11.2 Gorgias on the Art of Public Speaking

Gorgias

When Polus starts to launch into a speech, Socrates brushes him aside. He wants a conversation, not a speech. He addresses Gorgias directly. We meet both Polus and Callicles later in the dialogue. “Tell us now, what,” he asks Gorgias, “is your art (technē), and what should we call Gorgias?”

“The art of public speaking (rhētorike), Socrates.”

“And we should call you an orator?”[1]

But what exactly is the art of oratory? It is the art of delivering speeches. But speeches about what? About the most important things. Well, a trainer produces health and a financial planner produces wealth. What does oratory produce? The greatest good of all. And what is that? The key to freedom, the power to rule over others in your city. So “you say that oratory is a creator of persuasion, and its whole influence, in a word, comes to that.”[2] After a little more discussion, Gorgias identifies the subject matter of oratory as what is just and unjust.[3]

But don’t the other arts and crafts persuade people about truths in their domains? For instance, mathematics produces knowledge about numbers. Isn’t an expert the one most able to persuade? Here Gorgias reports that he has often accompanied his brother, a doctor, and used his oratorical skills to persuade a patient to take his medicine or undergo an operation, when his brother had failed to persuade him. Indeed, a good orator can persuade people to do the right thing, or, to the contrary, to do the wrong thing. So orators should use their talent justly to bring about good ends.

But if an orator doesn’t know what is right or wrong, Socrates asks, who will teach him? I can teach that too, Gorgias replies. But, Socrates complains, now you seem to be saying both that oratory is essentially about justice and injustice, but that being an orator does not guarantee promoting justice and shunning injustice.[4] This seems to imply that oratory has an equal power to benefit and to harm its audience, and that learning the skill of oratory confers power but not virtue on the practitioner.

[1] Plato Gorgias 449a.

[2] Plato Gorgias 453a.

[3] Plato Gorgias 454b.

[4] Plato Gorgias 460e-461a.