[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]
Plato’s Gorgias may be second only to the Republic as a wide-ranging and valuable text for the teaching of political philosophy. In the Gorgias, Socrates carries out a wide-ranging and yet ultimately inconclusive conversation with a cadre of rhetoricians: the learned Gorgias of Leontini, his young admirer Polus, and the braggadocious, ambitious Callicles. Midway through the dialogue, Socrates suggests that the conversation is “about the way we’re supposed to live” (502c, trans. D. J. Zeyl). Throughout, Socrates and his interlocutors hold up two competing and incommensurable ways of life: the life of philosophy, justice, and moderation on the one hand, and the life of rhetoric, power, and pleonexia (or unfettered desire) on the other. The choice between these two lives, as presented in the Gorgias, could by itself occupy an entire political philosophy class for an entire semester. The perennial nature of this debate lends itself well to teaching: for my part, I read the Gorgias 3 or 4 times a year alongside the roughly 100 students enrolled across multiple sections of my introductory Political Theory class at Elon University, where two facts about the dialogue bookend our reading of the Gorgias.
First, it is a dialogue where Socrates does not have to be compelled to speak. Unlike Republic, which shares much thematic content with the Gorgias, Socrates enters the conversation of his own volition, apparently curious to learn about the art that Gorgias purports to teach. As I remind my students, Socrates’ curiosity must become our own, as we endeavor to learn how to live well within a (democratic) political community. Second, the dialogue ends in a conversational impasse. Neither Socrates nor Callicles is convinced. In fact, by the end of the dialogue Callicles appears to have entirely given up on dialogue itself, answering only to please Gorgias and Socrates. Much like Republic, the Gorgias culminates in a myth about the afterlife, though curious readers might enquire to what ends, given that Socrates is already persuaded of his view and Callicles has grown sullen and recalcitrant—in a word, unpersuadable. This impasse generates several critical considerations for political philosophy. For one, it suggests that each of us must, in our own time and place, choose “the way we’re supposed to live.” Further, it reminds us that in any regime, there will inevitably be some who remain unconvinced of justice or virtue: Callicles represents a human type who is ever-present in democratic regimes. The central task of philosophy then, is not just to discern justice and seek to pursue it in our lives and regimes, but also to determine how to live a just life in political community with those who do not share our views. The Gorgias asks us to confront these perennial questions.
Teachers, scholars, and students interested in Plato’s Gorgias will be delighted to receive this latest volume in Cambridge University Press’s series of Critical Guides. Plato’s Gorgias is a lively scholarly companion to Plato’s text. The ten essays, written by a star-studded collection of authors, range broadly from studies situating the Gorgias in its historical and political context, to close readings of the text itself. This methodological and topical diversity reflect well on the editor’s efforts to compile a useful volume with a broad potential readership. The essays in the volume may be largely grouped into three parallel conversations, each of which improves our understanding of the Gorgias, its content, and its context.
Josh Wilburn, Harold Tarrant, and Ryan Balot seek to place the Gorgias within its historical context. Wilburn’s “Gorgias of Leontini and Plato’s Gorgias” compares Plato’s portrayal of Gorgias to the historical Gorgias by reading the Platonic dialogue in light of Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen and Defense of Palamedes. Wilburn shows both where Plato’s Gorgias aligns with what we know of the historical Gorgias, and where these two may diverge, ultimately concluding that Plato, like Socrates in the dialogue, took Gorgias’ ideas seriously and considered them worthy of careful consideration. While Wilburn’s chapter considers Plato’s reception of the historical Gorgias, Harold Tarrant’s “Ancient Readers of the Gorgias” follows up by outlining the dialogue’s reception in the ancient world, ending with a detailed outline of the dialogue’s use by the sixth-century Platonist Olympiodorus. Whereas Wilburn’s chapter could serve as an effective historical and conceptual introduction to ancient rhetoric, Tarrant’s contribution could easily provide a departure point for interested graduate students or scholars looking to expand on this fertile starting point. The volume’s penultimate chapter, Ryan Balot’s “Freedom, Pleonexia, and Persuasion in Plato’s Gorgias” reads the dialogue’s discussion of freedom (particularly, Gorgias’ claim that rhetoric is the “cause … of freedom for human beings themselves”) against the backdrop of Athenian democracy and empire. Read in light of Thucydides’ discussion of Periclean Athens, Balot suggests that Socrates is attempting to show Callicles that the political leaders he emulates, like Pericles and Themistocles, have harmed the cities by neglecting the better things in life and pursuing only Athens’ material advantage. Of course, Callicles would do the same, yet Socrates’s discussion of Periclean Athens is meant to show Callicles the error in his embrace of pleonexia – or, failing that, at least persuade Callicles to embrace a narrower vision of pleasure ordered towards “reputation, manliness, and imperial freedom” rather than “the lives of the stone-curlew, scratcher, and catamite” (191-2). Here, Balot’s essay helpfully contextualizes the discussion of Athenian politics in the Gorgias, while showing the place of this discussion within the Socratic elenchus.
A second thread of papers examines the heart of the debate between Socrates and his interlocutors. Hugh Benson’s “Philosophy and the Just Life in the Gorgias” outlines the twin disputes of the dialogue: the contest between the just life and the unjust life, on the one hand, and the competition between philosophy and rhetoric on the other. While it can be tempting to collapse these two into one debate (or to identify philosophy with justice and rhetoric with injustice), Benson argues that these two should be held separate, with philosophy representing the Socratic elenchos which encourages “the pursuit of knowledge necessary for such a [just] life” (49). Eric Brown and J. Clerk Shaw team up in “Socrates and Coherent Desire (Gorgias 466a-468b),” presenting a richly detailed close reading of the relationship between oratory, tyranny, and desire. While not breaking as much new ground as some other essays in the volume, this chapter devotes close attention to the discussion between Socrates and Polus, which is often overlooked for Socrates’ later confrontation with Callicles. Oliver Renaut’s “Shame in the Gorgias” discusses the pedagogic uses of shame throughout the dialogue. Shame, he concludes, is a morally ambivalent tool: it may be used to silence discussion and end conversation, or to reveal “a discordance between how we usually think, act, and speak, and what we really believe in” (122). Renaut, rather like Balot, closes by remarking on Socrates’ ultimate failure to persuade Callicles through philosophical dialogue.
The final thread among these essays illuminates the conversation itself, and Callicles’ recalcitrant and sullen response to Socrates’ questioning. Terence Irwin, in “Cooperation and the Search for Truth: Socrates and Callicles” examines Socrates’ peculiar (given the reading above) praise of Callicles as conversation partner. While Callicles is aggressive, Irwin argues that Callicles holds a plausibly coherent position as a political democrat and advocate of natural justice and is willing to revise his own views in response to Socrates’ questioning. Irwin points, specifically, to Socrates’ rejection of unrestrained hedonism (as outlined in Balot’s chapter) as a sign of Callicles’ quality as an interlocutor, while undercutting any depiction of Callicles as recalcitrant beyond the possibility of moral reform. Frisbee Sheffield likewise, in “Desire and Argument in Plato’s Gorgias,” places laser-like focus on Callicles’ place in the dialogue. Sheffield outlines the “consensus view”—that Callicles’ disordered desires place him beyond persuasion and in fact render him incapable of discharging the reciprocal obligations of dialogue – but then calls that view into question as incomplete, presenting a textual argument that Socratic dialogue is not only dependent on certain values, but also capable of generating those values in its participants via habituation. In fact, Sheffield argues, Callicles shows some moral progress over the course of the dialogue, eventually reengaging with Socrates by the concluding salvos. These two essays, taken together, should prompt teachers and scholars to reconsider the traditional depiction of Callicles as recalcitrant beyond reform. Nicholas Baima devotes careful attention to the concluding myth of the dialogue, arguing that while it cannot have been meant to persuade Socrates, who is already persuaded, nor Callicles who shows resistance to persuasion, the myth may strengthen the philosophically inclined listener of the superiority of the philosophic life by assuring them that virtue “pays” in the end. Despite playing a central role in the dialogue, this myth (which Socrates claims is a logos) is often neglected, and Baima’s contribution capably addresses that deficiency by situating it within the dialogue and within Socratic philosophy.
Allison Murphy’s excellent chapter (“Revealing Commitments”) closes the volume by drawing together the substantive dispute as well as the conversational impasse between Callicles and Socrates. Ultimately, she argues that the debate over which life one ought to live hinges on Socrates’ appeal to certain cosmic truths (captured perhaps most clearly in the concluding myth) that he believes and asserts, yet does not defend within the dialogue. This leaves the reader of the dialogue with the inevitable task of evaluating their own commitments and so determining which life they ought to live.
Plato’s Gorgias is a rich and rewarding text for both teaching and research. This Cambridge Critical Guide makes that case strongly, revealing the conceptual, ethical, and political depth of Plato’s text and invoking its relevance to a host of debates and questions. In fact, I am hard-pressed to come up with any substantial critique of the volume that J. Clerk Shaw has assembled. It is, like most academic texts, costly ($110 for 225 pages, inclusive of bibliography and index), and this will regrettably limit its audience. Some readers will perhaps wish that the essays spoke more clearly to the relevance of the Gorgias to the political questions of our own time – especially in the face of global debates surrounding tyranny and the use and abuse of rhetoric in democratic states. These connections, however, are left up to the reader. I found myself wishing for more discussion of Socrates’ debate with Polus, which is the focus of only one of the essays in the volume (that co-authored by Brown and Shaw). The volume, however, focuses understandably on Socrates’ culminating conflict with Callicles. It would be miserly, however, to insist on these minor points in the face of a rich, and generative (if slim) collection of essays that has done quite a bit to revitalize my own interest in Plato’s Gorgias. Perhaps you, like I, have been teaching it regularly; or perhaps you have neglected it for other Platonic dialogues. Either way, this Critical Guide may be just the thing you need to invigorate or reinvigorate your interest in the text. The essays, taken together, serve as both a comprehensive introduction to the text and its time, as well as opening new courses of study and research. In fact, the volume deftly combines accessibility and depth such that almost any essay could be assigned in an undergraduate seminar alongside the text itself, while still being of interest to graduate students and researchers. Whether you are a teacher, scholar, or reader of Plato, this volume is sure to be of use.
Authors and Titles
Clerk Shaw, “Introduction”
- Josh Wilburn, “Gorgias of Leontini and Plato’s Gorgias”
- Harold Tarrant, “Ancient Readers of the Gorgias”
- Hugh H. Benson, “Philosophy and the Just Life in the Gorgias”
- Eric Brown and J. Clerk Shaw, “Socrates and Coherent Desire (Gorgias 466a-468e)”
- Nicholas R. Baima, “The Ethical Function of the Gorgias’ Concluding Myth”
- Olivier Renaut, “Shame in the Gorgias”
- Frisbee Sheffield, “Desire and Argument in Plato’s Gorgias”
- Terence H. Irwin, “Cooperation and the Search for Truth: Socrates and Callicles”
- Ryan Balot, “Freedom, Pleonexia, and Persuasion in Plato’s Gorgias”
- Allison Murphy, “Revealing Commitments”