In reading "Gorgias" this time, I found the section about oratory as a knack, rather than craft, interesting. On page 806 Socrates says that oratory is a knack "For producing a certain gratification and pleasure." He goes on to comment that because oratory is a knack, in the interest of pleasure, it is not admirable.
Socrates then goes on to say that Oratory "isn't a craft, but a knack, because it has no account of the nature of whatever things it applies by which it applies them, so that it's unable to state the cause of each thing" (808-809). So, really, is it oratory's lack of truthiness that makes it a knack for Socrates?
Later, Callicles and Socrates return to the idea of Knack versus craft and Socrates notes that it is not the filling up of man with pleasure that is so wrong. Rather, that man should fill the appetites that make him better and not those that make him worse. He adds, that this act -- the knowing of which appetites to fill -- is craft, not knack. However, it seems to me that this arbitrary distinction between what makes man better and what makes him worse, is simply a product of oratory. That is, it is a product of what Socrates says.
So, I suppose this leaves me with a couple of questions: Is a knack a bad thing if it leads to the filling of appetites that make man better? Who decides what makes man better or worse? If the real question is making man better, does it matter if it is done through knack or craft?