English 622: Classical Rhetoric

To begin my response for this week, I would fist like to turn to the final sentences of the “Gorgias”: “So let’s use the account that has now been disclosed to use as our guide, one that indicates to us that this way of life is the best, to practice justice and the rest of excellence both in life and in death. Let us follow it, then, and call on others to do so, too, and let’s not follow the one that you believe in and call on me to follow. For that one is worthless, Callicles” (869).

Here I will try to stick to both Socrates' and Dr Rick's rule about not being long winded: I don't think that Socrates "won" this argument. It doesn't feel to me like Plato is ripping the sophists a new one here. Indeed, Gorgias' students sort of sit back and admit that there is no talking to this guy Socrates, who seemed so very chill to start. Socrates is using a strategy that leaves no room for conversation, and is asking all these yes/no questions.

In reading Gorgias I was very interested in Socrates views of oratory. Socrates seems to slam oratory in several places. Socrates claims, “Oratory doesn’t need to have any knowledge of the state of their subject matters; it only needs to have discovered some device to produce persuasion in order to make itself appear to those who don’t have knowledge that it knows more than those who actually do have it” (804).

In _Gorgias_, Plato's Socrates separates orators from medical professionals by saying that the former practices a knack and the latter practices a craft. The term knack is one that isn't often used other than in terms of being able to mean, "I'm getting the hang of this." It seems in my mind to be associated with a skill, so in my head it's not quite something that can be contrasted with craft but is something that seems very much integrally linked to it.