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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books A Short History of Ethics: a History of Moral Philosophy From the Homeric Age To the Twentieth Century CHAPTER 4: PLATO: THE GORGIAS I HAVE already said that it is impossible to produce more than a plausible account of the historical Socrates; and the most obvious reason for this is that it is impossible to say at what point in Plato’s dialogues the character called Socrates became merely a mouthpiece for the mature Plato.

But so far as the philosophical import of what is said in the dialogues is concerned, this need not trouble us. For a clear pattern of argument can be discerned. In the Gorgias, which is certainly a fairly early dialogue, we see Plato set most of his central problems in ethics. In the Meno and the Phaedo a metaphysical background is being constructed, which in the Republic provides an essential part of a proposed solution to problems which are a restatement of those in the Gorgias.

In the dialogues after the Republic there is a sustained critique of the metaphysics, but there are also two substantial afterthoughts on the problems of ethics, the Philebus, on pleasure, and the Laws. The Gorgias falls into three sections, in each of which Socrates has a different interlocutor, and each of which establishes certain positions once and for all before passing on.

The function of the first part is to dispose of the claims of rhetoric to be the τέχνη whereby virtue is taught and also to establish a distinction between two senses of persuasion. Gorgias himself is the upholder of the view that rhetoric, as the art of persuasion, is the means to man’s supreme good. For the supreme good is freedom (ἐλενθερία), and by freedom is meant the freedom to have one’s own way in everything.

In order to have one’s own way in the city-state, one must be able to sway one’s fellow citizens. Socrates introduces a distinction between the kind of persuasion which produces knowledge in the man who is persuaded and the kind that does not.

In the first case persuasion consists in offering reasons for holding a belief, and if the belief is accepted, an account can be given to back it up in terms of those reasons; in the second case persuasion consists in subjecting the audience to a psychological pressure which produces an ungrounded conviction. Now Gorgias makes it plain that rhetoric is persuasion not of the former, but of the latter kind.