Why Socrates and Thrasymachus Become Friends
In the Platonic dialogues Socrates is shown talking to two and only two famous teachers of rhetoric, Thrasymachus of Chalcedon and Gorgias of Leontini.[1] At first glance relations between Socrates and Gorgias appear to be much more courteous, even cordial than relations between Socrates and Thrasymachus. In the Gorgias Socrates explicitly and intentionally seeks an opportunity to talk to Gorgias and apparently treats him with great respect. Socrates shows that Gorgias’ claims concerning the power of his art are contradictory, but the philosopher does not press his advantage or embarrass the rhetorician.[2] Although Gorgias indicates his interest in hearing what Socrates has to say by urging his young friends Polus and Callicles to continue the conversation, Gorgias never says that he is convinced by Socrates. And Socrates never announces that Gorgias has become his friend.[3]
In the Republic Socrates reports that Thrasymachus burst into the conversation like a lion. Socrates even claims that he and his interlocutor (Polemarchus) were frightened. The initial exchange between Socrates and Thrasymachus thus appears to be hostile. And in the argument that follows, Socrates embarrasses Thrasymachus; the famous teacher of rhetoric blushes. Nevertheless, Socrates declares later in the conversation (498d), he and Thrasymachus have become friends.[4]
The difference in the relations Socrates had—or at least thought that he could have—with the two teachers of rhetoric is important, because it indicates what sort of rhetoric Socrates thought was compatible not only with his philosophy but also with a just political order, and what not. The differences between the claims and arguments of the two teachers of rhetoric are not easy to pinpoint, however. Many of the charges Gorgias’ associates Polus and Callicles make against Socrates, at least partly in defense of Gorgias, sound very much like charges Thrasymachus makes against Socrates. In order to discover the grounds of the difference in the relation between the philosopher and the two teachers of rhetoric, it thus becomes necessary to review and compare the claims Gorgias and his students make with those Thrasymachus levels against Socrates at the beginning of the Republic. These claims and charges are fundamentally differentin two respects:1) Gorgias claims that rhetoric is simply superior to all other arts;the ability to persuade others, particularly those who do not have knowledge, gives a person both the freedom to do as he pleases and the ability to rule in his own city. Thrasymachus does not make any claims for his art in particular, but insists that rulers properly speaking know what they are doing, and that means especially knowing what is truly advantageous for them. 2) The difference between the two rhetoricians’ understandings of the power of their art is thus based on a broader difference concerning the possibility of knowledge itself. Both in his famous Encomium to Helen and his declamation “On the Non-Existent”Gorgias suggests that there is no order or anything that exists in itself, independent of the way in which it is captured and described in words. If they had carried on the long conversation to which Socrates says Gorgias’ contradictory claims give rise, the philosopher would most probably have suggested that, like his host Callicles, Gorgias should have studied more geometry. If he had, he would know that “the wise say that heaven, earth, gods, and human beings are held together by community, friendship, orderliness, moderation, and justness; and on account of these things, they call the whole a cosmos” (507e). In other words, Socrates would have made the same sorts of objections to Gorgias’ broader claims that he makes in the Theaetetus to Protagoras’ famous statement that “man is the measure”: some “things” or beings, like numbers, are not simply the way human beings see them at the moment. They are knowable, indeed, precisely because are not sensible and do not change.
In contrast to Gorgias, who claims that everything is fundamentally merely a product of persuasion, in the RepublicThrasymachus explicitly refuses to follow Clitophon’s suggestion that he substitute “belief” for “knowledge” on the part of rulers. According to Thrasymachus, rulers deserve to be called rulers, strictly speaking, only if they know what is truly in their own advantage. If there is something rulers need to know in order to be rulers, the highest art cannot be merely an ability to persuade the ignorant of anything one desires.
A. Socrates’ Encounter with Gorgias
At the beginning of the Gorgias the famous rhetorician’s Athenian host Callicles expresses surprise that Socrates has come to hear Gorgias declaim. In fact, however, Socrates is not interested in witnessing a demonstration of Gorgias’ prowess as a speaker. Although he blames their failure to arrive on time to hear Gorgias’ exhibition on Chaerophon’s keeping him in the marketplace, Socrates says that he wants to converse with Gorgias. In particular, he wants to ask the rhetorician what the power of his art is and what he teaches. Since Gorgias had previously offered to answer any questions after his speech, he agrees to respond to Socrates’ queries.
In order for them to converse, Socrates emphasizes, Gorgias will have to keep his responses short. Although Gorgias sensibly observes that all questions cannot be answered adequately with brief replies, Gorgias’ first responses to Socrates’ questions are very short. Since Gorgias claims to be a knower and practitioner of an art, Socrates asks what he does and makes others capable of doing, too. Gorgias replies, speeches;soSocrates asks what the speeches are about. “The greatest of human affairs, and the best” (451d), Gorgias vaguely and rather evasively responds. Pressed to be more specific, he finally declares that his art provides “the greatest good and cause both of freedom for human beings themselves and rule over others in each man’s own city,” by enabling them to make speeches which “persuade judges in the law court, councilors in the council, assembly men in the assembly, and in every other . . . political gathering” (452d-e).[5]
1. The Grounds of Gorgias’ Claims
If Gorgias had not been restricted to brief replies by his agreement with Socrates, he might have explained the reasons for his vast claims with arguments like those to be found in two of his remaining fragments. In his “Encomium to Helen” he explains the overwhelming power of speech and in “On the Non-Existent” he demonstrates the reason or basis of this power by arguing that there is no form of “being” that exists independent of our sensations.
Gorgias begins his “Encomium” by suggesting that there is a certain kind of proportion and order to all things: “What is becoming to a city is manpower, to a body beauty, to a soul wisdom, to an action virtue, to a speech truth.” That proportion seems, moreover, to create a duty: Because “man and woman and speech and deed and city and object should be honored with praise if praiseworthy and incur blame if unworthy. . . . , it is the duty of [a] man both to speak the needful rightly and to refute the unrightfully spoken.”[6] Gorgias concludes that it is right for him to refute those who have rebuked Helen for having caused so much suffering as a result of her lack of fidelity to her husband. He seems to be doing what is right or just, but, in fact, the arguments he gives on behalf of Helen would undermine any legal conception of justice.
Helen is not responsible for the suffering she is said to have caused, Gorgias argues, because she did not choose to do so. Her beauty, a result of her divine parentage, caused men to desire her love and thus brought many men together in order to achieve their ambitions for wealth and glory by displays of personal vigor or knowledge in victorious conquest. Helen herself was moved to act as she did by divine command or necessity, by force, by speech, or by passion. In the first two cases it is fairly easy to see why Helen was not able to resist. The gods are more powerful than mortals and it is impossible for a weak woman to resist the superior physical force of a man. Gorgias explains that speech and passion are equally irresistible, however. Because human beings are mortal, we do not and cannot know the past, present, or future. We are reduced in all cases to acting on the basis of opinions (or beliefs). But these opinions are easily changed. Astronomers have persuaded human beings to believe things about the heavens contrary to their own observations. Philosophers, too, are able to undermine the beliefs of others by refuting them. Most importantly, speakers who know how to arouse the passions of their audience are able to change their opinions. Fear is stronger than thought. So is desire or love. The power of speech on the soul is analogous to the power of drugs on the body. Speakers who know how to produce and use speeches to arouse specific passions can change what other people think.
With a bit of reflection it becomes clear that the four factors Gorgias says must have determined Helen’s actions, so that she herself is not responsible, would apply to any “criminal.” We see, therefore, what kind of speech Gorgias claimed would be the cause of freedom for human beings and why it would enable them to rule over others. Ability to make arguments like those Gorgias gave on behalf of Helen would not only free a potential felon from the threat of punishment in court by persuading a jury of his innocence. Someone able to arouse the passions of others by means of speech could also persuade an assembly to adopt the opinions and consequent measures he proposed as law.
In another speech “On the Non-Existent” Gorgias set Parmenides’ famous argument showing that being is one, homogeneous, unchanging, eternal, immobile, intelligible but not sensible on its head by arguing on the basis of the same kinds of mutually exclusive alternatives that nothing exists.[7] If it did exist, it would not be intelligible, because things in our minds do not necessarily correspond to things which are. And “even if it should be apprehended, it would be incapable of being conveyed to another. For if existent things are visible and audible and generally perceptible, which means that they are external substances [and perceived by the respective senses of sight and hearing], how can these things be revealed to another person?”[8] Human beings communicate by means of logos, a separate faculty from sight or hearing. Logos is not a substance or existing thing, however; it arises from things impinging upon us. In opposition to Parmenides’ claim that being is one, intelligible, and unchanging, Gorgias asserts that all existence is perceptible, hence ever-changing and malleable. Because our perceptions are products of interactions between external things and those who perceive them, they change and can bechanged. There is no independently existing “being” or “reason” (logos) by which to test or measure the truth of our changing perceptions. These perceptions can, moreover, be intentionally manipulated by a rhetorician who knows how to affect the passions and therewith the perceptions and beliefs of his audience.
- Socrates’ Refutation of Gorgias
In his conversation with Gorgias Socrates does not explore the philosophical
basis of the rhetorician’s claims. He simply gets Gorgias to agree, first, that a rhetorician does not need to know the subject about which he speaks in order to persuade an ignorant audience, and second, that the rhetorician’s speeches concern the just and unjust, noble and base, good and bad. Because the rhetorician does not claim to have much substantive knowledge, Socrates concentrates on the potentially corrupting, destructive effects of the claims Gorgias makes about the power of his art. According to Gorgias’ understanding of the character of human access to the world, we do not and cannot actually have knowledge of the things “in themselves,” only of the way in which we can affect the perceptions other people have of them. In refuting Gorgias, Socrates proceeds on the basis of the rhetorician’s own presuppositions, not the philosophical claims and arguments which he mocked. Socrates insists on beginning his examinations of the opinions of others with propositions to which they agree, because, we see in his later abortive exchange with Callicles, if Socrates does not, his interlocutor can follow his reasoning to the end and then simply object to the first premise. In that case, the interlocutor is not led to reconsider his initial opinions or commitments as a result of having been refuted or corrected.
There is an implicit problem in a foreign teacher seeking students in Athens making such claims—and Socrates knows it. If Gorgias is able to do what he says he can, he is offering to teach all who are willing to pay him how they can manipulate, if not overthrow the democratic regime. Gorgias apparently recognizes the problem. After Socrates reminds him that there may be “someone inside who wishes to become a student of yours” (455c), Gorgias thus adds an otherwise inexplicable qualification to his exultation in the “power of his art.” Having bragged that a rhetorician can “go into any city” and persuade any gathering to accept his advice rather than that of an expert, he cautions: “one should use rhetoric just as every other competitive skill,” not against human beings, family, friends or fellow citizens, but “against enemies and doers of injustice”(456c-e). If someone learns the art of rhetoric and uses it unjustly, Gorgias urges, “the man who taught him should not be hated and expelled from the cities” (457b).
Socrates highlights the refutation he is about to inflict upon Gorgias by asking his interlocutor if he is a man like Socrates, who would rather learn the truth by having his own false opinion refuted than to enjoy a victory in speech by refuting another. Affirming that he is like Socrates, Gorgias nevertheless tries to escape the threatened defeat by expressing concern for those who have been listening to him speak for so long. They may be tired. Members of the audience assure him, however, that nothing would please them more than for the conversation to continue. So Socrates asks Gorgias whether he would teach a student who does not know what is just, what is. Gorgias says that he would, and Socrates argues that if someone who has learned to be a carpenter, must be a carpenter, just as someone who has learned medicine, must be a doctor, so someone who has learned justice, must do what is just.[9] If Gorgias teaches his students to be just, therefore, he has no reason to worry about his becoming hated or expelled from the city. If “the rhetorician is powerless to use rhetoric unjustly and to want to do injustice” (461a), the power of his art has been shown to be much less than he suggested and the teaching of it much less dangerous.
- The Reactions of Polus and Callicles to the Refutation of Gorgias
a. Polus: The Difference between the Noble and the Just
Socrates and Gorgias do not have an opportunity to examine the question of the relation between rhetoric and justice at length, although Socrates suggests that would be necessary, because Polus breaks into the conversation. Less angry than incredulous, Polus accuses Socrates of proceeding unfairly. First and most specifically, Polus objects (461b), Socrates led Gorgias to contradict himself merely because the famous rhetorician was ashamed to admit he would not teach someone who did not know what is just, noble and good. Neither he nor many of the critics who have taken his objection at face value see the difficulty in the situation of the foreign teacher of rhetoric to which Gorgias was responding. In other words, both Gorgias and Socrates understand democratic politics better than Polus (and some of the later commentators.) Second and more generally, Polus charges that Socrates has treated Gorgias not only impolitely but also unfairly by insisting on asking the questions himself and forcing the other to answer briefly.
Socrates begins the exchange by asking Polus whether he knows what Gorgias does and will, therefore, be willing to answer in his place—and to keep his responses brief. Polus objects to the restraint on his freedom of speech. Like Gorgias, Polus thinks that the ability to speak is valuable precisely because it enables its possessor to do what he wants-- beginning, of course, with speaking as long and in the manner he chooses.
Conceding that there is more freedom of speech in Athens than anywhere else (and thus connecting freedom to the political regime rather than to the exercise of rhetoric), Socrates suggests that there is—or ought to be--a certain kind of reciprocity between the speaker and listener. If a speaker has the freedom to say what he wants, a listener has a corresponding freedom not to pay any attention.
Believing that Socrates was able to refute Gorgias primarily because Socrates controlled the course of the argument by asking the questions, Polus says that he wants to ask rather than to answer. Before telling Polus, in effect, what to ask, Socrates defends himself from the charge of treating Gorgias impolitely by expressing concern that the rhetorician will be insulted by Socrates’ answer, but Gorgias tells Socrates to go ahead. He understands that there is more to their difference than simply saving face or a victory in speech. He wants to hear what Socrates has to say. Socrates then informs Polus that he does not consider rhetoric to be an art at all. Like cosmetics, cookery, and sophistry, he thinks that rhetoric is a sham art. A true art, like the art of legislation, gymnastic training or medicine, is based on knowledge of what is good for the subject. Like the sham arts, rhetoric merely consists in the ability or “knack” of flatteringan audience by appealing to what pleases them.