, council members in the council, citizens in the assembly, or people at any other political meeting? If you have the power to deliver such a speech, you will have the physician as your slave and the trainer as your slave. The money-maker you speak of will gather wealth for you rather than himself, because you can speak and persuade the multitude.
Socrates: Now I think, Gorgias, you have explained very precisely what you understand the art of rhetoric to be. Unless I am mistaken, you mean that rhetoric produces persuasion, that this is its only business, and that persuasion is its highest aim and purpose. Do you know of any effect of rhetoric beyond producing persuasion?
Gorgias: No. That definition seems very fair to me, Socrates. Persuasion is the chief purpose of rhetoric.
Socrates: Then listen, Gorgias. I am quite sure that if anyone ever entered a discussion purely out of a desire to know the truth, I am such a person. And I would say the same of you.
Gorgias: What is coming, Socrates?
Socrates: I will tell you. I know very well that I do not know exactly what you mean by the persuasion rhetoric produces, or what subjects it deals with, though I have a suspicion about both. So I am going to ask: what is this power of persuasion that rhetoric provides, and what does it deal with?
But if I have a suspicion, why do I ask instead of telling you? Not for your sake, but so that the argument can proceed in the way most likely to bring out the truth. And I want you to see that I am right to ask this further question. If I asked, “What sort of painter is Zeuxis?” and you said, “A painter of figures,” would I not be right to ask, “What kind of figures, and where do you find them?”
Gorgias: Certainly.
Socrates: And the reason for asking that second question would be that there are other painters who paint many other figures?
Gorgias: True.
Socrates: But if Zeuxis were the only one who painted them, your answer would have been quite sufficient?
Gorgias: Exactly.
Socrates: Now I want to ask about rhetoric in the same way. Is rhetoric the only art that produces persuasion, or do other arts have the same effect? I mean, does someone who teaches anything persuade people of what he teaches, or not?
Gorgias: He persuades them, Socrates. There can be no doubt about that.
Socrates: Again, take the arts we were just discussing. Do arithmetic and those who practice it not teach us the properties of numbers?
Gorgias: Certainly.
Socrates: And therefore persuade us of them?
Gorgias: Yes.
Socrates: Then arithmetic, as well as rhetoric, produces persuasion?
Gorgias: Clearly.
Socrates: And if anyone asks what kind of persuasion, and about what, we will answer: persuasion that teaches the quantity of odd and even numbers. We will also be able to show that all the other arts we just discussed produce persuasion, and to say what kind and about what.
Gorgias: Very true.
Socrates: Then rhetoric is not the only art that produces persuasion?
Gorgias: True.
Socrates: Since rhetoric works through persuasion and other arts do too, a perfectly fair question has arisen, just as in the painter’s case: what kind of persuasion does rhetoric produce, and about what? Is that not a fair way to put the question?
Gorgias: I think so.
Socrates: Then if you approve of the question, Gorgias, what is the answer?
Gorgias: My answer, Socrates, is that rhetoric is the art of persuasion in courts of law and other assemblies, as I was just saying, and that it deals with what is just and unjust.
Socrates: That is what I suspected you meant, Gorgias. Still, do not be surprised if later I repeat a question whose answer seems obvious. I am not asking to refute you. As I said, I want the argument to proceed step by step, so that we do not fall into the habit of anticipating and guessing what each other’s words mean. I want you to develop your own views in your own way, whatever your hypothesis may be.
Gorgias: I think you are quite right, Socrates.
Socrates: Then let me ask another question. There is such a thing as “having learned”?
Gorgias: Yes.
Socrates: And there is also “having believed”?
Gorgias: Yes.
Socrates: And is “having learned” the same as “having believed”? Are learning and belief the same thing?
Gorgias: In my judgment, Socrates, they are not the same.
Socrates: And your judgment is right, as you can establish this way. If someone asked you, “Gorgias, is there false belief as well as true belief?” you would answer, unless I am mistaken, that there is.
Gorgias: Yes.
Socrates: But is there false knowledge as well as true knowledge?
Gorgias: No.
Socrates: No, indeed. And this again proves that knowledge and belief are different.
Gorgias: Very true.
Socrates: Yet people who have learned and people who have believed are both persuaded?
Gorgias: Exactly.
Socrates: Shall we then recognize two kinds of persuasion: one that produces belief without knowledge, and another that produces knowledge?
Gorgias: By all means.
Socrates: And which kind of persuasion does rhetoric produce in courts of law and other assemblies about what is just and unjust? The kind that gives belief without knowledge, or the kind that gives knowledge?
Gorgias: Clearly, Socrates, the kind that gives only belief.
Socrates: Then it seems that rhetoric produces persuasion that creates belief about what is just and unjust, but gives no instruction about them?
Gorgias: True.
Socrates: And the rhetorician does not instruct courts of law or other assemblies about what is just and unjust, but creates belief about them? After all, we cannot suppose that anyone could instruct such a vast multitude about such important matters in a short time, can we?
Gorgias: Certainly not.
Socrates: Come, then, let’s see what we really mean by rhetoric, because I don’t yet know what I mean myself. When the assembly meets to choose a physician, a shipbuilder, or any other craftsman, will it consult the rhetorician? Surely not. In every election, the person with the greatest skill should be chosen. Again, when walls have to be built, or harbors or docks constructed, the master builder will advise, rather than the rhetorician. When generals have to be chosen, a battle formation arranged, or a position taken, military experts will advise, rather than rhetoricians. What do you say, Gorgias?
Since you claim to be a rhetorician and to train rhetoricians, I can do no better than learn the nature of your art from you. And let me assure you that I have your interests in mind as well as my own. Some of the young men here may well want to become your students. In fact, I see some, quite a few, who have this wish but would be too shy to question you. So when I question you, imagine that they are questioning you. “What is the point of coming to you, Gorgias?” they will ask. “What will you teach us to advise the state about? Only what is just and unjust, or also those other things Socrates just mentioned?” How will you answer them?
Gorgias: I like the way you lead us on, Socrates, and I’ll try to show you the whole nature of rhetoric. You must have heard, I think, that the Athenians’ docks and walls and the plan for their harbor were devised on the advice partly of Themistocles and partly of Pericles, rather than at the builders’ suggestion.
Socrates: That is what people say about Themistocles, Gorgias. And I myself heard Pericles’ speech when he advised us about the middle wall.
Gorgias: And you’ll notice, Socrates, that when a decision has to be made about such matters, the rhetoricians are the advisers. They are the ones who carry their point.
Socrates: That was what I had admiringly in mind, Gorgias, when I asked about the nature of rhetoric. Whenever I look at it this way, its greatness seems astonishing to me.
Gorgias: Astonishing indeed, Socrates, if you only knew how rhetoric embraces all the lesser arts and holds them under its sway. Let me give you a striking example. On several occasions I’ve gone with my brother Herodicus, or some other physician, to see a patient who wouldn’t let the physician give him medicine or treat him with a knife or hot iron. Through rhetoric alone, I persuaded him to agree for my sake to what he wouldn’t agree to for the physician’s.
And I say that if a rhetorician and a physician went to any city and had to argue before the public assembly, or any other assembly, about which of them should be chosen as the state’s physician, the physician would have no chance. The man who could speak would be chosen, if he wished. In a contest with someone from any other profession, the rhetorician would have more power than anyone else to get himself chosen. He can speak more persuasively to the crowd than any of them, on any subject. Such is the nature and power of the art of rhetoric!
And yet, Socrates, rhetoric should be used like any other competitive art, not against everyone. The rhetorician should no more abuse his strength than a boxer, an athlete skilled in both boxing and wrestling, or anyone else skilled in armed combat. Having powers that are more than a match for either friend or enemy does not mean he should strike, stab, or kill his friends.
Suppose someone has trained at a wrestling school and become a skilled boxer. At the height of his strength, he goes and strikes his father or mother, or one of his close companions or friends. That is no reason to hate the trainers or instructors in armed combat, or banish them from the city. Surely not. They taught their art for a good purpose, to be used against enemies and wrongdoers, in self-defense rather than aggression. Others have twisted their instructions and put their own strength and skill to bad use. That does not make the teachers bad, nor is the art at fault or bad in itself. I would say instead that those who misuse the art are to blame.
The same argument applies to rhetoric. The rhetorician can speak against anyone and on any subject. In short, he can persuade the crowd of anything he pleases better than anyone else can. But he should not try to rob the physician, or any other practitioner of an art, of his reputation merely because he has the power. He should use rhetoric fairly, just as he should use his athletic powers.
And if, after becoming a rhetorician, he misuses his strength and skill, surely his teacher should not be hated or banished on that account. His teacher intended him to put the instruction to good use, but he abuses it. So he is the one who should be hated, banished, and put to death, rather than his teacher.
Socrates: You, Gorgias, like me, have a great deal of experience with debates. I think you must have noticed that they don’t always end with both sides learning something, or with either side defining the subjects they’re discussing. Disagreements tend to arise. Someone says that another person hasn’t spoken truthfully or clearly. Then they get angry and begin to quarrel. Both sides think their opponents are arguing only out of personal resentment and jealousy, rather than an interest in the question at issue. Sometimes they go on insulting one another until the audience is thoroughly annoyed with itself for ever listening to such people.
Why do I say this? Because I can’t help feeling that what you’re saying now is not quite consistent with what you first said about rhetoric. And I’m afraid to point this out, in case you think I’m hostile to you and am speaking out of jealousy, rather than to discover the truth. Now, if you’re the same kind of person as I am, I’d like to question you further. Otherwise, I’ll leave you alone.
“What kind of person are you?” you’ll ask. I’m someone who is very willing to be proved wrong if I say anything untrue, and very willing to prove someone else wrong if he says anything untrue. I’m just as ready to be proved wrong as to prove someone else wrong. I believe being proved wrong is the greater benefit, just as being cured of a very great evil is a greater benefit than curing someone else. I think no evil a person can suffer is as great as a mistaken belief about the matters we’re discussing. If you say you’re the same kind of person, let’s discuss this to the end. But if you’d rather stop, that’s all right. Let’s end it.
Gorgias: I would say, Socrates, that I’m exactly the kind of person you describe. But perhaps we should consider the audience. Before you came, I had already given a long demonstration, and if we continue, the argument may go on at great length. So I think we should consider whether we might be keeping some of these people here when they want to do something else.
Chaerephon: You hear the audience cheering, Gorgias and Socrates. That shows they want to listen to you. As for me, heaven forbid that I should have any business that would take me away from a discussion so interesting and so skillfully conducted.
Callicles: By the gods, Chaerephon, although I’ve attended many discussions, I doubt I’ve ever enjoyed one so much before. So if you keep discussing this all day, I’ll be all the happier.
Socrates: I can honestly say, Callicles, that I’m willing, if Gorgias is.
Gorgias: After all this, Socrates, I would be disgraced if I refused, especially since I’ve promised to answer anyone who comes to me. So, in keeping with the audience’s wishes, go ahead and ask me any question you like.
Socrates: Let me tell you, then, Gorgias, what surprises me about your words, though you may well be right and I may have misunderstood you. You say you can make anyone who is willing to learn from you into a rhetorician?
Gorgias: Yes.
Socrates: Do you mean you’ll teach him to win over the crowd on any subject, through persuasion rather than instruction?
Gorgias: Exactly.
Socrates: In fact, you were saying that the rhetorician will have greater powers of persuasion than the physician, even on a matter of health?
Gorgias: Yes, with the crowd, that is.
Socrates: You mean with people who don’t know. With those who do know, we can’t suppose he has greater powers of persuasion.
Gorgias: Very true.
Socrates: But if he is to have greater powers of persuasion than the physician, he will have greater powers than someone who knows?
Gorgias: Certainly.
Socrates: Although he isn’t a physician, is he?
Gorgias: No.
Socrates: And someone who isn’t a physician must obviously be ignorant of what the physician knows.
Gorgias: Clearly.
Socrates: Then, when the rhetorician is more persuasive than the physician, someone who is ignorant is more persuasive with other ignorant people than someone who has knowledge. Isn’t that the conclusion?
Gorgias: In the case we’re considering, yes.
Socrates: And the same holds for rhetoric’s relation to all the other arts. The rhetorician doesn’t need to know the truth about things. He only has to discover some way of persuading people who don’t know that he has more knowledge than those who do?
Gorgias: Yes, Socrates. And isn’t that a great comfort? To have learned only the art of rhetoric, rather than the other arts, and yet be in no way inferior to those who practice them?
Socrates: Whether this makes the rhetorician inferior or not is a question we’ll examine later, if the inquiry is likely to be useful to us. But I’d rather begin by asking whether he is as ignorant of what is just and unjust, shameful and honorable, good and evil, as he is of medicine and the other arts. I mean, does he really know anything about what is good and evil, shameful or honorable, just or unjust in these arts? Or does he merely have a way of persuading people who don’t know that he, though he lacks knowledge, should be considered to know more about these things than someone who does know?
Or must the student know these things and come to you already knowing them before he can acquire the art of rhetoric? If he is ignorant, you, as the teacher of rhetoric, won’t teach him these things, since that isn’t your business. But you’ll make him seem to the crowd to know them when he doesn’t, and seem to be a good man when he isn’t. Or will you be unable to teach him rhetoric at all unless he first knows the truth about these things? What are we to say about all this? By heaven, Gorgias, I wish you would show me the power of rhetoric, as you said you would.
Gorgias: Well, Socrates, I suppose that if the student happens not to know these things, he’ll have to learn them from me as well.
Socrates: Say no more, because you’re right there. So anyone you make into a rhetorician must either already know the nature of what is just and unjust, or be taught it by you.
Gorgias: Certainly.
Socrates: Well, isn’t someone who has learned carpentry a carpenter?
Gorgias: Yes.
Socrates: And someone who has learned music a musician?
Gorgias: Yes.
Socrates: And, in the same way, someone who has learned medicine is a physician? Anyone who has learned anything is whatever that knowledge makes him.
Gorgias: Certainly.
Socrates: And in the same way, someone who has learned what is just is just?
Gorgias: Of course.
Socrates: And someone who is just can be expected to do what is just?
Gorgias: Yes.
Socrates: And mustn’t a just person always want to do what is just?
Gorgias: That is clearly the conclusion.
Socrates: Surely, then, a just person will never agree to commit injustice?
Gorgias: Certainly not.
Socrates: And according to the argument, the rhetorician must be a just person?
Gorgias: Yes.
Socrates: And so will never be willing to commit injustice?
Gorgias: Clearly not.
Socrates: But do you remember saying just now that the trainer shouldn’t be blamed or banished if the boxer misuses his art? And likewise, if the rhetorician uses his rhetoric badly and unjustly, his teacher shouldn’t be blamed or banished. Instead, the wrongdoer himself, who misused his rhetoric, should be banished. Wasn’t that what you said?
Gorgias: Yes, it was.
Socrates: But now we’re saying that this same rhetorician will never have committed any injustice at all?
Gorgias: True.
Socrates: And at the very beginning, Gorgias, we said that rhetoric dealt with speech about what is just and unjust, rather than about odd and even numbers, as arithmetic does. Wasn’t that what we said?
Gorgias: Yes.
Socrates: When I heard you say that, I thought rhetoric, which always speaks about justice, couldn’t possibly be an unjust thing. But when you added shortly afterward that the rhetorician might misuse rhetoric, I was surprised at the inconsistency you had fallen into. And I said that if you thought, as I did, that being proved wrong was a benefit, it would be worthwhile to continue examining the question. Otherwise, I would stop.
And in the course of our inquiry, as you can see for yourself, we’ve agreed that the rhetorician is incapable of using rhetoric unjustly, or of being willing to commit injustice. By the dog, Gorgias, there will be a great deal of discussion before we get to the truth of all this.
