Plato - Gorgias

I was thinking that maybe I should start blogging stuff before I come to class instead of having everything ready but blogging after class. Hm. I will try to think intensively on what to do. But for now, here are the quotes I chose from the reading last night, and here are the reasons, parts of it.

"I'm talking about the ability to use the spoken word to persuade - to persuade the jurors in the courts, the members of the Council, the citizens attending the Assembly* -in short, to win over any and every form of public meeting of the citizen body. Armed with this ability, in fact, the doctor would be your slave, the trainer would be yours to command, and that businessman would turn out to be making money not for himself, but for someone else for you with your ability to speak and to persuade the masses (p. 13).” – Gorgias

This quote from the book summarizes the argument that Gorgias has for the superiority of rhetoric because he is stating that being able to persuade people will give one what they want. The ability to say things and things that can and will persuade people is a way of being on top of people, not necessarily looking down on them, but being able to control them in a way. If one is able to persuade another with words than, in those terms, is almost like being able to control their minds and their way of thinking.


“A rhetorician, then, isn’t concerned to educate the people assembled in lawcourts and so one about right and wrong; all he wants to do is persuade them. I mean, I shouldn’t think it’s possible for him to get so many people to understand such important matters in such a short time (p. 17).” – Socrates to Gorgias

Socrates, to me, is very satirical. He puts things and says things and holds the mirror for one to see and reveals, in a way, how one is. By all means, it might not be how they are in everyone’s eyes, but in his own eyes. I guess, that’s what I am trying to say. Also this statement is pretty much stating that in order to persuade people using rhetoric then one does not need to educate or inform someone or someones because persuading them is getting what you want where as educating them may get something else.

“What about training other people in rhetoric, too? Should we attribute this ability to you (p. 6)?” – Socrates

This is just another quote that I’d like to add because I interpreted it as him saying to Gorgias that, since you [Gorgias] is the expert train others to be like you so the world can be filled with more rhetoricians who only persuade and not educate people into the beliefs of your own. But I could be all wrong.

As for Polus and Socrates, that is something else. I am rather confused with Polus’s argument. So I would prefer to not swing that way.