Gorgias
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~58,500 words · 278 passages
Cite this work
- APAPlato. (n.d.). Gorgias. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/gorgias
- MLAPlato. Gorgias. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/gorgias.
- ChicagoPlato. Gorgias. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/gorgias.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Against the teachers of rhetoric: if the orator persuades without knowing, what is he actually selling? It turns towards the graver question of whether it is better to commit injustice or to suffer it.
Context and history
The dialogue where Socrates says he would rather suffer wrong than do it, and where Callicles retorts that justice is an invention of the weak to restrain the strong — an argument Nietzsche would pick up twenty-three centuries later. Plato's harshest discussion of power.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
mantle of Schleiermacher has descended upon his successors, who have applied his method with the most various results. The value and use of the method has been hardly, if at all, examined either by him or them. Secondly, they have extended almost indefinitely the scope of each separate dialogue; in this way they think that they have escaped all difficulties, not seeing that what they have gained in generality they have lost in truth and distinctness. Metaphysical conceptions easily pass into one another; and the simpler notions of antiquity, which we can only realize by an effort, imperceptibly blend with the more familiar theories of modern philosophers. An eye for proportion is needed (his own art of measuring) in the study of Plato, as well as of other great artists. We may hardly admit that the moral antithesis of good and pleasure, or the intellectual antithesis of knowledge and opinion, being and appearance, are never far off in a Platonic discussion. But because they are in the background, we should not bring them into the foreground, or expect to discern them equally in all the dialogues. There may be some advantage in drawing out a little the main outlines of the building; but the use of this is limited, and may be easily exaggerated. We may give Plato too much system, and alter the natural form and connection of his thoughts. Under the idea that his dialogues are finished works of art, we may find a reason for everything, and lose the highest characteristic of art, which is simplicity. Most great works receive a new light from a new and original mind. But whether these new lights are true or only suggestive, will depend on their agreement with the spirit of Plato, and the amount of direct evidence which can be urged in support of them. When a theory is running away with us, criticism does a friendly office in counselling moderation, and recalling us to the indications of the text.…