Gorgias

Gorgias is a Socratic dialogue by Plato, first published in 320 B.C.

Set amid a public display of oratory, it asks whether persuasive speech is a true craft grounded in knowledge or merely a knack for pleasing that imitates justice.

Through exchanges with the rhetorician Gorgias and his bold supporters Polus and Callicles, Socrates pushes the question from technique to morality. The conversation probes whether success and power justify themselves, or whether rhetoric without truth corrupts both speaker and city.

As the debate turns to pleasure, pain, and self-control, the dialogue argues that doing injustice is worse than suffering it and that self-mastery is better than indulging desire. Persuasion severed from knowledge and virtue, it suggests, leads to a disordered soul.

The work closes with a vivid myth of final judgment, reinforcing the claim that a good life is measured by justice and truth, not applause. Clear, combative, and deeply reflective, it remains a cornerstone text on ethics, politics, and the limits of persuasive speech.

This edition of Gorgias is based on Benjamin Jowett's translation.

Socrates: Come, then, and let us see what we really mean about rhetoric; for I do not know what my own meaning is as yet. When the assembly meets to elect a physician or a shipwright or any other craftsman, will the rhetorician be taken into counsel? Surely not.