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Ascend - The Great Books Podcast
Rhetoric and Philosophy: Part One of the Gorgias with Athenian Stranger and Johnathan Bi
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- [00:00]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Today on Sin the Great Books Podcast, we are kicking off Plato's Gorgias. This is one of my favorite favorite dialogues. It's presumably about rhetoric, but it escalates, blossoms, matures into a beautiful, beautiful dialogue on what is truly the good life and what is true happiness. I would particularly recommend this for young men because it's very good about asking you what will reign in your heart. Will it be philosophy or will it be tyranny? This is certainly a dialogue worth giving a subtle and attentive read to. I also have to say that it ends with one of my favorite myths. Of all the Platonic myths of the Republic, of everything. The Gorgias ends with probably my favorite Platonic myth about judgment and the afterlife. And how the Gorgias as a dialogue is structured is a very long dialogue. It's actually structured in three natural parts because throughout the dialogue, Socrates has three interlocutors. He talks with Gorgias, then he talks with Polus, and then he talks with Callicles. So we're going to have three episodes, one on each part. And today we have two phenomenal guests who are going to do a very, very, very deep dive into the first part of the Gorgias, the dialogue between Socrates and Gorgias himself. And I was very much a student in this conversation and really much just appreciated hearing all of the different comments. So join us today for a wonderful conversation on the first part of the Gorgias between Socrates and Gorgias himself. Welcome to Ascend the Great Books Podcast. My name is Deacon Harrison Garlick, a husband, father of five, attorney and deacon assigned to our cathedral here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We are recording on a beautiful afternoon here at the Chancery. If you're new to Ascend, our weekly podcast helps guide you through the Great Books. For example, if you want to read Homer's Iliad, Aeschylus, Oresteia, Sophocles, Aristophanes, or even Dante's Inferno. We have podcasts, videos and written guides to help you or your small group read these great texts. You can check us out on X, YouTube, Facebook or Patreon. We appreciate all of our supporters and visit thegreatbookspodcast.com where we have lots of written guides to help you. Today we are discussing we're actually continuing our study into Plato. Together we have read and discussed first Alcibiades, the Euthyphro, the Apology, Crito, Phaedo, and the Meno, and are now adventuring into Plato's Gorgias. We'll be discussing the dialogue in three separate Episodes. The first, introducing the text and discussing the dialogue with Gorgias. The second episode on the discussion with Polis with Dr. Matthew Bianco of the Searcy Institute. And the third on the discussion with Callicles with Dr. Greg McBrayer of the New Synchro podcast. Today, to help guide us through the first part of the Gorgias, we are joined by two excellent guests. First, returning to the podcast, we have Mr. Athenian Stranger, who runs an excellent account on X, discussing Plato, Nietzsche, technology, greatness, and a host of other topics drawn from the great books. Welcome back, Athenian.
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Athenian Stranger
Thank you so much for having me, man. It's always an honor whenever I get to talk with you guys.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, no, we appreciate you being here and everyone. Yeah, please go check out his account on X. He's always got a lot of good things going on, a lot of good spaces. Second, we have a new guest, Mr. Jonathan Bai, who runs an excellent substack with high quality videos on Shakespeare, Rousseau, Plato, and other great authors from the great books. Welcome, Jonathan.
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Jonathan Bai
Thank you. It's actually pronounced B, but I think bi might be a bit more fitting for discussing the Greeks.
- [03:44]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Good, we'll go with that. We'll go with Jonathan B or bi, just for this episode. So, Jonathan, tell us about. Just tell us about your project. Like what? You've got some really high quality videos. I checked out your substack on YouTube as well. Like, tell us about your project.
- [03:56]
Jonathan Bai
Yeah, so I, I graduated college, I studied philosophy, went through a great books program, and I wanted to do a philosophy PhD, but then quickly realized there were all these issues with the academy and pursuing a professional path there. And so I decided to do philosophy on my own terms. So instead I built a fintech company first, got some financial stability, and now I'm just going through the great books. And so, so my project, unlike Athenian's project, which, you know, has valuable lessons to teach people, I'm just publicizing my learning. Okay? So any, any one I teach is collateral damage. I'm just kind of reading the books that I want to read, as well as interviewing secondary current professors who've written good secondary works on them. And, and so I just make that learning public. I can't remember who I think it was Hegel critiquing someone who says, I wish he hadn't made his learning public. And that's what I'm kind of doing right now. So this is me trying to design the PhD curriculum that I wish I could take.
- [04:47]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, I think that's beautiful. And I think in a certain way, that's all of us. Right. Because the authors of the great books are the teachers. You know, some of us are students that have been around longer than others. There are various degrees of different kind of students. In a lot of ways, they're the teachers. Like today when we approach the Gorgias.
- [05:03]
Jonathan Bai
Right.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Plato is the teacher. And so, yeah, I think a lot of ways those projects. Our projects are similar insofar as a sin's goal is to really help provide people kind of a small group atmosphere to read the great book. So we're kind of working through chronological order, et cetera. Yeah. Where people are very much kind of invited to come learn alongside us as opposed to being lectured at. And I think too Athenian, like with your project and the spaces you do and like your good podcasts and things like this. I mean, that's, that's the same tone and vibe that I get from your project as well.
- [05:35]
Athenian Stranger
Yeah. The way I like to think of it is, you know, I. I didn't start in philosophy. I started in mathematics. And in fact, I. I really almost should not have started in. In education at all because I was such a horrible student for my whole life. I just had ended up having a really good high school math teacher. And so because I just wanted to impress him, I. I tried to learn and I didn't want to stop learning, but all I knew was math. You have to understand very, very tiny Texas town where the. If you had a pulse and you showed up, they passed you. And I ended up going off to college and I wanted to end up teaching math. I wanted to be like what that teacher had done for me made a difference in my life. And I thought it would be great to go back to get a math degree, go back and teach in a small Texas town. And once I saw how beautiful. I mean, it was sort of, they let me do whatever I wanted in the math program and they liked me, and I just was off and running and didn't stop and went really, really far in mathematics to where it got to a point of philosophy. And then because life being what it is, you run into problems in your own life and you start looking at your math text, these advanced mathematics books or something, and they, they don't. They don't have anything to say to you about how to deal with those problems. So I started roaming around in the philosophy department and finally just walked away from the math PhD program and wanted to just do philosophy. And I had absolutely no background. I had no qualification whatsoever. I didn't even know the English Language, for God's sake, with grammar or anything like that, how was I supposed to learn Greek? And so I was always behind the ball, but because I had that passion to want to learn, I never gave up. And so what I do when I'm doing my spaces or my lectures and my Athens corner thing is I'm hoping that I'm talking to people like that. People who have maybe gotten their education might not have been the one they wanted, but it pays the bills, it gives them a good life and they just want to learn. And so I never assume that, you know, whoever's listening to me or anything on, even in any given space has listened to anything I've ever said, has no prerequisites whatsoever. And I consider it my job to just introduce them in a way that has that kind of wonder inducing effect to where they're like, you know what, that's pretty cool. And I recognize that I have skin in the game and so I'm going to take that and I want to go further. And so I. What I like to say is I just always assume that my audience is always autodidacts from the, from the absolute beginning level of not even knowing where to start to people who might think that they know an awful lot about it but would like to learn more.
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Jonathan Bai
Can I actually respond to that? Because that mirrors my story into philosophy almost exactly. So I was trained up as a competitive math guy, not because I wanted to impress my teacher, but because I'm Chinese.
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Athenian Stranger
It kind of comes with don't show me up here. Because I was going to say you probably just because like you said, Asian or Chinese or whatever, you're probably. Your undergraduate knowledge of math would probably blow my graduate level out of the water.
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Jonathan Bai
So, so I, I competed in the Canadian Olympiad. And so I was in high school all through it. I went to college to do a CS degree, was in engineering school. I dropped out of college to run a tech startup and it completely failed. And I was miserable. I had all these romantic issues and I got into philosophy precisely as Athenian said, for practical reasons. For me it was like ceteriology. It was like the salvation of my soul. And I really got into the French thinker Rene Girard, as well as the Tibetan Buddhists. And I happened to be studying with a lot of continental theorists. So I got into recognition theory in 1920th century, German and French thought mostly. But that was one of the reasons why I didn't do a PhD was because I always treated philosophy as a way of life. And it was clear that in the academy. That's not how they're treating it at all. And so the one other thing I'll add Athenian is, you know, it's great that, you know, we're both talking about Plato today because Plato advised actually young men from practicing philosophy for very different reasons. I think Paulus advises. And instead, mathematics is the primary mode of training before you're ready to go there. And I think the way we both do our projects, the reason it's so similar, I don't know about you, but the reason I primarily focus on reconstruction is that is how I learned proofs in math. So in maths, I would like try to redo a proof. And I carried that same kind of intuition to my humanities learning, which is like, can I reconstruct this argument? And I found that. Is that. Is that why you also focus so much on reconstruction?
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Athenian Stranger
I mean, I. I don't know if I would describe it that way, but that's probably how it comes across. I mean, that. That probably captures a lot of it. That's why people end up liking a lot of my notes. And everything that I make is because my mathematics background just shows through immediately from the diagrams and stuff that I make. I might show you guys the diagram I made of what's the most important passage in the Gorgias here with what Plato does, or, I'm sorry, Plato's Socrates. But let me also just sort of a sidebar and then a comment sidebar. You know, you're dealing with someone who knows math when they. When they add the S to it. They speak of maths. They don't speak of math. To speak of math means you're educated in America, so you probably don't really know math. Also, this description of what we're talking about with regard to our backgrounds and our approaches to teaching these things to other people is deeply Platonic. I mean, so there's a reason why it's. It's so helpful to be talking about Plato on this, because Plato employs no technical terminology. He gives us dialogues. These are not treatises, these are dialogues. In other words, it's the unfolding of the deepest possible depths of whatever this thing called philosophy is, not only in everyday language but in everyday activities. And so I think that's very, very instructive, particularly for our various critics who would say things like, oh, they're just, you know, they're these kind of midwit people or something, or they really don't know what they're talking about. They're just trying to popularize it and maybe Some money off of it or something. It's like. Well, no, but you've got your finger on something that's very philosophical. So how about we talk about that? Because that's exactly what's going on with Plato and his Socrates throughout the dialogues.
- [11:40]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. No, I think it's beautiful. Yeah, it's interesting. My foray into philosophy was somewhat different, but the pattern remains the same, which is I was looking for. I was restless and I was looking for peace is what I was looking for. What's interesting for me is I found it basically concomitantly with Catholicism. So when I went to. I was Protestant and I went to go study Catholicism at a graduate school, thank God it was a very solid program. But one of the things they had is that you had your typical two year master's work, but then they had tacked onto it a two year sequence in the great books. So as I'm trying to learn systematic theology in St. Thomas Aquinas, I'm also reading Plato's Republic for the first time. And yeah, it just brought such an inner peace of like, I know how to live, I know how I'm supposed to do these things. Like, I know what is good and true and beautiful and now I can just go live it as opposed to being kind of stuck in a certain way of. So it's like a restlessness, this kind of existential angst that I don't, I'm living life and I don't even know what life is. Right. Not that you exhaust it. I mean, part of the beauty is being able to study the truth the rest of your life. But you have to be on the right path. I think, and I think one thing about all three of our projects is that it's always beautiful to me that when you find someone who really has been affected by the truth, it's always diffusive. They always want to share it with other people. You always want to bring people in because I guarantee you, because I know both of your old projects, you probably spend a good amount of time each week working on that project and you probably don't do it because you're raking in cash over hand, but because when you get those messages from people saying, like, hey, like this really helped me, or hey, like, I read, I'm reading the Iliad on my lunch break, or like, you know, my wife and I are finally starting to like, you know, we're turning off Netflix, we're actually going to read something together. I mean, those little messages make it all worth it. I Mean, I'm about you guys, but like this, I'm assuming you get delighted when you see those because like that's why we're in this, to share, you know, what's true, good and beautiful. So maybe kind of taking that, like why, why didn't we read the Gorgias? Like, why is this a dialogue that it is worth reading? Like, why is it worth your time? Because it's fairly long, right? I think it's one of his longest dialogues.
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Athenian Stranger
Well, I was going to say that this dialogue in particular addresses exactly what we have sort of been speaking here about is the, I like to call it in some respects the burst like effect of philosophy, of doing philosophy. Because that burst like effect, the pedagogical effect, that is the soul's reception to this thing we would otherwise think of as wonder, that is the erotic element of human nature. We all have erotic longings. The question is, are they of the noble things that separate us from the beasts or are they of the bodily pleasures? It's what it turned out that that's definitive for this particular dialogue. That's going to be exactly what separates. Well, let me rephrase it. The way that Plato Socrates says one of the most provocative things he ever Sundays. He says two of the. Two of the most provocative things Plato Socrates ever says get said in this dialogue. One is that he is the only person in classical Athens who practices rhetoric. The other is that he is the only person in classical Athens who practices statesmanship. So not Pericles, not Demosthenes, not Themistocles, not any of these people, but Socrates does. I don't revel in being crass, but we have to take readers as they are. And so every now and then kind of jokes that help people that understand what's going on. I like to tell people if size matters, you know, like we're so told in common culture. Well, the Gorgias is the third longest dialogue. So, you know, I mean, it's worth taking a look at it. But anyway, yeah, that's sort of my, my salvo on there of why we should read it. It's going to turn out that the dialogue itself is going to have everything to do with philosophy as Plato understands it, versus the phantom images of philosophy that lead, for instance, the characters of the Republic to laugh when Plato Socrates says something to the effect of only when philosophers rule can we have this greatest of cities. And they say, what are you talking about? Philosophers are worthless? Well, we're going to find out why. That's the belief that philosophers are worthless because of the sham imagery of philosophers that gets revealed by people like the so called Gorgias or the, so the sophists. Right, the difference between the sophist and the philosopher.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, no, very good. Go ahead, Jonathan.
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Jonathan Bai
I think, I think the Gorgias is a, is an acquired taste. And the first two times, this is the third time I'm, I'm rereading it. The first two times I read it, I thought it was much inferior compared to the Phaedrus because apparently at first glance for our audience, the Phaedrus is about, is. It seems to be about rhetoric and the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy as well. But the Phaedrus is a lot more seductive I think, because the imagery right here we get comparisons of leafy water barrels and stuff. And you know, you get a nice myth at the end with the Judge of the Damned. But in the Phaedrus, right, you have the charioteer and the horses. And importantly you actually start the Phaedrus with actually three different speeches that is given about the topic of love. So you get a demonstration of what rhetoric is. But, but the real reason I, I really love the Phaedrus when I first picked it up was because I think it gives a much more interesting answer to the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy. Whereas the Gorgias explores a lot of what are the issues with rhetoric without philosophy. I think the Phaedrus also explores the question of what is the issue with philosophy without rhetoric. Right. Which is in his Plato's Socrates, I'm sorry, infamous critique of writing. And so for those reasons I was much more naturally drawn to the Phaedrus as Plato's dialogue on rhetoric. But now this third time that I've reread it, I think what's really appealing to me in the Gorgias are all the philosophical refutations that Plato has, especially to Paulus and Callicles, that I think are very philosophically rich and interesting. Like one of the really interesting claims, we're not going to talk about it today, but in your next episode, it's better to be harmed than it is to harm. If you, if you're bad, it's better to be justly punished than to avoid that punishment. And Callicles is eventually going to give a kind of proto Nietzschean view around the importance of power and conventional slave morality, as well as a kind of a hedonism that Plato all responds to in very philosophically interesting ways. So that would be my answer, which is, yeah, if I'm really just interested on the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy, I'd probably read the Phaedrus because I think it's a much more well rounded dialogue. But there's a lot of philosophical gems that are hidden along, hidden along the way in this dialogue.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
I think I struggled with the dialogue at first. I actually took it out for black powder season. I have a lease out in the Panhandle, and I went hunting for a week. I just camped out of my car. No anything?
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Athenian Stranger
What are you, a Texan?
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, I'm an Oklahoman. I'm an Oklahoman. So I take my. I take my play doh. Out when I go hunting. And it's a. It's a beautiful experience, right, Because I. Where I go, there's no artificial light. I can stand in the middle where I camp and pull a360 and you can't see a single artificial light. You see stars, you never see anywhere. And you're just out there by yourself. And I love it. It's quiet, hunting. And then in my downtime, I read. And so I was reading this year, I was reading Plato's Gorgias. And I like, I liked it. It was okay. But it wasn't until Callicles that I was like, oh, I love this dialogue. This is amazing. And then the myth made it for me. It's like, this is one of my favorite dialogues, et cetera, for the Christian.
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Jonathan Bai
We know why?
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, like, yeah, because, I mean, it dovetails really well into Christianity. It gives, and also gives us like, a really beautiful, just really beautiful picture, I think, of the soul that I greatly appreciated. But then I think, like, for me, maybe just, like, as a surface level, right? It takes up the question of rhetoric, and I think that can be kind of laborious at the beginning. But as you start to see then, like, the question of, like, well, does rhetoric have a purpose? And when that starts to shift then to a conversation about the good life and a conversation between callicles, which has this kind of, like, tyrannical satiation of your desires versus, like, is there a better life that you can live? I think one of the things that I really appreciated about the Gorgias is it seems to have a very raw and real element to it that I appreciate. Like, when he says that he appreciates callicles just being honest at the end, I also really appreciated that, like, just tell us that you want to satiate your baser desires. Like, don't do all this gymnastics to try and make it, you know, not what it is. Because I think, like, in a lot of ways, and I think Athenian Some of your posts and spaces have helped me kind of understand this is that I've come to appreciate that the world that Socrates is engaging with is far more like our world than I think I realized. And what I mean by that is like we kind of think. I think, or at least I do, maybe my own mental kind of downsides is you kind of think of nihilism as a modern phenomenon, right? This is something that's crept back up particularly as like Christianity has, has declined and so now there's just this great nothingness. But you see this really with the young men of Athens too. There's like the belief in the pantheon, the gods. This has fallen away. They all want to be tyrants. They all just want to satiate their lower appetites. They want power. And so I think one of the things that really made me appreciate this dialogue, and again, I'm very much just a student of it and coming to appreciate it more. But I think there's a lesson here that I find incredibly apt that starts with the question of rhetoric, but leads into deeply fundamental questions about how to live a good life and what I found overall to be a pretty honest dialogue back and forth.
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Jonathan Bai
That's exactly what I was trying to say about. If I'm really interested in the question of rhetoric itself, I much prefer the Phaedrus, but it's the philosophical nuggets along the way. It's when Socrates really pushes on what is at stake. When we were talking about the question of rhetoric, it's all those things that, especially when he refutes Paulus and Callicles that I find most fascinating. So you're just better way of what I just said.
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Athenian Stranger
Yeah, let me, let me sort of put some meat on these bones. People, people often pair certain dialogues because they go together quite well. You can have things, for instance, like collections of the dialogues in which Plato, Socrates is engaging with the so called Sophists. You can pair the Gorgias, very recently in some of the best scholarship in terms of translations, has been paired with the Phaedrus. And then in some other very recent outstanding scholarship, the Gorgias has been paired with Aristotle's rhetoric. All of these things are appropriate. It's like they're not necessarily better or worse or something. But what I will say about the pairing, as you guys have mentioned, with regard to the Phaedrus, the entirety of the Gorgias is contained within a particular thing that gets said in the Phaedrus. And now that makes sense precisely because the Phaedrus it's this very interesting dialogue that most people are unable to reconcile. You get. You have the opening or the first half of it supposedly alleged first half of it about Eros and then you have the alleged second half of it about writing. So you have to figure out why it is that. Well, it's like why do we get these amazing descriptions of love and Eros in the first half but then it's the second half about writing is kind of interesting, but it's not. It seems, it seems strange and it's not as appealing as the first part. Well, I mean there's an answer for that, but I, I won't get into it. That also unfolds into everything such that the, the Phaedra serves as a kind of key, a kind of skeleton key for all of the Platonic dialogues. So that's why it's not surprising that we can find within the Phaedrus one particular passage that explains the entirety of the Gorgias. And I'll just read it. This is Phaedrus, the Stephanus pages, the pagination for people who aren't familiar any. Any translation of Plato. That's going to have the numbers on the sides of the page. Those are Stephanous paginations. Same thing with Aristotle. You have the Becker numbers on the sides. But this is 271D and what we have is the Socrates. He says since the power of speech. That's interesting, the power of logo in other words, because the Gorgias is going to be about the power of rhetoric. What is the power of rhetoric? He says but the power of speech happens to be a leading of the soul. It's necessary that one who's going to be how many forms. There's that great Platonic word e day the plural of Eidos. The rhetorician has to know how many forms the soul has the different types of souls, if he's going to lead them. Right. Because that's apparently what is going on here is that rhetoric is going to be a leading of the soul. He says therefore there are so and so many and of such and such a sort from which such and such people come to be. Well that's interesting. Come to be. In other words, the leading of the soul changes the person they can come to be through this. And when these have been thus distinguished. Well that's interesting because that's exactly what philosophy is about is understanding the various forms of things so that one can distinguish them. Right. And he says once they've been distinguished then in turn there are so and so many forms of speech, each of such a sort. He says, now then, people of a sort of such a sort are easily persuadable. Now it's important we always understand in this dialogue as well as the Gorgias, the Greek word there for persuasion, or anytime you see persuasion, it's pistis, that means trust, right? So we have to understand that somehow trust, because there are different types of trust that the rhetorician is going to traffic in. The two most important types are going to be exactly what distinguishes Socrates from Gorgias. But he says such and such. Whatever he says, people of another sort are difficult to persuade on account of these things, which is to say, the different kinds of speeches geared towards different kinds of souls. Everyone has a different kind of soul. We call that the baggage we bring with us. That's why we have Platonic dialogues, we don't have Platonic treatises because there's no universal form of speech that can be deposited into every single kind of soul. Human souls are too different that way. That's what's going on in the Gorgias. Because what we have just found out from the Phaedrus is that you can have specific logoi. Right, Speeches to meet specific kinds of souls. So yeah, okay, we got to just match the, match the logos up with the kind of soul so that we can get persuasion, so that we can lead that soul into becoming something new. Okay, great. That's the theory. There's all the difference in the world between knowing that and actually seeing it when it happens. Seeing it when it happens is what we get in the Gorgias. That's, that's going to be where the rubber hits the asphalt, as we say. That's precisely what Gorgias, polus and then Callicles exhibit for us. And why Socrates never changes, but each one of them do. They fall further and further away. Right. The opening question of the Gorgias effectively is, you know, what is rhetoric? What is this power of rhetoric? I want to know what it is. Socrates even, even says so called rhetoric, what is it? And each of them sort of hems and haws because they don't want to flatly reveal their soul and say, rhetoric is me being able to make other people do what I want them to do. Gorgias won't flatly say it. I mean, he says it in kind of a way. Polus kind of says it in a little more of a way. And it's not until we get to Callicles where he says, he says, you're damn right, might makes right. And I Want people to do exactly what I say and not only do I want them to do that, but that is in fact a law of nature. It's the first time we ever have the word. The phrase law of nature in the Western tradition. That's frightening. But the first appearance of a comes from the mouth of Calicles. But that's effectively what it is. So Phaedrus is the kind of theoretical knowledge of the different types of souls and the logo, the different kinds of logo that they need in order to be led so that they might become virtuous. And then in the Gorgias we see the kind of worst case scenarios. In other words, you want to know by the extremes. Right. Okay, let's take the work the most difficult kinds of souls, but the ones that we need to convert the most and see what happens when we try to match them up with different logo and things like that.
- [28:02]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, no, very good. I think, yeah. There's two major things that stand out to me there. One is the question of is there a purpose to rhetoric? What is the teleology of rhetoric? Does rhetoric constitute an art? Does it actually have a purpose? And so I think that's one of the things that. That's racist. The second one is I want to talk about these three souls and the way this kind of maps on particularly because obviously he has three interlocutors in this dialogue. So let's look at that structure a little bit. And then Athena, I'm interested on whether you think this maps on. So if we're looking at particularly for those who are new to the Gorgias, it's interesting because it's basically three dialogues together. And so it moves from the first one that we're talking about with Gorgias himself is the shortest. And then you have the medium dialogue which is with his student Polus. And then we have the longest one at the end is with Callicles and Gorgias. I mean, just a little bit. I know Athenian, I think you and I both share a little bit of hesitation of jumping into like, you know, the history of these things and rooting it in kind of a historicity. But I think just like obviously Plato's audience is going to know who these characters are. So I think it's good for us to have a working understanding. So Gorgias, you know, we have to know, I mean, he's Sicilian, he came to Athens. In a lot of ways he set the young men of Athens on fire. Because he's this wonderful rhetorician that seems to be able to get Whatever he wants. Because, you know, he could do these things, obviously. Like, you know, most famously, he gave a defense of Helen, who is like the most indefensible character amongst the Greeks. Right. He gives a defense of her just to show simply that he can. And so he's like the master teacher. So in certain ways, seeing Socrates and Gorgias start to interact, it's like seeing two titans, right, Start to go back and forth. Polus, right? His name means cult and he tends to be very cultish. Right. He tends to be a bit spirited. He jumps in these types of things. He's also a student of Gorgias, but also a teacher of rhetoric. He's written books. This is actually referenced in the dialogue. He's written. Pies are in books. Callicles, though, this character that I think makes the entire dialogue. We don't have a really good firm historical rooting for Callicles. And that doesn't. I'm not sure exactly what import you bring to that. Obviously sometimes people want to make him. They kind of hollow him out and make him an analog for something. Maybe he's a character who like stood for Plato or stood for Alcibiades or stood for, you know, he's some kind of stand in. But these are our three characters that we have. Gorgias, Polus and Callicles. So Athenian, when you say that rhetoric has to be able to reach out to these different types of souls, you know, obviously, maybe to simplify it, the Platonic soul typically has three parts. So it has your intellect that seeks truth, it has the spirited that seeks a certain nobility, and then it has the appetitive that seeks pleasure. Do you think that, you know, maybe that's too easy here, but do you. Is there a. Is there at least an initial mapping of rhetoric trying to reach out to these three souls? Or do the three interlocutors somehow reflect these three different types of souls? Because people tend to emphasize the intellect or the spirited, the appetitive more. Right. Like, could you say Callicles is an embodiment of that appetitive appetite to satiate desire? It's interesting. Polus, I kind of slipped and even described him as spirited like a cult, like a horse, you know, is Gorgias representing some type of intellect? Is there somewhere, in some fashion, as we kind of dive into rhetoric and maybe use that statement from the Phaedrus as a bridge where the three interlocutors represent three different aspects of the soul that Socrates is working through?
- [31:41]
Athenian Stranger
I mean, it could be helpful pedagogically, but I would, I would not go down that road simply because the thing about the, the so called tri partitions of the soul and the Platonic dialogues, they always break down and they're never, they can't be related either. The, the, the tri. The so called tripartition of the Soul and Republic 4, it can't be reconciled with the so called tripartition of the soul and the feedrus. And the tripartition of the soul in the Republic doesn't even remain in the republic. It flatly, Socrates flatly says later, I believe it's in book eight where he says, look, it turns out the soul is actually this caged animal that's trying to break free of the iron within it. It's this monster of a combination of things. And in Aristotle, Aristotle flatly says, you know, you can, it turns out you can divide the soul any way you want, depending on what you're trying to locate about the nature of soul. And I think that's the most important part is the various divisions of soul are always done in order to better isolate whatever it is that you're trying to truly understand about one particular person's soul. And so in that respect, what I would say, and we also find this in the Phaedrus, by the way, there's, there's no. You, you can't. There are no sharp distinctions in soul. I mean, this is the. When Aristotle, Aristotle gives the most beautiful definition of what he says, choice is which is this. And he says that that is itself an archive of the human. In other words, that's what the human is, is this thing called choice. And what he says, the Greek he uses is beautiful. He says it is thoughtful eros and. Or erotic thoughtfulness. So in other words, no distinctions. You can't sever these things. They're a combination. I don't like applying Latin philosophical concepts to Greek philosophical concepts, but we're in the realm of having transformed from the relationship of parts to whole, which is to say the tripartitions into the realm of what we'd otherwise think of as essences, in other words, overlapping things that simply cannot be distinguished. And what we find out in the Phaedrus, the Socrates flatly tells us that if you sever any parts of the soul, in other words, if you make any soul divisions, what you have is a monster. That's what a monster is. If you want to know what a monster is, a monster is someone who has logos and thoroughly severed from their eros, or someone who has thumos thoroughly severed from logos or something like that petitive or epithumia, if people want to get technical about the words, you know, epithumia versus these kinds of things. I think more importantly what's always going on that, that undergirds all of these discussions of soul, particularly in Plato. But all this, it's in Aristotle as well. This is where they're at agreement is this thing known as pleonexia. That word pleonexia, it sometimes gets translated as desire or want. But you have to understand it is in many respects the term for human nature. In both Plato and Aristotle it simply means always grasping for more, never enough. Think of it as infinite desire is what we could say. And what we're finding with the three human types is that they all have a pleonexia. The question is whether or not they still have the virtue of prudence to not reveal all their cards, right? So Gorgias is going to be the most successful because under heavy fire he can still hide his pleonexia. Polis is going to be pretty good as well because eventually, and what I mean by hide is they just stop talking, right? They just say, you know what, I'm going to let you go on Socrates. I'm just going to bow out here because I'm still going to be making money after you, after this conversation where you think you've won, right? Where the sort of the Ben Shapiro ooh, glasses have come over you right now, that's fine in front of these people who are watching, but I'm still going to be able to prosper and flourish once I leave this situation. We fall further and further away from that as the situation digresses to where we get to the point of callicles. What we're going to find out is that the art of the so called art of rhetoric, this is what Gorgias refers to as his power of the art of rhetoric. It's nothing more than the perfectly tyrannical man. Now probably the reason we don't know anything about Calicles is because Plato has had to conjure up the final result of what you have with people that just flat out will not continue to reveal their cards as far as continuing the logos. And this is why Socrates flatly says to them throughout, he says, we, we have to put a head to the logos, right? In other words, we've got to complete it. We've got, we've got to put a head to it. And so that, that's what we're seeing going on there is that we, we, we're getting in many respects sort of like what you said nihilism is nothing new under the sun. The whole purpose of book one of the Republic is just to show us, and spectacular the display that the youth of classical Athens were every bit as nihilistic, if not more so, than the youth of contemporary America right now, as we talk. Nothing new under the sun there. And so what is the extent of philosophy to be able to. This is what I like to say sometimes as a kind of working definition of philosophy which we could build upon, is it. It is the proper education of the eros of the human soul when you're dealing with people who are fundamentally not, not, not just full of pleonexia, in other words, always grasping for more of their desires, but they've been educated in such a way that they can hide it very well. And not only hide it, but use it manipulatively. We call this propaganda to get other people to do their bidding. It's the problem we have with all of our politicians right now. I mean, this is exactly why Gorgias flatly says, the power of my art. I'm going to tell you what it is, Socrates. It's most especially that which wins over political activities. And so that's when you see the tyranny of the soul under the harness of pleonexia on an individual basis can. Can in fact get writ large across the entire political community. And so you can then begin to speak of political eros. That's going to be the injust, or we could say perfectly the perfect tyrant. And so the question of the Gorgias ultimately revolves around, not to jump too far ahead. I mean, I have the pagination there. But what. When Gorgias finally says what the power of his rhetoric is, he says that it is that which gives, on the one hand, freedom to oneself, but also power over everybody else. In other words, freedom and empire. The and right there is absolutely crucial because that means you get both right? Most understandings of politics are always, you have a decision to make. You can either have a free, a free people or you can have an empire. To have both of them means that you're in the realm of a thorough tyrannical problem. And when Socrates responds to this, he says, I see now what you mean by the power of rhetoric, but let me tell you what I understand rhetoric to be, and it turns out to be nothing less than just an absolutely beautiful description of what philosophy itself is. So what we have fundamentally going on in this progression from Gorgias to Callicles is a competition, probably the competition between, on the one hand Perfect tyranny, freedom and empire versus this other activity of philosophy which Socrates, he doesn't even hide it. He says his knowledge of the natures and the causes of things, it's, it's. I mean, that's philosophy, knowledge. I mean, he uses the word natures and causes of things, right? And so the, the whole dialogue is going to depend on really if, if, if you can add plurality to the word logos. Do you have a logos of things or do you have logoi of things? If you have logoi of things, that means you're in the realm of rhetoric. Gorgias is rhetoric. If you have a logos of particular things, only one logos, right? It's just this log. This is it. Then you're in the realm of philosophy, because what that means is that you have to follow the logos to where it goes. You talked about the teleology of rhetoric. A better way to phrase it is the teleology of logos. If you have to follow the logos, which Socrates says you have to do in the Republic and the feto, and I believe he might even say he says it. That's why he says in, in this dialogue, we've got to put a head to the logos. What that means is that the logos is. Is. Is not yours alone, right? You can't tyrannize over it. The logos is. I mean, he's getting this from Heraclitus, by the way. The logos is common. And Heraclitus flatly says, but people act like it's individual, that they own it. But if the logos is common, that means that you're not free to attach an end, a telos, to whatever you're inquiring into, only because you're. What do they call that? Confirmation bias. Right? You can't have confirmation bias. Philosophy can't have confirmation bias. You have to follow it. Right. And in the Republic, Socrates says, the logos is like a wind. We have to follow it wherever it blows. Gorgias is like, no, I know where the logos is going. The logos is going to where other people are going to do my bidding. And that's. It's that simple.
- [41:07]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
So, yeah, no, very good. I think it's an excellent mapping and something. It's like a. I think you've given us a lattice work that we kind of need to climb on and build off of. I want to root us in the text. Jonathan, any thoughts though, before we kind of jump in?
- [41:19]
Jonathan Bai
Yeah, maybe two quick ones. Just building off of what you said about the encomium on Helm, which is Gorgias's infamous defense of Helen. So this was a very popular genre at the time of a lot of these oratory teachers defending things that clearly they themselves do not think is true. And that is just like hot takes essentially. This is like the, this is like the Greek version of hot takes to show how good of a rhetorician I am, that if I can defend Helen, think about what I can do for you in court or think about all the, all the laws that you'll be able to pass, you learn from me. But this is a great example, I think, of why rhetoric is not to be abandoned for the philosopher. Because what's a great contrast against encomium von Helen Gorgias. Gorgias speech is the palinode in the Phaedrus. So this is the third speech in the Phaedrus and it's Socrates, the defense of love. So the first two speeches are tax on love or like critiques of love and the third one defense. And importantly in that speech, Socrates defends the idea of a madness, but a divine madness. And so you can see how that's kind of like an encomium on Helen, right? Where, where madness like, like, you know, who, who would think madness would be a good thing? But what's different between Socrates and Gorgias is that Socrates actually does believe that divine madness can be a good thing. So Socrates has, what I'm trying to say is Socrates has the kind of rhetorical skill but he uses in the surface in the service of philosophy. And that's actually a thing that we're going to see today in the Gorgias is what Socrates is really critiquing is not rhetoric per se, but it's rhetoric not in the service of a greater end. And maybe I'll just also add that I also agree with Athenian's claim of not doing these three simple divisions. It's not only for the fact that there seem to be a lot more fine grained distinctions that we see in the Republic, for example, right? So in the generation of states and souls, the oligarchic man, democratic man and the tyrannical man are all examples of appetite ruling over. So they're all repetitive men in some sense. But the way that appetite rules over is very different. Oligarchic man is compared to a Persian death fit, right? So his like, more like desires for money controls the other parts, whereas the tyrannical man is compared to a drunkard. Right? So even within these competitive men there's like huge distinctions. And so the way I read these three different people of Gorgias, Paulus and Callicles is that they're all really Callicles position like Callicles position about power and pleasure is really all three of their position. The first two just have more shame, or maybe to put it in Fenian's terms, more like social dexterity, to withhold it. Because we have to remember how these transitions happen. And this is not from Socrates, not from the opponent's side. Paulus says that Callicles was too ashamed to admit that he doesn't need to teach his students justice at all to win in law courts. And then Callicles said that Paulus was too ashamed to admit that it was not more shameful to be the. The recept, the recipient parm, than the one to do it. So what, what each person is saying is like, no, no, no, I'm going to take over this debate now because they actually agree with me. They're just too socially concerned to do this. So. Yeah, I'll, I'll pause there.
- [44:28]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, I think that's very good. Yeah, let's, let's kind of push into the text. I think we've gotten a couple good mappings here.
- [44:34]
Athenian Stranger
Hang on, let me, let me, let me just add something real quickly because it's very important, what Jonathan just said right there, because it extends to the opening of the dialogue itself. It's not simply a matter of these three interlocutors with Socrates that are showing, as Jonathan rightly says, not so much shame, because I think they're fundamentally shameless, but they still have a kind of prudence. So that they're not, I guess, I mean, these are. These are people who travel among cities, right? I mean, in order simply to be able to do that in classical Greek or, you know, I mean, you had to be careful. Idio. Socrates flatly says, he says, I want to know what rhetoric is Gorgias, because there's a lot of hoopla about you and this power. And in fact, there's a lot of people that want to know what this rhetoric is, what the power of it is, but they are too ashamed to know. So shame does come up. But it's precisely because he's speaking about the youth that want to come up and talk to Gorgias because they've heard, right? Remember Glaucon and them in the Republic. Socrates, our ears have been talked off by the rhetoricians. Literally our ears have been talked off. He says, so we want to hear from you, Plato. Socrates is addressing the fact that he knows the souls of the youth and he knows the power of this thing already. That has been diffused within the city of rhetoric and what it can grant those who have mastery over it as far as satisfying their desires. And Plato, Socrates does one of these things that is the most important in all of the dialogues when he does this. He does this, for instance, in the apology, which is crucial. He says, so Gorgias, I know that they're not going to come up and talk to you, but they really want to, he says, so think of me as being their stand in. Tell me, Gorgias, what this power of sort of like this. It's like Delilah with Samson. What's the secret of your strength, big guy, right? And so that's what's going on. And so, and so Socrates does. Socrates acts as a kind of prophylactic for the city. He says, Socrates realizes, I know the youth want to know what this is and they would otherwise love to learn everything from this guy, but they're not going to do it unless they do it through back channels or something like that. He said, so how about we just get on with the battle right in front of everybody and let me represent them. And so I'll have it within me to be able to give you pushback that they wouldn't necessarily have, but they will see that. And so that's a kind of we could refer to as the answer to the question. And the dialogue where Plato's Socrates says I'm the only one in classical Athens who practices true statesmanship. He's showing us right there that it's at the beginning of the dialogue. That's what true statesmanship is, protecting the youth of the city to the extent that he can from that which is most dangerous. In other words, the unloosing, the unleashing of pleonexia in the souls of the youth by way of this alleged art.
- [47:46]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, I like that a lot because I think that even on a surface level, a first read through, I think you have to realize the irony that Socrates is the one that's accused of corrupting the youth, but it's actually Gorgias, right? And I think that that's one of the things that's really interesting is that why is the dialogue. I mean, a few thoughts that occurred to me. One is, why is the dialogue called Gorgias? Like, why is it not called Callicles? And so I think in a certain way it's interesting to me as I read it, how Socrates's dialogue with Polus and then Callicles reflects back on Gorgias. And you see Gorgias interject himself in the text Saying, no, no, no, keep going. Because there's, in certain ways, I wonder how much Gorgias is aware of things or how much he's actually really digested these things. Because as he makes certain claims about rhetoric, but then seems to try and at the same time kind of artificially graft on concerns about justice, like he, I think he stumbles. And when Gorgias tries to understand what's the role of justice with rhetoric for then Socrates to turn and show him, what's the kind of caliber of your student when Gorgias listens to Polus, what is it that he hears? Or when Gorgias listens to Callicles, what does he hear about his own student saying back what rhetoric is, if that makes sense. And so I think it's interesting, Thedian, you mentioned that this has kind of a, A battle, an antagonistic feel. And that was something I noticed about it, is that it is. I mean, they, they make vulgar comments towards one another. One of them, I think it's Callicles that says, I could punch you right in the face. And I think this all starts at the beginning because the first. How's this dialogue open? Which we should probably always pay attention.
- [49:23]
Athenian Stranger
How dialog's open, the very first word of the dialogue due to the, the what's known as case in the grammar, it's involved in the word itself that makes it different than English. For instance, if you open the dialogue the very first word, it's Callicles speaking. And he says, in War and Battle, Socrates, he says, this is the way to do your part, they say. So we have to keep in mind dialogue just flatly opens sort of with abruptness. Right. What I, what I like to tell people when I did my recording on this, is that that should tell us right there that we are always. We're not giving an introduction to this whole topic or anything precisely because we're always already in it. We're always already amid not knowing the difference between rhetoric, sophistry, justice, philosophy. Right, but not only that, but it, it is a war. It's flatly a war.
- [50:18]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
But what is it? I mean, and maybe, Jonathan, I'm interested in your thoughts, but like, what's the war for? Like, what is the battle that's happening in this dialogue that I think is ultimately between Socrates and Gorgias that polis and callicles help kind of parse out? But like, how would, how would we articulate the victory?
- [50:35]
Jonathan Bai
Like the war over? Right. What, what, what are the stakes? I think, you know, maybe for a modern audience it, it has to do with like a version of this nihilism that, that we're discussing. So I believe in the 5th century the power dynamics were so such that generals were becoming. Became a lot less influential and rhetoric and oratory, because the changes in the, in the, in the legal democratic system became a lot more influential. And I think this had a more corrupting effect. And one passage I think I'd want to point out is 455.455E. So I think what we have to keep in mind is that this dialogue was written after the Peloponnesian War in terms of when Plato wrote it. But I'm pretty sure the dramatic setting of this dialogue is right within the Peloponnesian War. So I'm going to read those passages. Well, Socrates, I'll try to reveal to you clearly everything oratory can accomplish. So the discussion around here is how Gorgias basically says even when the state has important decisions about shipbuilding, they don't go to ask the shipbuilder, they ask the orator. Right? So he's saying how you can convince people, even without knowledge of the thing. You yourself led the way nicely for. You do know, don't you, that these dockyards and walls of the Athenians and the equipping of the harbor came about through the device of Themistocles and in some through that of Pericles, but not through that of the craftsman. Okay, so it's through the rhetoricians and not with people who have actual knowledge. Socrates says this. That's what they say about Themistocles, Gorgias. I must myself heard Pericles when he advised us on the middle wall. And why I think this is such a great dramatic touch is that by the time this dialogue was written and people would have read it, the middle wall was torn down. Because as part of the. So what the middle wall was, was a part of. With part of this system that connected Athens, the Athenian city, with the port. And that is what allowed Athens to survive as long as it did in the Peloponnesian War, even though their land forces were getting slaughtered, it was because that they had still had access to their navy and their port. When the Athenians lost the Peloponnesian War, as a mark of extreme shame and Spartan victory, the Spartans tore down this very middle wall. And I think everyone who was reading this dialogue in the time would have noticed that. They would be like, oh, yeah, this is the very exact wall that Pericles and the rhetoricians told us to do. That was a sign of hubris. So this is the great Play on the temporality of. Between the dramatic setting and the actual writing of it. An analogy I'll draw for our modern audiences. It's as if we put on a movie today about the triumphs of capitalism. And you had a guy in August 2001 pointing to the World Trade Centers and be like, everyone loves us, right? Like, we're going on to the top floor of the World Trade Center. Because that was the kind of the significance of the middle wall and the loss as a sign of Athenian arrogance and overextension. And I think that is caused by surge in these corridors and these office, essentially. And so maybe that gives us a good sense of what is at stake is like the very corruption of the Athenian psyche.
- [53:46]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, I like that. Yeah. I think. And it might be. It might be too simplistic on my part, maybe as Athenian said, I'm just trying to find a pedagogical kind of like, foothold in the text. But it does really seem.
- [53:57]
Athenian Stranger
It's never a bad thing. It's never a bad thing. That's always. It's always a good thing.
- [54:01]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, I took it as a good thing. I mean, I think it's. It's. It helps me to try and find a place to grasp onto and start to kind of map these things out. It seems like the. The war that's going on here really is like, for the souls of. Of the youth. And I think that Callicles at the end kind of shows us that as these two different ways that the life diverges. But at the same time, I think Gorgias is held in such high respect that this beginning dialogue that we have here, like Gorgias, has to be somewhat deconstructed, I guess, if that makes sense. Right. He has to be. I mean, he's forced not give long speeches. He's forced to kind of give clear answers. It takes away that kind of rhetorical sophist flourishing that makes people get lost in the answer. And it's like, oh, that sounded really good. Right. I think about. In, like, the Meno. Right. Meno always likes the answers that sound the best, regardless of their logos. And so I think here there's a war going on between Socrates and Gorgias. But what's interesting, though, and maybe I'm, you know, again, some caveats, but Gorgias seems to be the gentleman out of the three. He seems the one that seems to be the most calm about this. I mean, in certain ways, he's the source of the corruption. And maybe this is what Athenian's talking about, where Gorgias just has more of a self discipline to hide certain things. But I wonder too Athenian, I wonder, you know, you see, kind of just to map this out. So Socrates, you know, he, he starts speaking to Gorgias. He seems kind of very dead set on what he wants to ask him, right? What, what do you do? Oh, it's rhetoric. That's at 449A. I'm capable of making other people rhetoricians. That's 449B. Well, what's a telos of rhetoric? Well, it's the greatest human concerns and he kind of gets pushed back on. Like what does that even mean? In 452e we get well to persuade people in court, right? We get this power, et cetera. Do you think though I'm curious though, do you think that Gorgias really understands what he's doing? Like, do you think he really understands the type of young men that he's churning out? I guess my question is, has Gorgias really come to terms with what kind of men he's producing? Or has he internally made compromises that make him somewhat blind so he's not being internally consistent in and of himself, and so he's producing men that don't even hold to the standards that he thinks he is. And then as Socrates shows him who Polus really is, as he shows him who Callicles really is, Gorgias is coming to some type of revelation about his own work, his own rhetoric. Or do you think that Gorgias is just, he knows this all already, he's just hiding behind the surface. Does that make sense? Is there a maturation for Gorgias here? Because it seems like there's one way to read this in which Socrates is using Gorgias students to try and reveal something to Gorgias about rhetoric that Gorgias for some reason doesn't seem to grasp. Probably not because he's not intelligent enough, but because he seems to assumed certain contradictions that he's perfectly comfortable holding. And so does Polus and Callicles teach Corgius something like throughout the dialogue? Or do we see him interjecting because he's starting to learn something?
- [57:26]
Athenian Stranger
Yeah, I think you'll like my answer because I'm able to rope in the entire tradition of philosophy up to Nietzsche. This is good.
- [57:35]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I look forward to this.
- [57:36]
Athenian Stranger
Nietzsche appreciates Gorgias and he appreciates Gorgias for a very specific reason. There's no learning that takes place of Gorgias, Polus or Callicles in the dialogue. What we're witnessing on display is in fact the limitations of reason in the polis. A lot of, a lot of people fall in love with the Platonic dialogues and philosophy etc because they think if they can just get everyone to be more reasonable and we can establish this thing known as political philosophy, then we can establish flourishing political community. That's not what you get in Plato. What you get in Plato is that the teaching about Logos reason itself is that to expect too much of it in the polis is itself unreasonable. That, that's, that's, that's the real teaching of the Republic. The beautiful city Kallipoli is in fact quite ugly. One could say that Plato's Republic is the greatest critique of idealism that's ever been written.
- [58:42]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
But it had to be that, just as an interjection. Is that on that same note, is that why the beautiful city needs a beautiful lie?
- [58:49]
Athenian Stranger
Well, one could say that that's the reason why it does. Now the beautiful lies are. That's a particularly philosophical point because it's going to truly shock the senses of believers of any faith. Think of it this way. If you can't have flourishing political community without lies, in other words, if the truth cannot rule, what does that say about the divine? At best the divine doesn't care about, about man. At worst, it says that the divine can't really. You can't rule with the divine right. It's not, it's not going to work. That's why the first occurrence of theology in the west occurs in Plato's Republic. And it occurs precisely as a thorough trashing and dismissal of all the traditional divine. But sort of getting back to this here, what we're finding is that the war that's taking place that's going on here, what I would submit is look what is said. So there's those two. The key moments in the dialogue are going to be with respect to when finally Gorgias tells Socrates what the power of rhetoric is. Now he prefaces it and then he later gives us exactly what it is. So the preface is roughly, roughly 452d. And then the actual great elaboration he gives of it is 456B. But, but the importance of this, for what I'm about to say of the war that's taking place occurs in his first statement of it at 452. Gorgias5 says. He says he's talking about what rhetoric is. He says it's the very thing that is in truth the greatest good Socrates. That's a full stop right there. Highlight Circle, dog year, everything. Gorgias has just told us what the greatest good is that would seem to be significant. We always want to know what is the good. Right? That's, that's in fact what the dialogue, the Republic is about. What, what is the good? Well, I mean it's really about what is justice. But, but you can't get to justice without knowing what the good is. And then the other high point is going to be when Socrates tells us and says, when he's listened to Gorgias explain all that. And he says okay, I got you, I got you. But let me tell you what I think rhetoric is. He says come along then. This is Socrates gives his answer for B. And following he says come along then. And I have the, he says and if I have the power. Which is funny because he's asking what the power of rhetoric is. So he's being chee. He's outdoing Gorgias at his own game. He's, he's saying if I've got the power to sort of show you something. In other words, if my rhetoric. And by the way, this is something Jonathan might really appreciate. This was the whole point of my recording on this. Aristotle himself flatly refers to Gorgias's writings at the opening of the rhetoric as techne of logoi. The Greeks had the word techne and they had the word logos, but they didn't combine them for the word technology.
- [62:00]
Jonathan Bai
I remember listening to this.
- [62:01]
Athenian Stranger
Yes, right. So, so the question is our word technology doesn't rise until around the 16th century once, well, when we start to get the industrial revolution. But what would it be like to, what would technology be if it existed in pre modernity with these great thinkers? Well, Socrates himself tells us that he has a techne of logo, he has a technology. It's this. We're seeing two competing versions of technology. That's, that's really what's sort of going on here. The two competing versions of technology concern nothing less than the understanding of what the greatest good for man is. Gorgias has just told us that the greatest good for man as a result of his technology is to be able to have perfect tyranny over them because it allows one freedom for anything. Freedom for anything and empire over everyone. Socrates responds and he says I'm going to try to tell you what, what it is. And he's going to flatly say that it is the good. Right. So we're getting a glimmer of Socrates telling us what the good is here. And this is when he's flatly Going to go into this. What I think is just this amazing, wonderful description of what he flatly says. The purpose of philosophy is he distinguished. Now, and I won't go into it. I mean, I, I actually have a really fascinating. So I didn't know your background in math, Jonathan. I'll have to share my diagram of it with you. I think you'll appreciate it. But I did, I made a diagram of it. You, you need to do these things sometimes because Socrates is, he's complicated, so you need to sort of diagram it out. But he, in Socrates ends his discussion of what, what he says, rhetoric is by, by saying, he says. So you've heard what I, what I claim rhetoric is. It's the counterpart. Now that's, that's an important word. The word that gets translated is counterpart. If you don't know the Greek, you're going to miss it. It's antistrophe. Antistrophe is from poetry. It's from tragedy. For every antistrophe you have a strophe. So it turns out that. Okay, well, okay, so, so if it's the, if it's the antistrophe of that part of the soul for something, right? Everyone in this dialogue agrees that what is referred to as rhetoric or the power of rhetoric is epidemiology. Now I'll explain that. Just a second. Just bear with me. But what he says is. He says now. He says, now maybe I've done something absurd. Since when I'm not letting you speak in long speeches, right? Socrates said we said, no, no, we, we can't have long speeches. Well, hold on. But why can't they have long speeches? Because what's being opposed here is rhetoric versus dialogue. Rhetoric versus dialogue. Gorgias only speaks in monologues. You often can't avoid those because in politics you have to. Decisions have to be made on the spot. You have to win someone over on the spot. You can't have long debates or anything, or else you end up with contemporary America gridlock. But long term persuasion, long term pistis can only occur through dialogue, right? Socrates's method. But he says, but it's something I deserve to have your forgiveness for because you weren't understanding me when I spoke. Briefly, he says, you were unable to make any use at all of the answer that I gave you and needed detailed explanations. So he continues to say to sort of draw out the speech there. And he's directly addressing polis at this point. But Gorgias has flatly just told him, don't listen to Gorgias. Talk to me. And, and, and Socrates flatly ignores it because he's like, look, I know where, I know you're going to shut yourself off at a certain point. And so what I want is to talk to someone who's going to be a little more revealing about it. So he still speaks to polis. And what he says is that he says, he says, and I say that it, in other words, what Gorgias calls rhetoric. In other words, Gorgias is technology. He says, and I say that it, it's not an art, it's not a techne. Right? I'm at 465A here. He says it's not an art, it's, it's not a techne, he says, he says, but a matter of experience, he says, because it has no speech. The Greek there is a logon. That's also where we get our word irrational from. He says it has no speech to give about the nature of the things. Okay, again, full stop. What are the natures of things? That is philosophy. That is what Socrates is always wanting to know. The thing in itself, he says, because it can't give the nature of the things it makes use of or what it uses them on. So it doesn't even know what it uses them on, he says, whatever they may be. And therefore it can't state the cause of any of them. So it's not even Gorgias's technology is not only not a technology, it doesn't know what it's talking about and it can't even talk about what they even are. Now the reason that that's so important is what, what Socrates has just said is that the difference between your understanding of technology, or we could say rhetoric, is not able to provide an account of why it goes wrong. Dialectic can. The key sentence in the entire text itself is when Gorgias, or when Socrates flatly says this is a 467 seed of Polis, he says, show me I am wrong. Show me where I'm wrong. Gorgias's art of tech, Gorgias's technology, his art of rhetoric, it doesn't, it doesn't have that. It doesn't have an ability to do that because all it understands, it traffics. And that comes back around to that word epidexis. The key word there is de exis, which means a showing or revealing. It is the mean between two things. Epidexis, which is Gorgias's showiness, paradingness and apodexis, which is mathematical demonstration. This is Euclid Right. And so epidexis only traffics in what we know as, or what we refer to as enthymemes, right? Those are rhetorical flourishes. They seem persuasive. Apodexis that traffics and syllogisms in induction, right? So the apodexis that comes closer to approximating dialogue, Socratic dialectic, it can give an account of what. When things have gone wrong, because it has a logos. In other words, it's logical. There's nothing logical about rhetoric. It's pandering because it has a. As he says, it has a kind of experience. It has a sense of the. It can read the room. Right? But reading the room can only get so far if you're among complete strangers that don't necessarily go about revealing their souls to you the way that Socrates's art or his practice of politics or his, as he says, his practice of rhetoric can, in other words, by way of dialogue, dialectic. So those are the two things. But, but the key, another key point though there is that that the fact that it's an antistrophe, right? Rhetoric is the antistrophe, the counterpart to dialogue means that in the exact opposite way, the strophe of dialogue is rhetoric, right? Strophe, antistrophe. That's when the, when the chorus goes across the stage in one way with a particular pattern, but then it goes the exact opposite way, using the same pattern, but to different effect. So in other words, these two things are absolutely related. Socrates is telling us they're related. Gorgias can't see that they're related. He thinks there's only rhetoric through and through. Again, this is going to be why Nietzsche has so much appreciation for him. Because for Nietzsche, there is no. The power of logos is so radically limited that it's, it's. It should be mocked except for people who truly know how to traffic in it, which is very few. And so all of that's going to sort of get back to why it is that, for instance, Nietzsche has such a great appreciation for Gorgias and such versus Plato's Socrates and everything like that. But, but that's ultimately what's going on there. But the key point is to realize that this thing we understand as philosophy is going to be exactly the antistrophe and the strophe of rhetoric and dialogue. So that's what philosophy is for Plato, Socrates. In other words, it is the poetic understanding of the dialectic. So that's how you get that beautiful sort of combination of myth and logos as we're going to see just in this dialogue itself. That's why it ends the way it does. Because he's going to really leverage his own language of antistrophe by way of his understanding of Greek tragedy and such. Which philosophically.
- [70:45]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Can I jump in here and see maybe Athena, if I can re. Articulate this maybe in a. Not a more simple way, but maybe just a more like shallow or introductory way way or the way that I read it. So oftentimes you hear people say that Plato did not like poetry. If you read the Republic, Plato does not like poetry. And you get this antagonism that there's poetry and philosophy and you have to like, choose and you know, and they usually point the Republic and some critiques of Homer and things like this. But obviously there's some really jarring, clear problems with this. For instance, Plato is teaching us through dialogues which are deeply poetic. He's giving us myths and stories. Gyges ring, the myth of Urban. We get a myth at the end of this one. There's these beautiful myths that are deeply poetic. And so a lot of times when you look at this, I think what was really coming forward is that, you know, a poet. There's a problem with a poetry that is not subordinate to philosophy, right? There's a. There's a problem. It's not poetry per se. It's that there can be a Socratic poetry or a philosophic poetry or a way that poetry and philosophy are coupled and produce something very beautiful. Is it fair to say? Because it seems to be that there might be a similar thing going on in the Gorgias, that it's very easy to say, look, here's philosophy and here's rhetoric, and you have to choose one or the other. And look how much he critiques rhetoric and says it's not an art. And you guys are a bunch of pastry makers. He gets into this later, which is interesting critique. But at the same time, as you've already mentioned, Socrates is out rhetoricing the rhetoricians. He has better rhetoric at times. And so it seems to me, you know, is it fair to say that it's not that he disagrees with all rhetoric? Because he also talks about there's rhetoric for the mathematician, there's rhetoric for the doctor. Like, there's rhetoric that serves a particular purpose, which is a good. But this rhetoric that Gorgia seems to set forth is not really a true art. It's not actually focused on a true good. And so it seems then. And if I'm tracking your conversation as well, but in a much more simplistic way is that rhetoric is a good. I might even argue that it actually is an art if it actually serves the proper purpose of sharing what's true, good and beautiful with others, if it's actually subordinate to philosophy. Like, is there a way to read rhetoric and poetics as analogous to one another in their relationship to philosophy? Does that question make sense? Or maybe. I know, Jonathan, you haven't jumped in a while, but that's one thing that I'm trying to wrestle with is ultimately how the dialogue, and maybe or we just confine ourselves to this first part with Gorgias, what is the actual critique of rhetoric? Does Gorgias actually is a stand in for rhetoric per se, or is he a stand in for a certain type of rhetoric that's been divorced from what it should be doing and therefore is causing, you know, damage, is causing a certain erotic love of tyranny in the souls of the young. And that rhetoric needs to be reordered, maybe subordinate to philosophy to have a teleology that's more towards a good. Because that's how I would read his critique of poetry as well. Any thoughts?
- [74:04]
Athenian Stranger
Yeah, I mean, I can throw something in here and I'll try not to do my long winded stuff where everyone else is like, look, we got stuff to say too. The way that I phrased it in my notes is that the question ultimately is are we to make rhetoric subservient to philosophy or is philosophy to make rhetoric subservient to itself? Because you're going to have both either way, in the sense of the erotic nature of man. Man's soul longs for things. The longing for those things man's soul recognizes as good. Those things that are good are understood to be good because they are pleasing. So what is the proper pleasing of man's soul? Right. Rhetoric, as Gorgias understands it, seems to, and it's, it's borne out in the dialogue. It seems to be understood as nothing more than the, the pleasures of the body, that kind of such. For Plato, Socrates, the pleasures that are most proper to man are going to be attendant upon, as he's told us, knowledge of the natures of things and their causes, because that's that which is true. But it's more than that because for Plato, Socrates, what he's saying is that I find more pleasure in that. That's the, that's the greater pleasure proper to man as opposed to the pleasures of the body which are common to all living creatures. Right. Gorgia and that's by the way, why Gorgias rhetoric, which I call Gorgias's technology, is exactly our understanding of technology today. In other words, it doesn't question the pleasuring of the beauty or the pleasure of the object it seeks to achieve. Right? You can't have that with Plato, Socrates and his technology, his art of speeches. It does in fact question whether or not those pleasures are good. Right. And so that's going to ultimately be what it, what it's going to come down to with regard to the subservience or the handmaiden theory, I guess we could say, of rhetoric to philosophy or philosophy to rhetoric. Because Gorgia, I mean rhetoricians are not fools. I mean they have an understanding of things, they have an understanding at least of a way of understanding other people's souls so that they know how to speak well. Right? There's not a fool that knows how to speak well, Right. I mean, they're at least that good. But the question is about the rational content of things. Right? That's the key. And so as I was mentioning before this, this is why Aristotle is going to make so much about Gorgias in the rhetoric. But he's getting all of this from Plato's Gorgias, that thing dexis, right? The showing forth, the revealing that is proper to man as having logos. For the rhetorician, it's just epidemis to parade it, right? To get that flash and wow, right. So that people are like, yeah, that's what I want. I want to be able to do that. I'll, I'll go along with that. Right? Yeah, sure. You know, I'll front the money for it. Here you go. Here you go. But the, the apodexis, right? The, the more demonstrative form of things that is more common of dialogue versus rhetoric. That's not going to be that. That's in other words, the form of, I guess we could say dexis, right? Showing the revealing of things, demonstrations of things, insights into things, has within it the method by which it can discern whether or not it is correct or incorrect. And so Gorgias's rhetoric doesn't have that. There's no method internal to it to determine if it itself is good or as Nietzsche would say, the problem of science. And it's not as if Nietzsche would say it. This is. Nietzsche does say this and then the 1886 preface to Birth of Tragedy, which he says explicitly is the question of science, the problem of science. He says the problem of science cannot be answered from within science. Well, what is science for us? Well, it's Gorgias's technology. It doesn't have to have internal to it a methodological account of determining if it is good or bad. Socrates's technology or his understanding of these things does. And so what is most distinctive of us as human beings, we're going to long for things. We're going to want to find ways of achieving them, whether it's through speeches or what have you. But the question is, are we also going to take that extra step of having within us the ability to question the very premises of why we want those things? Right. Does one sit around with their face plugged into the computer finding bodily pleasure in pornography? Or does one hop into a space in Twitter of serious people talking about serious things and find a higher pleasure there? Right. That's ultimately the question there. So that's how it sort of all comes together in terms of these things.
- [79:03]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, I like that a lot. I think if I was going to try and tether that to the text, one way to maybe break open into that is Socrates question about whether the persuasion that Gorgias engages in is one that actually imparts knowledge or not. Because I think that's. Oh, go ahead, John.
- [79:23]
Jonathan Bai
I was going to say, before we get there, maybe I'll give my answer to your question about whether is it right to phrase it as whether Plato just disliked poetry, rhetoric per se. Right. So this question is whether poetry or rhetoric per se was a bad. And I definitely agree with you that I don't think that is his reading at all. In fact, agreeing with Athenian stranger. I think what's really being critiqued in the Gorgias is not rhetoric, but it's tyranny. It's the fact that the rhetoric of Gorgias, Paulus and Callicles is not being used to serve the good or justice, but it's used to power for power's sake, which. Which is just tyranny. So even though it's not a critique of rhetoric per se, or. Or poetry per se, I think.
- [80:10]
Athenian Stranger
And you could say will to power. Right? It's will to. There you go. Yeah.
- [80:14]
Jonathan Bai
And what, however, even though he's not critiquing rhetoric per se, I think what he is critiquing is a rhetorical or a poetic culture, if that makes sense. In other words, the practice of rhetoric, I mean, to Athenian's point, it's not reflect reflexive in the way that philosophy is that it can course correct, but it also even pure techne things that are just about instrumental instrumentality seem to contain with it its own ends. Right. So maybe you can see this in pickup culture. Right. Someone might ask, well, what's wrong if I just study how I should be speaking with women? Well, there's. There's nothing wrong with it per se if you're using it to serve good ends. But usually that technique of pickus artistry contains normative ends that are smuggled through it. And that's what I think is going on with rhetoric, which is even though that the practice itself is not bad, a culture that idolizes the rhetoric naturally takes on the successes of its instrumental goals, being to persuade, being to convince, as the final end itself. So a rhetorical culture, we might say, is naturally, even though it doesn't have to be inherently tyrannical, that it cultivates tyrannical souls. And in fact, I'm going to go even further in defending rhetoric and poetry here, which is that in the Phaedrus, in the final part of this critique of writing, I think it's even stronger that rhetoric is a handmaiden of philosophy. But in some sense, I think philosophy is incomplete or at the very least impotent without rhetoric, because this is one of the main critiques on writing. One was the Egyptian thing about memory. One was about the Straussian points about writing can't hide itself. But my. The primary critique of writing is that it was dead. Socrates gives this beautiful analogy of if you had a seed, a living seed, where would you want to plant it? Would you want to plant it in a soul that. Where it could grow a nourishing soil? Or do you plant it in the pages of a dead book? And so the issue, I mean to Athenian's point of the Phaedrus being about being able to speak with different people and meet people where they're at and making them more virtuous. Writing philosophy just without rhetoric itself is kind of dead. It's kind of impotent. It cannot protect itself. It cannot. And so I think I'm both agreeing with your points that it's not a critique of rhetoric per se, but it's a critique of rhetorical culture. And I think Socrates thinks even higher of rhetoric than simply as a handmaid. I think it completes. I mean, this is the Athenian's point about strophe and anti strophe, right?
- [82:40]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
It.
- [82:40]
Jonathan Bai
It completes philosophy in some way.
- [82:43]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I think that I really like your point about the fact that rhetoric divorced from philosophy is impotent, because that's.
- [82:49]
Jonathan Bai
Because philosophy divorced from rhetoric, philosophy divorced from rhetoric is impotent.
- [82:53]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
But shouldn't wouldn't it be also the, the rhetoric divorced from as well? Because the rhetoric then doesn't serve like right.
- [82:59]
Jonathan Bai
Well, rhetoric, rhetoric, divorce from rhetoric, divorce from philosophy, I think is tyrannical. And philosophy divorced from rhetoric is impotent, if that makes sense, the distinction. Because if rhetoric is not serving any, it's not. Rhetoric is not serving its own ends and not philosophical ends. It becomes tyrannical. That's what we get in Gorgias, Paulus, Calicles, philosophy without rhetoric. This is the book example is impotent. It's not evil in the way that callicles and polis are. It's just. It just can't. The goodness can't come out.
- [83:29]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. It seems to me that when you couple rhetoric with philosophy, then again, if you go back to like, what is the war and this dialogue over? And you're talking about particularly the souls of young men, I think that, you know, in a lot of ways what is needed is the young men need to be instructed in erotics. They need to be instructed in how the love that's in their soul can actually be called up towards higher and better things, which are actually more satiating and bring more happiness than the life of the tyrant. And so it seems to me that this is what he's trying to do with rhetoric is that it is analogous to poetry insofar as we have to move this rhetoric underneath philosophy and then that coupling together allows then, yeah, like a great fecundity, I think, if you will. Because maybe that kind of tethers to the text a little bit. It's interesting to me, and this is where I go back to my question of like, how much is Gorgias being intentionally obstinate about these things versus how much has he just really actually not thought about them? Because it's really fast. To me, when Socrates asks him, like, does your persuasion impart knowledge or not? You know, his answer is no, we don't impart knowledge. And actually we deal with the ignorant, not the knowledgeable is what we deal with. Because it's interesting to Athenian's point where Gorgias, if I understood correctly, Gorgias's rhetoric, this like technology, if you want to use that word, doesn't have like an inner standard by which to judge itself. If I could maybe play on that a bit, it seems like what Socrates has shown Gorgias is not only is your rhetoric not one that imparts knowledge, therefore you're not actually teaching anyone, but you're preying on the ignorant, but also you as the rhetorician can also be ignorant about what you're talking about. No one here actually has to have knowledge, right? So if you're going to, you know, I'm going to go talk about whether we should go to war or not, or I'm going to do this rhetoric or I could do this. The rhetorician doesn't actually have to have knowledge about the thing that he's talking about. So you could have the ignorant instructing the ignorant on what to do. And it doesn't seem to me either. I guess there's different ways to read this. Either Socrates is, is yanking off this veneer that Gorgias knows is there but no one's been able to yank off of him. Or Gorgias hasn't actually really thought this through because I guess why would he, why would he think it through if the whole rhetorical mindset is that it's not teaching and you yourself don't have to be knowledgeable about what you actually are rhetorical about. At what point would. I mean, because you can be self contradictory if you, if you read his praise of Helen, the whole thing doesn't even make sense. He can contradict himself in the same speech. So if his, if his own art, I guess to use that phrase, right, or his own practice, his own experience of rhetoric can be contradictory, can Gorgias not simply be contradictory in his own soul? Like is he, has he really thought about these things or has he not? And that's a question I keep returning to. Is, is Socrates actually trying to reveal something to Gorgias about this type of rhetoric?
- [86:39]
Athenian Stranger
Yeah, I mean I, Look, I, I personally think that, that it's not so much Socrates trying to do any kind of teaching of these three men here. He's a, he's at war. He's just there to destroy them because he know. I think, I think Socrates fully understands how parasitical the sophists are upon the youth. Because look, Socrates was the most notoriously unemployed man in human history and his work day consisted of Nothing less than 13 hour days in the agora with the youth. So he knew the, the souls of the youth more than anything. That's why Socrates was so fundamentally concerned with education. He has found Gorgias, Polus and Calicles because those are the people who are disfiguring, in other words making monstrous the souls of the youth. And so he's there to destroy them. The only teaching that's going on, I would argue in the Gorgias is the audience that we're never really told much about except for the fact that he's Socrates points out at the very beginning, he says, I'm sure a bunch of these young guys that are here watching would really like to ask you these questions. They're the ones doing the learning. He knows that he's not going to be able to convert by any turning of the soul. These people, because look at their souls. Look at their souls, their souls can't be turned. What I would point out that one just as we're sort of mentioning back and forth on the Phaedrus, remember he always talks about rhetoric Socrates does as a leading of the soul. So there's that all important passage that I read previously, which is that really encompasses the entirety of the Gorgias from the perspective of the Phaedrus, which is 271d22a. That's where he says there are different so and so types of souls, so and so types of logoi, so and so types of ins, these kinds of things. How do we mash these things up together? In other words, there are different eta forms, ideas. But he says, but it's always going to be for a leading of the soul. Well, he says this also quite a bit earlier. And by the way, Aristotle says this explicitly as well in the Poetics. The tragedy is a leading of the soul. What phaedrus, this is 261A. What Phaedra says is these speeches Socrates are needed. So Socrates is doing that love charms, what Xenophon, Socrates calls it his love charms that he's being able to get these people to want to be interested in hearing what he has to say. And he's got Phaedrus's attention. See, he never really gets Gorgias's or Poluses or any of their attention except insofar as he tells Gorgias that Gorgias, you're a fool. You don't know what you're talking about. And then Gorgias is like, okay, well then you tell me what it is. But Phaedrus says these speeches Socrates are needed. Come then lead them aside and scrutinize them and what they're saying and how. And then Socrates is playing his little role as like this mantis. And he says, come forward then nobly born creatures and persuade Phaedrus, endowed with beautiful children, that if he does not adequately philosophize, he will also never adequately, he will never be adequate at all to speak about anything. And let Phaedrus then answer. And Phaedrus says, ask away right there, role playing, the cosplaying and then Socrates says, well then he says would not the rhetorical art taken as a whole be a certain leading of the soul through speeches not only in law courts and whatever other public gatherings. It's almost like you think he's already had the conversation with Gorgias because that's what Gorgias said it's primarily about. But Socrates says, but also in private ones the same concerning both small and great things. And no less honored, he says, with a view to what's correct, at least when it arises, concerning serious than concerning poultry matters. Again and that's earlier. So that's, that's Socrates setting up exactly everything that's at stake earlier before he's going to go in and to explain it by way of, as he's already just mentioned, adequately philosophizing. Right? Well what is adequately philosophizing? Well it's recognizing the distinctions between different kinds of souls, different kinds of arguments, all based on an understanding of different kind of forms. And I don't mean that in any metaphysical way whatsoever, but just the common usage of the term. The forms of souls that we recognize. Right. The forms of speeches that we recognize. Rhetoric is just a form of speech. All logo is inherently of some type of rhetoric. Whether it's just terrible rhetoric, awkward speaking or something like that. Because it's all a de exis. Right? A showing forth. Right? That's, that's the whole point of this Epidexis that Gorgias is describing what his rhetoric is. It's a spectacle, it's a parading. Whereas Socrates is saying no, no, no. I mean there's more to it than just Epidexis. But there's also this antistrophe of dialogue. So we've got to have this back and forth. You can't have one without the other. Jonathan was exactly right when he said that philosophy without rhetoric is flatly impotent. I mean we've seen these people, we usually call them college professors of philosophy. That's exactly what I mean. I mean in fact, I might steal that from Jonathan and start referring to college professors of philosophy as impotent.
- [92:03]
Jonathan Bai
Yeah, let me respond to that because this was the exact point opinion that I was going to make, which is another way to. This is very self congratulating, but I don't think this is wrong. Another way to view all three of our projects is trying to join rhetoric with philosophy in the modern age. Right? Because if as Athenian says, pornography is rhetoric today, why is it rhetoric? Well, think about it. Gratifying your pleasures Right. It's kind of like pastry baking. Then the question is, well, what is philosophy without rhetoric? Right. What is book writing? And the answer is the academy. Like, those guys aren't like, aren't leading any souls, like, put it that way. They're not leading any souls, they're writing.
- [92:44]
Athenian Stranger
For this Hyper is where souls go to die. Right? The academy is where souls go to die.
- [92:50]
Jonathan Bai
Right. And so I think one, one other way to view all three of our projects is that we're trying to find a modern way to join rhetoric properly with philosophy. That's the first thing I'll say. The second thing I want to respond to what Athenian said was I totally agree with his reading of Socrates as being like. As knowing exactly what the Socrates, what the Sophists are about and just about like destroying them in this culture war. Because we have to remember, to Athenian's point, there are many souls that just can't be saved. And we see this actually in the end of this dialogue in the judgment of Raphael. Like some of the souls, you just can't save them. So they don't get to go to this purgatory place. And you see this in the Republic as well. When he's talking about the design of the Calipolis, the adults from the previous generation, a lot of them are taken away. And it's the children that are left who are more moldable, that are. That. That. That are still capable of being formed, whose souls are still salvageable, that are left. And there's an analogy of this actually in the Platonic soul as well, which is some desires that are way too strong, some appetites are way too strong, just must be banished, period. They can't be transmorphed. And so one of the other interesting conclusions of the Phaedrus is that the loving, the lovers ought not have sex and they ought sort of redirect their, their sexual passion, their eros into, into their contemplation for philosophy. And so the last thing I'll say here is this is my read, my. So my reading of Socrates here is very close to Athenian's reading, which is when he says things like, oh, I'm so curious what Gorgias is doing. Or like, he knows exactly what Gorgias is doing. And I think you can see that because when he's asked to give a definition of rhetoric by Paulus, this, in the second part of dialogue, he gives a very critical definition. Like, this is a knack, it's not a craft. And this is where he gives the pastry analogy. But I will say there is another reading of Socrates, who is this person who is always seeking truth. He doesn't really portray himself as a teacher who is. Even though he's been disappointed by every person he's grilled, he's still out there genuinely hoping that the next person he talks to is the one who has true wisdom. And so this is a much more naive picture, naive and innocent view of Socrates that I always had a hard time in understanding. So. So in this view, Socrates is being honest when he says things like I wonder what Gorgias is teaching. And the only reason that I'm a lot more open to this interpretation of Socrates is, is I just did an interview on Sextus Empiricus and that's kind of what Sextus was like. Right. This is ancient skepticism where sexism is kind of like just disappointed by every metaphysical theory that he's examined. But he's still kind of naive and innocent and hoping the next theory he examines is the right one. I find that view of Socrates hard to digest. I'm much more Athenian here as someone who knows what's right, knows what's wrong, is trying to win a culture war. But there is that. There is that interpretation too, I think.
- [95:44]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, it's interesting. My intuition of the dialogue is. I think I like the idea that. Because I think when he engages with someone, like when he engages with Euthyphro or with his interlocutor, I do think that Socrates is always trying to teach someone. I think Socrates truly wants to convert people to philosophy. I think he has a genuine care for the soul. Now, what are the souls receptive to him is completely different, but I think he has like a genuine. So I think that one thing we didn't talk about, which Athenian brought up, but I think is very good is something about this dialogue, is that it's one of the more public dialogues. This is this Euthyphro and Socrates having this back and forth with no one really around, but rather like there's a group that's watching and this is almost like in a certain way, it's almost. It's almost like when you're online and you're. You're interlocutor is obstinate, like you're not. You're not going to change this person's mind, but you happen to be arguing in the public square. And so really when the reason you're dialoguing with this person is for the sake of those watching and listening, it's not actually for the sake of the interlocutor. Themselves But I think we're. I think part of my questions still lie and I'm still wrestling them with is where. Where's Gorgias's own self understanding? Where's know thyself for Gorgias? Is he, is he kind of self conflicted? Is he malicious? Does he actually know what he's done whereas he stumbled into. Because he doesn't seem to want to play. Maybe this goes to Athenian's point, right? He has a better veneer. He doesn't seem to play. He wants to play the full tyrant. But I think Socrates shows him as terribly inconsistent. I do think he wants to destroy sophistry, this like rhetorician because I think it's destroying the young souls of Athens. But I am very much taken up with whether or not there's a path for redemption for Gorgias or whether or not this is just a facade. Because it is interesting to me throughout the dialogue that he's the one that teams the push for the conversation to keep going, if that makes sense. Is there something authentic that he's actually witnessing in Socrates taking his own students and showing him what they've become? Right here are these little tyrants that you keep producing into the polis. Like is this truly what you want? Or maybe that's a question like Athenian. Do we think that Gorgias, is this really his intent is to create little tyrants or is it just a byproduct of something that he hasn't really thought of or it's just useful for him so he just simply does it? Like where do we think of like gorygias self understanding here or do we know?
- [98:06]
Athenian Stranger
Yeah, I mean. Well, I mean not to sound like a broken record the way I keep bringing up Nietzsche but I mean this is why Nietzsche appreciated the, the Sophists and Gorgias is because I think that Gorgias does understand exactly what's going to happen. He knows what he's producing. It's not that he doesn't care but he has more of a. He has more of an understanding of the kind of friendship that, that Nietzsche puts voice to than the kind of friendship that Plato's Socrates puts voice to. I mean this is these discussions I've been, these spaces I've been doing on greatness lately. All of it comes back around to the role of this understanding of friendship for the philosophical life. Friendship for the philosophical life for Aristotle and for Plato and Socrates is that it is a. The Greek word for it is beautiful. It is a learning together together of learning for Nietzsche friendship is. I mean, it's still crucial. It's absolutely definitive for Nietzsche. However, what Nietzsche says about it is that he says, you can never dress yourself up too well for your friends. And what he means by that is that you. Well, I mean, he. His Zarathustra says this. And then he gives voice to a little bit later, he says, you want people who are going to reach for your crown. So Gorgias is perfectly fine by producing a bunch of little tyrants, because that means that he just has to make sure that he stays on top of his game and knows more than they do. And so it's this perpetual, as Nietzsche would say, agony, right? Contest always. And precisely because I would, I would say this speaks back to the dialogue as being about war. And we could even, I would even say this. This is the Thucydidean element here. All is war. And one has. One has to ask oneself, I mean, because we can't really ever prove it. I mean, these. We're at the level of fundamental premises here. Do we believe that all is in flux in a kind of war, or do we believe that there is a natural, peaceful, kind of harmonious state among man and human nature? Plato and Aristotle. Now, some people will say that, yes, of course they believe that. I would say. I mean, they're not fools. They know exactly what I mean. Pleonexia, right? The soul of man is fundamentally chaotic. And Pleonexia, Plato's Athenian stranger, is crystal clear about this. It's why also Plato, Socrates in the Republic, says you can't enlighten the masses, says you just can't do it. Well, why can't you? Well, that's because there's something fundamentally in the soul of man that's not going to allow for that at any kind of a large scale. But Gorgias is going to take this even further and he's going to say, much like we find in the Laws where the Cretan says that it's fundamentally a state of war of man upon man. And he flatly says the Lawgiver of Crete himself, Minos, taught that peace is nothing more than an empty word that doesn't mean anything because everything is always at war. You just simply have these periods of time in history when it's just not an open conflict. It's. That means that simple. And what we have with Plato and Aristotle is an alternative to that, that encompasses what we all, what we know of as the virtue of prudence. Gorgias and I would say Nietzsche, with regard to their teachings politically which is, in other words, with regard to their teachings, simply. And Thucydides, this is why, this is why Nietzsche loved Thucydides, flatly says, look, let's forget the pretenses here. Let's, let's. We're all grownups, we're all men. Life is war, all right? So we are either going to be manly about it or we are not, all right? This business about trying to, you know, put on civilities and niceties to it, that's only going to make us weak. That's what's going on effectively with, with Gorgias, I think, and his understanding of all of this. And, and Socrates is not a fool. He recognizes these problems in man that flatly cannot be corrected in the grand scheme of things. That's why, as Jonathan had pointed out, everyone over the age of 10 in Gallipoli has to leave. Well, let's think about that for a minute. Are parents going to voluntarily leave their children under the age of 10? Or are we talking, or let's be adults here, are we talking about genocide? Is that what's needed? It is what's needed. That's exactly what Plato, Socrates is talking about, genocide. He's like, you want the beautiful city? I got it for you. Murder everyone over age 10, start from ground zero. So the only difference though is that with Socrates you have the element of this virtue, this emphasis of this virtue. Similarly for Aristotle, very powerful element of the virtue of prudence. Now we have to be clear what that means, and that's a whole different discussion. But that's why you don't really have that in, for instance, Nietzsche. Heidegger, following Nietzsche, is flatly going to take the word virtue in the Greek of Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics and translate it as resolve will. It's often been said that this Platonic dialogue is the dialogue of the will. You know, there's no word for will in Greek. I don't like that. It's a Christian conception, beginning with Augustine, but in many respects it sort of is. The question of this dialogue is, are we to be politically prudent amid the monstrosities that man can become through his soul by way of the severing right of the aspects of the soul? Or are we just going to openly say, you know what, let's turn, let's return to a Homeric culture, right? Let's return to the Sarpedons and the Achilles's and the Hectors, who are always saying, I'm going to be best among men. It's always a question of who's Best among men. Right? No peace. There's no such thing as peace. It's who's best among men. And the question of who's best among men is the hierarchy that is imposed upon the polis to find peace. They've not gone down that road. The west did not go down that road. Gorgias is offering us sort of the classical Athenian echoes of that from Thucydides or something like that. And then we're going to find that Nietzsche is going to pick that up later.
- [104:32]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, no, I deeply appreciate that. Jonathan. Any kind of. Any comments on that or any kind of like, just final thoughts on the Gorgias and this dialogue with Gorgias here at the beginning.
- [104:44]
Jonathan Bai
Yeah, maybe as an annoying philosopher, I'll. Maybe I'll. I'll just clarify what Socrates catches Gorgias on, I think, because when he admits to Gorgias that his persuasion is not of. It is of conviction and not of knowledge, I think it still leaves open the path for Gorgias that Gorgias himself, even though he doesn't need to persuade a crowd about what is just or unjust, that he himself still knows that. So I don't think that is actually the death, the death blow of the argument. I think the contradiction that Socrates catches Gorgias is in is, I think around 456. Gorgias says the teacher should not be held responsible, the rhetorical teacher should not be held responsible for the tyranny of their student or for the bad actions of their students. Because rhetoric is simply a techne. Right. I'm just teaching people how to box. I'm teaching people how to build a gun. It's not my fault that they go around shooting people. So, so that's one claim. But the claim that Socrates catches Gorgias in, in a contradiction is at the very end when he says, no, if they don't know justice and they come to me, I. I will teach them justice, or they need to know justice beforehand to use this. And so that's the contradiction that Socrates catches Gorgias in that progresses the dialogue forward. And Paulus jumps in and says, no, no, no. Gorgias was too ashamed to say that all this rhetoric thing is, is just about persuading people you don't need to know no justice. It's simply about if you can convince people. And so that's. I'm describing this for our audience because I'm trying to set up your next discussion about what contradiction Gorgias is actually caught in and how the dialogue progresses further.
- [106:24]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No I think it's really helpful and that you anticipated because my, my question was, could be any, anything that we need to look forward to maybe in that next section with polis. So maybe Athenian. Anything for the audience as they're going to read that next section with polis that you want them to look out for.
- [106:38]
Athenian Stranger
Yeah, just sort of, because this is going to run throughout and this, I should have brought this up so much earlier, but the section with polis is so fundamentally definitive because that's where Socrates tells us. Well, it's, it's in the section with polis where it begins with, you know, Gorgias has told us what he thinks, you know, rhetoric is, but it's directed at polis from Socrates. What rhetoric, what he thinks rhetoric is with regard to the, the phantom image of politics. Even though Gorgias has just said, no, don't worry about him, speak to me and go. And Socrates is basically like, nah, you had your chance, buddy. I don't care about your credentialism. I gave you a chance. And so now I'm just going to talk to your. Since he was more willing to be open about some things. But, but what he says, again, this doesn't come out too well in the translations, but it's, it's, it's so key in this passage and throughout the whole text, really. Remember that the. Socrates has been accusing the sophist, all of them, of not having an art. They don't have a logon. Right. They're a logon. Alpha primitive privative God. Oh yeah, me primitive. But, but he says, he says an. It's an experience. As if somehow an experience is a pejorative. Right. Let's put a question mark on that for a moment. And he said, because you guys do guesswork. Well, guess what the word for guesswork is that he uses. Stokazimi. Guess what Aristotle's word is for trying to hit the mean with virtue. Stochasmite. So something about guessing is not a pejorative and to flatly be dismissed. And Plato, Socrates knows this because that's exactly what this thing we call mind or noose intellect is. Flashes of insight. We don't know where they come from, they just hit us. Aha. Right. Socrates knows that better than anybody else. And so when he's critiquing rhetoric or rhetoricians and saying, you guys are a bunch of guesswork, whatevers hedonists, he knows. And this is where Socrates, Socrates is not above being underhanded by any means whatsoever. In fact, he tells us earlier in the dialogue that his anti hedonism is not nearly as much as what people would like to think it is. Socrates is thoroughly erotic. He flatly says, yeah, I love to know, you know, if I'm wrong or whatever. And I think it's a great good, you know, that other people can figure things out. He said, but it's greater good that I myself know it. In other words, his, his Eros is still self interested to a large extent. That's not to say that you can. Well, let me rephrase that. What that's to say is that self interest is itself not necessarily a bad thing. It's just a matter of managing it so that it doesn't spill open into the public. Where you get these people like polis and callicles, these students of Gorgias, because that's always how wisdom diffuses into the polis. How does philosophy get into the public arena? Well, through students. So our students really, in fact to be that by which a teacher is held accountable for classical, Classical Athens said yes. Because if they didn't say yes, Socrates would not have had to drink the hemlock. I mean, it's that simple. In fact, teachers were so responsible for their students, according to classical Athens, that if you were to around you're finding out would consist of a little shot of hemlock. That's how serious it was. And so that's why we need to especially be concerned with polis's response because he's, he's doing that thing that all of us do when we have influential people in our lives. We're defending them, right? Even, even if someone else has come along that's better. We're going to be like, hey, hey bro man, look, Loyalty. I got you. I got you. I'm going to jump into the fray. And that's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing. But if your intentions themselves are not noble, you're going to run into bad things. Polus has no noble intentions. Kallicles are even worse. And so that's why we need to follow, as Socrates says, the logos, not plural, singular, and make sure that we understand where they are slipping up. Because what they're showing us, this falling away from beginning with Gorgias, down through polis, down through calicles, away from any possible noble, which is to say blunderstanding of this alleged art of rhetoric, what's happening in this fallen away is that the students themselves are revealing that the love of their own right, that all important aspect of Eros is that which they're going to go down the ship with. Right. And we as a people, well, let's rephrase that. We as thoughtful men who consider ourselves to be in some positions, I don't want to call us leaders, but each one of us here has our own projects where we are teachers and we would like to know that the product of our teaching through our students is noble. We need to know how wrong it can go if we don't take that so very seriously. Right? Because if they like us enough, they're going to fight for us. They're going to. And they might go down with the ship for us. But let's make sure that, well, this is Socrates. Of course, if they're going, if that's going to happen, die for something noble or beautiful, right? Don't die for something ugly that doesn't even separate you, for God's sake, from the other animals, just your base desires. Your teacher taught you how to be an amazing courtroom lawyer so that you could get any criminal off the hook. You're going to die on that hill.
- [112:41]
Jonathan Bai
What's really interesting about this dialogue is this is kind of the line that Socrates. Socrates is pushing Gorgias in the line that the Athenian jury will push Socrates on. Right? Socrates will push Gorgias and say, look at these, look at these guys are producing. Are you not responsible? Which is exactly what Socrates is being pushed on. Obviously this is written after Socrates trial, so this is clearly significant, right? This happened a lot in this dialogue where Socrates, for example, foreshadows his own death and he says, you know, I will not be able to defend myself. No, no. Apollos or Calicles says, you will not be able to defend yourself in court. Right. It's of course Socrates response is the worst punishment is not, is not death. It's a corrupt soul. But anyways, my question for you is, how do we read like if we agree, and I do agree with what you're saying, that teachers must be held accountable or maybe not fully, but somewhat held accountable for their students. How do we think about Alcibiades and how do we think about Socrates own failure in that, in that regard? Was he actually guilty? Maybe that is another way to ask that question.
- [113:46]
Athenian Stranger
Yeah, it's unfortunate that we don't really get too much of a solid answer from Plato on this question. I mean, I think, I mean, we do. It's just that it's not satisfactory enough for contemporary sensibilities. Socrates never satisfies Alcibiades sexual advances. That's not good enough for contemporary readers because they want to, they want to Hear Socrates, they want to demand of Socrates, do you denounce? Right. He doesn't do that. However, we get an incredibly powerful defense of Socrates on that charge of not just Alcibiades, but also another one of his colleagues who is even more scandalous, who Socrates does bring up in the apology, by the way. Way. And what Xenophon goes out of his way to argue, I mean he does a masterful job of it is he says I was there, I witnessed all of it. And as long. Well, he says, he says two things. He says there were no one that ever crossed paths with Socrates who were more victory loving. There's philosophia, philosophy, there's philotimia, love of honor and then there's philo nycha which is love of victory. Those two philo taimia love of honor and love of victory. Those, those are what end up being the two fundamental obstacles to people becoming serious philosophers. And what Xenophon says is no one loved victory and honor subsequently more than Alcibiades. He said, however, as long and he says I was there, I saw it all, I was with them. He says as long as Alcibiades was still coming around and being under the sway of and the Greek. He uses just the phrase, it's just absolutely beautiful. He says so long as Alcibiades was experiencing the speeches, the logoi that teach from Socrates, he was self restrained, he was moderate and he says, he goes out of his way and says it was only after Socrates. He said it was only after Alcibiades when he realized he was not going to be able to be the leader of all Athens as long as he stayed with Alcibiades. Socrates, when he went away for a year or so, he says it was only then when he fell away from the spe the logo that teach that he engaged in all of the scandalous corruptive activities. He said Socrates's hands are innocent here because so long as Socrates was his substitute father. Which makes you wonder where was Alcibiades his father by the way? Well, we all know the answer to that. He was given the speech to the Athenians that they didn't even need the gods anymore because they all themselves were their own gods. Pericles funeral oration but, but that's, it's a power, it's a very powerful defense. It's, it's a scandal that we, our, our own education is so pathetic that most people don't today read Xenophon's memorabilia, trying to try to make it a comeback. I'm trying to give it a comeback. And there are other people. Greg McGrayer, by the way, I mentioned, I heard you say that you guys are going to have him on. Greg's a great friend of mine. There's just about no one alive. And now he wouldn't agree with this, but there's just about no one alive who knows more about Xenophon and Xenophon, Socrates than. Than Greg. In fact, we got into a great conversation with some of the other great anons on Twitter, and my group chat the other day about that particular passage in Xenophon. And of course, Greg was chiming in and I was messing with him, saying, hey, why don't you become a tenured professor or do some translations of Xenophon or maybe publish a paper or two before you start coming at us with all this stuff about Xenophon. Because, of course, all that he has a good.
- [117:24]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
He has a good wit about him, a good humor. Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, I think we kind of took this up when you read the Meno, right, The Minos. I agree that the answer to this problem between the student and the teacher doesn't seem to be ever fully formed in the Platonic corpus. But you also see, I think it's implied several times that in certain ways it has to be reciprocal, that the teacher can only lead the student to a certain degree, but the student has to reciprocate in some capacity. Because I think the Meno, particularly reading the Meno as primarily about education and how the soul responds to trying to be educated, I think kind of implies the problem with this, with a soul that does not reciprocate when it's there, right? It's just opposite. It's recalcitrant. It's not taking in what it needs. I mean, obviously, the classic example of this is the west is basically built upon two people, Socrates and Jesus Christ. Socrates has Alcibiades, Christ has Judas. And so there are problems that arise if it's always the teacher's fault. There's things that I think we have to, like, struggle with.
- [118:22]
Athenian Stranger
So I was going to say that. I would think that. I would argue there's a better dialogue to go to than the Meno. And it is. It's the one that you and I discussed, the Alcibiades one, because that's where you realize just how it's no small affair. Think of it this way. It's no small affair to have a child, right? That needs to be taken very seriously far more than anyone today does. Similarly, it's no small affair to be involved in education. What's at stake in education? Well, we find out in the Alcibiades 1 when Socrates and Alcibiades have their first conversation. Because what does Socrates hang over Alcibiades head? Knowing. Knowing Alcibiades enormous ambition. He says, without me, you won't be able to have the entirety of the world that you want. Right. So meeting students at their level or you know, what have you, that is inherently a very serious because potentially enormously dangerous endeavor. And for educators who don't think that's the case, they shouldn't be in the business of educating because that is exactly what's at issue. You can. It goes even further to what was said earlier about the Gorgias being an entirety of encompassed in that opening discussion or that opening that passage of the Phaedrus about knowing the different kinds of souls and knowing the kind of logoid that you can. That can even enter into that particular kind of soul. Would any other logoi have even made Alcibiades open to the idea of philosophy other than Socrates saying, hey man, I can give you the world, I can give it to you, right? I don't think so. I don't think that there's any other logo where there could have been offered to Alcibiades that would have got him into the realm of philosophy than being promised something like that.
- [120:11]
Jonathan Bai
An important. Socrates was in lying, even though the world he was offering was the very different kind of world that Alcibiades thought he wanted. But he's meeting him, it's imminent. He's meeting him where he is. And this actually has to do with, I think at least one of the interpretation. I just interviewed Camp Takar at Cornell about how the different parts of the soul reason needs to communicate to appetite in the philosopher's soul why the things that it advises it to do is good on appetite's own grounds. So reason is not talking to appetite being like, oh well, if you give up sex, I get to do more thinking. It's no, no, no, like on your own grounds. This is good for you. And so anyways, it's a. It's half past midnight on my time, so I think I'm gonna have to tap out the gorgeous only keep me up for so long. But the Republic, I'm gonna go all night.
- [121:00]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
So no, I think no, I. We're gonna bring this to a close. I mean, I know we'd have to. I have. Speaking of, you know, having children is important. I have five of them that are waiting for me for family dinner. So no, I, we should say thank you to Jonathan whose plans changed and so he's calling in from London and so he's staying up till midnight. So we deeply appreciate it.
- [121:19]
Jonathan Bai
Super fun.
- [121:20]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Again. Check out all of Jonathan's stuff. Go follow him on X and find the links there. You can check him out on YouTube. He has a substack, some really high quality videos coming out. Go learn alongside him and his journey. What's true. Good and beautiful. Also Athenian. Thank you so much. We deeply appreciate it as always.
- [121:36]
Athenian Stranger
No, no, no, no, no. Let me simply thank you guys because I'm just some guy from, you know, small Texas town and you know, you guys are doing this great St. Jonathan's traveling all over the world for God's sake. Like I, I, I, I'm honored when you guys bring me on board with these kinds of stuff and, and thank you because I know you, neither of you would say it, but we all know it. This thing, this conversation lasted so long. It, it went so far over because I wouldn't shut my damn mouth and kept monologuing for so long.
- [122:07]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I was going to see if I, you know, maybe I should ask you. You know that you only have to answer in one word, right? Take the spirit of the Gorgias and say. Nope, nope, Athenian. You have to only answer in one word. No monologuing. Just one word. I was going to say that and make that joke, but then you Talked for another 20 minutes and I forgot.
- [122:22]
Athenian Stranger
But I didn't give you an in way, right? You couldn't get a word in.
- [122:24]
Jonathan Bai
You couldn't get a deeply thought you should have done. That's what Gorgia should have done. He should have kept talking over Socrates.
- [122:30]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
That's right. Yes. No, I, both of you, I think you guys have been wonderful teachers. I learned a lot tonight and I, I deeply appreciate it. Everyone, please go check out the projects of both Jonathan and Athenian stranger. Join us next week when we are discussing the second part of the dialogue, discussing polis as the interlocutor. Again, we'll have Dr. Matthew Bianco of the Circe Institute, who did his PhD on Plato and education, guide us through this section. Go check us out on X, YouTube, Facebook and Patreon and thegreatbookspodcast.com we deeply appreciate it. Thank you everyone.