Erminia Di Iulio has written a book that is well conceived and thoughtfully executed, advancing a view of Gorgias’ epistemological ideas. She blends philological and contemporary philosophical approaches in working out readings of each major text—Encomium of Helen, Apology of Palamedes, and the two testimonia reporting the arguments in On What Is Not—to build “a comprehensive reading of Gorgias’s perspective on the relation language-thought-reality” (p. 4). She is careful to note that she reads each text on its own terms and with a view to the specific contexts in which its ideas are advanced, so as not to impose a single interpretive framework across the entire set of texts. In the Introduction she argues persuasively that we can nonetheless discern a “common thread” of epistemological questions that, while they may not be Gorgias’ sole concern, are nonetheless central and recurrent across the corpus. She takes each of his major texts to be, though distinct in their context and approach, critically engaged with efforts to close what she terms the “mind-reality gap.” In this way she strikes a fine balance: deploying concepts and terminology from modern philosophy that illuminate the issues and arguments in play, without treating Gorgias as though his thinking must proceed in those terms.
Throughout this concise and closely argued book, the method put forward in the introduction is clearly applied and discussion focused on epistemological issues and their theoretical implications as these arise in each text. The first two chapters are devoted, respectively, to the first two theses in the extant summaries of On Non-Being: first, that nothing exists and, second, that even if it does it cannot be known. Chapter 3 turns to the Apology of Palamedes, a text deserving of far more attention than studies of Gorgias typically offer; Chapter 4 treats the much-discussed Encomium of Helen; and the final chapter focuses on the third and final thesis of On Non-Being: that even if something exists and can be known, it cannot be communicated to others. Di Iulio states that each chapter is “self-sustaining,” and yet the architecture overall interestingly splits the treatment of On Non-Being, turning to Gorgias’ ipsissima verba—comprising both the least- and most-studied texts associated with him—before drawing on these discussions to tackle the much-debated third thesis. Endnotes are appended to each chapter, furthering the sense of their independence, while the organization overall does a fine job of tracing her themes throughout the corpus and allowing more informed and nuanced approaches to longstanding debates around the Encomium and the third thesis of On Non-Being.
This book emphasizes the twin and coequal elements of Gorgias’ approach to epistemological questions. The first is a negative and critical aspect (“pars destruens”) that responds to Parmenides by challenging the unity of logic, language, and being proclaimed in his poem. Chapter 1 argues, following existing views, that the first thesis of On Non-Being—nothing ‘is’—points up a logical and linguistic problem rather than an ontological one. Di Iulio even aims to reconcile scholarly differences over whether the linguistic problem with Parmenides’ “being” turns on existential or predicative senses of the term, since on her account Gorgias understands the predicative use of ‘is’ to imply a statement about identity. The problem with predication, therefore, is not ultimately reducible to claims about existence, and Gorgias’ argument points up more than one thorny problem with the way in which reality is construed in language. Di Iulio thus locates Gorgias’ arguments in a dialectic that runs from Parmenides to Plato’s Sophist. Chapter 2 tackles the second thesis of On Non-Being: even if something exists, it cannot be known. The crucial component of this thesis, Di Iulio argues, is Gorgias’ suggestion that there is no criterion by which we might distinguish truth from falsehood, in part because it is impossible to fully distinguish and coordinate existential and veridical sense of the verb “to be.” While covering well-trodden ground around the varied senses of that verb and their relations in both Parmenides and Gorgias, Di Iulio advances a helpful and subtle view of Gorgias’ judgment of Parmenides. He may accept the necessity of Parmenides’ identity between ‘being’ (εἶναι) and ‘knowing’ (νοεῖν), but also seizes on his failure to account for non-veridical thinking. Gorgias thus emphasizes, and here Di Iulio brings modern philosophical terms to bear, the critical difference between intentional thinking (simply “having something in mind”) and representational thinking (“thinking that something is the case”). This, in turn, allows Gorgias to point out that the fantastic objects of intentional thinking—his famous example is chariots running on the sea—cannot be easily distinguished from those of representational thinking. Even in the case of perception, where thinking seems to represent and denote external objects, the mental representation is phenomenally the same. All cases come down to the same outcome: there is no secure criterion by which to distinguish truth from falsehood.
Chapters 3 and 4 turn to the texts extant from Gorgias himself, the Apology of Palamedes and Encomium of Helen, and to the positive aspect of Gorgias’ thinking about knowledge (“pars construens”). Di Iulio’s careful analysis of the Palamedes is successful both in revealing a thoroughgoing account of knowledge and in situating its argument among the broader array of Gorgias’ ideas. She shows that the Palamedes is concerned above all with the epistemic position of the audience—not having witnessed events for themselves, they cannot know the truth about them—and the impossibility of acquiring knowledge through another’s account. Palamedes’ speech, though it may spring from knowledge, cannot grant knowledge to its audience by referring facts to reality. Since, as far as the audience is concerned, neither Odysseus’ accusation or Palamedes’ apologia is truth-evaluable, Palamedes can convince the Greeks of his innocence only by showing the accusation to be logically inconsistent. Di Iulio locates the “epistemological core” of the Palamedes in two main arguments. First, that Palamedes’ statements in sections 5 and 24 present knowledge and belief as a strict either/or: one really does know, or one merely believes and does not know. Second, and against recent treatments arguing for a coherentist epistemology in Gorgias, she shows persuasively that sections 22 and 15 offer a strict foundationalist account of knowledge grounded in witnessing.[1] True speech is not impossible, then, but its production and evaluation is experience-dependent; the predicament of forensic oratory is that the audience almost always lacks the experience that would let them evaluate speeches with respect to truth. While sticking to her commitment to treat Gorgias’ texts independently, this reading of the Palamedes nicely sets up Di Iulio’s approach to the Encomium of Helen in Chapter 4. As one might surmise, the suggestion that most of us are rarely in a position to evaluate the truth of speeches opens up a veritable playground for persuasion and deception. Since the possibility of knowledge by direct perception is impossible with respect to Helen, the questions focus on how doxastic judgments are made. Here Di Iulio resists a prevailing tendency to read the speech, sections 11 and 13 in particular, as substituting likelihood for truth. She argues instead that, rather than putting forward a deceptive resemblance of truth, Gorgias offers plausibility that implicitly acknowledges the unavailability of truth. She deftly shows how the use of εἰκός and related terms in the Palamedes should inform our reading of the Encomium, such that the latter is not advancing an approximation of truth but acknowledging that the fact of the matter is inaccessible and therefore irrelevant. This heightens the paradox of a speech that ostensibly sets out to tell the truth about Helen, and lets Di Iulio make hay of its quasi-comic turn to the speech as a “plaything” in the final sentence.
Chapter 5 finds in the third thesis of On Non-Being—even if something is and can be known, it cannot be communicated—a conception of knowledge similar to that offered in the Palamedes: knowledge is possible, but only where objects or events are directly perceived. Perception may be veridical and allow one to know the objects of experience, but this knowledge simply cannot be translated or reduced to the communication of facts and concepts in logos. This means that one cannot articulate even one’s own knowledge and, even if this were possible, another person cannot receive and possess what the speaker knows unless they already happen to have direct experience of the very thing or event in question.
Overall, Di Iulio shows us a Gorgias who is seriously engaged with his philosophical contemporaries, and with unique and challenging contributions to the questions of the day. Her readings offer substantive objections—intriguing ideas in their own right—to earlier portraits of Gorgias: first of all as one who makes a malicious and disingenuous response to Parmenides without concern for the truth of issues in play; secondly as one who does so as part of a larger project to substitute verisimilitude for truth. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Gorgias’ ideas and relationship to philosophy, as well as those keen to see how modern philosophical discourse may generate a fruitful dialogue with ancient texts whose relationship to the philosophical tradition may be opaque and problematic. The printing itself is compact and easy to reference, though an index of topics and terms would make it more so; the several minor errors of spelling or grammar only very occasionally interfere with comprehension. The engagement with scholarship is remarkably thorough without relying on a reader’s familiarity with the field, and so for many years to come this book will be an important touchstone for studies of Gorgias and his texts.
Notes
[1] See, e.g., J. P. Bermudéz, “Truth and falsehood for non-representationalists: Gorgias on the normativity of language,” Journal of Ancient Philosophy 11:2 (2017), 1–21.