Challenging the Established Order: Socrates' Perversion of Callicles' Position in Plato's Gorgias (original) (raw)
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This paper focuses on a neglected portion of Plato's Gorgias from 506c to 513d during Socrates's discussion with Callicles. I claim that Callicles adopts the view that virtue lies in self-preservation in this part of the dialogue. Such a position allows him to assert the value of rhetoric in civic life by appealing not to the goodness of acting unjustly with impunity, but to the badness of suffering unjustly without remedy. On this view, the benefits of the life of rhetoric depend on the idea that virtue consists in the power to protect oneself from the predations of others. I argue that by challenging this understanding of virtue as self-preservation, Socrates both deprives Callicles of any remaining justification for the rhetorical life in the Gorgias and, at the same time, makes room for his own defense of the life of philosophy.
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Although often dismissed as a villain, Callicles’ views about philosophy, politics, and human nature expressed in his speech in Plato’s Gorgias criticizing Socrates turn-out to be similar to Socrates’ own thoughts about philosophy, politics, and human nature when compared to Socrates’ arguments in other dialogues such as the Republic. However, Socrates obfuscates these similarities through his use of rhetoric in the latter part of the dialogue in order to conceal a more fundamental disagreement about the priority and relationship of philosophy and politics. This similarity and obfuscation constitutes an important and overlooked teaching of Plato’s Gorgias.
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SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
This paper will attempt to comment on the tension between politics and philosophy in the Platonic dialogue Gorgias. The aim is to ground this discussion through an analysis of the character of Callicles who plays the role of sparring partner as it were, testing and challenging Socrates' positing of philosophy as an end in itself and the best life, and not as a preparation and cultivation for the life of action. The mimetic exchange between Socrates and Callicles stems from their common experience as erotic men. Socrates will try to elaborate his teaching upon this shared sense of longing. But Callicles is reluctant. As we will see he grows impatient with Socrates and at some point refuses to converse, or even listen: his motivation for an active life animates him, and for this he will need not only courage, but also phronesis, a political prudence that he aspires to learn from Gorgias, his teacher.
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This article focuses on the concept of δύναμις (power, capacity) in Plato's Gorgias and highlights its contribution to the author's argumentative strategy. While previous studies have explored aspects of δύναμις in the dialogue, its role in developing the contrast between Rhetoric and Philosophy has been largely overlooked. The author argues for the centrality of δύναμις in the Gorgias by analysing Socrates’s understanding of the nature of Rhetoric as well as his critique of the practical value of rhetorical power. The paper is divided into five sections. The first section examines the significance of δύναμις in Gorgias's refutation, which initiates the central controversy between two modes of power in communal speech. The second section analyzes Socrates's understanding of the δύναμις of Rhetoric, focusing on the psychological effects of rhetorical power. Sections three and four explore Socrates’ critique of the practical value of Rhetoric through his discussions with Polus and Callicles, respectively. The final section argues that Socratic dialectics are portrayed throughout the dialogue as embodying a superior form of δύναμις.
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Praxis Filosófica, 2009
This paper will attempt to comment on the tension between politics and philosophy in the Platonic dialogue Gorgias. The aim is to ground this discussion through an analysis of the character of Callicles who plays the role of sparring partner as it were, testing and challenging Socrates' positing of philosophy as an end in itself and the best life, and not as a preparation and cultivation for the life of action. The mimetic exchange between Socrates and Callicles stems from their common experience as erotic men. Socrates will try to elaborate his teaching upon this shared sense of longing. But Callicles is reluctant. As we will see he grows impatient with Socrates and at some point refuses to converse, or even listen: his motivation for an active life animates him, and for this he will need not only courage, but also phronesis, a political prudence that he aspires to learn from Gorgias, his teacher.
Morality's Weaker Argument: De Jure Authority in Plato's Gorgias
Socrates’ failure to defend himself against the charge that he “makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger” is an omission that requires explanation. Modern scholarship supports the conventional portrait of Socrates as a proponent of ethico-religious teleology (ERT), who is concerned essentially with morality and ethics. After rejecting an obvious logicist interpretation of the charge, and taking seriously the speculative suggestion that Socrates was a sophist with craft knowledge of the art of rhetoric, I undertake a textual analysis of the Gorgias to elicit Socrates’ overall position and argument about morality. That position, I argue, amounts to a formulation of de jure authority. In conclusion, I propose the following interpretation: because Socrates identifies moral striving itself with “the weaker argument,” he views the charge as just (that is, its principal assertion is true); thus, he has no reason to defend himself against it.
Callicles as a Potential Tyrant in Plato's Gorgias
JOURNAL OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY, 2023
This essay argues that Callicles is depicted by Plato in the Gorgias as a potential tyrant from a psychological standpoint. To this end I will contend that the Calliclean moral psychology sketched at 491e-492c points towards the analysis of the tyrannical individual pursued by Plato in books VIII and IX of the Republic based upon the tripartite theory of the soul. I will thereby attempt to show that (i) in the Gorgias, Callicles does not actually personify the ideal of the superior person advocated by himself insofar as he is still susceptible to shame, as evinced by Socrates' cross-examination (494c-495a); and that (ii) looking forward to the Republic, he can be understood for this same reason as being precisely on the threshold between the democratic and the tyrannical soul.