Autor: Plato

Buch: Gorgias

Titel: Gorgias

Stichwort: Sophisten, Rhetorik

Kurzinhalt: why an attack on rhetoric was critical for Plato. It lay at the heart of the outer values accepted and perpetuated by Gorgias

Textausschnitt: XVIa Now, the sophists too often claimed to be teaching arete (519c). Since they were teaching people how to get on in the world in some way or another, they clearly accepted the normal Greek definition of arete in terms of outer achievement. This is the context in which Socrates' interlocutors in Gorgias fit. Gorgias was explicitly teaching rhetoric to such career-oriented young men. Callicles' diatribe against the serious study and practice of philosophy (484c-486d) and his theme of playing Zethus to Socrates' Amphion (see the notes on 484e-486c and 506b) are Plato's brilliant ways of portraying a man protesting long and loud because he completely fails to understand the worth of the inner values championed by Socrates, for whom arete was an inner state, manifesting in one's external behaviour. As Plato says in Republic (which develops and expands many of the themes of Gorgias), a person should first put his own inner house in order, and then he can take part in public life, if he wants (443c-444a; compare Gorgias 527d). There is nothing to be gained, and a great deal to be lost, by performing magnificent ritual offerings to the gods when your mind is actually corrupt and irreligious. (Fs) (notabene)

XVIb We can again see, from this point of view, why an attack on rhetoric was critical for Plato. It lay at the heart of the outer values accepted and perpetuated by Gorgias and others like him. It lay in direct contrast with the whole teaching of Socrates. Since its most important public manifestation was in the lawcourts and assemblies of Athens, where it told people what to do, it could plausibly claim to be involved with matters of right and wrong, justice and injustice. But to Plato's mind, philosophy offered the only authentic way of life, and it was philosophy which truly dealt with right and wrong. Rhetoric had to be swept out of the way, as a spurious rival. Tenkku says (pp. 61-2),
Plato assumes that ignorance of the true good is the main reason for the moral corruption of his time. The rhetoricians claim to know the greatest human good. Their answer to this fundamental question is nonetheless completely wrong, according to Plato. By means of persuasion rhetoric is, however, able to mislead people in this important matter. Thus, in attacking rhetoric, Plato fights against the very roots of evil. (Fs)