 as being a democracy, Sparta being an oligarchy. And there's probably numerous reasons why they ended up going to war, and they went to war more than once. Like, this isn't the only one. But among those reasons probably had to do with the fact that they were each amassing more and more allies and becoming more and more powerful in the region, and probably worried about the power of the other, right? But why this is important is because Athens eventually loses the war in 404. Sparta sets up an oligarchy called later, the rule of 30 tyrants. And these 30 tyrants do horrible, nasty things. They steal land from anybody because they want the land. They'll just make rules and make decrees that they're gonna steal the land. They executed quite a number of pro-democrats. They exiled quite a number of pro-democrats, and they were just all around quite corrupt. They are overthrown by the Democrats coming back in in 403. Now Plato, some of his relatives are some of the 30 tyrants. Plato's family generally was much more impressed with something like oligarchy than with something like democracy. However, Plato writes at a certain point in his life that he was extremely disappointed with how the rule of the 30 tyrants turned out. That he had hoped it might be a good and just rule, but it turned out to be a corrupt rule. And in fact, he decided not to go into politics himself, Plato, because there was just two, well that there was the rule of 30 tyrants, but also the Athens put Socrates to death in 399, which we'll talk about in a little bit. And he just, with these things happening, he just didn't think he could do much good in politics. Look at what is going on with people, whether they're Democrats putting Socrates to death, or whether they're oligarchs being corrupt. So instead of going into politics, like many of his family had done, Plato ends up starting a philosophical school and starts writing. So that's why we get things like this. Now, what about Socrates? Was Socrates a fan of democracy? Probably not. One of the historians who is contemporary with Socrates Xenophon says, and that's with an X Xenophon. He says that for Socrates, this is Xenophon's words, Socrates says, they are not kings or rulers who hold the scepter merely, or are chosen by fellows out of the street, or are appointed by lot, or have stepped into office by violence or by fraud, but those who have special knowledge how to rule. Now Xenophon's right, then this indicates that Socrates doesn't think those people should rule who are chosen by their fellows out of the street, or are appointed by lottery, which actually did happen in Athens at the time. The jurors would be appointed by lottery. Some of the other council positions like the president for the day would be appointed by lottery, but rather those should rule who know how to rule, who have knowledge of how to rule. And I think that could be part of the reason why Socrates ends up getting put on trial and killed in 399 BCE. So what Socrates would do in his life is kind of what you saw in this text, at least as far as we know. The problem is Socrates wouldn't never wrote anything down again so far as we know. All that we know about Socrates is written by other people. So we think he actually went around and talked to people and like he does in this text and asked them questions and tried to get them to see issues with their own views, but we're not positive. But as far as we know, that's what he did. He would make enemies amongst the people he talked to as he did here with Calakles, although Calakles ends up just giving up, because he would show them that what they thought they knew, they didn't actually know. So he would ask them, what is oratory in other texts? What is justice in other texts? What is love? And he would try to get their views on those things and then he would show them what was wrong with that view. So he made quite a few enemies in Athens. That probably contributed to people not liking him. He also was friends with one of the 30 tyrants who was one of his students. He was friends with a traitor to Athens during the Peloponnesian War with Sparta. So he doesn't look very good on that count either. So he's got dangerous friends, made a lot of enemies in the city. And on top of that, he, sorry, what was my next point? Oh, during the time when the 30 tyrants are ruling, all the pro-democrat people are leaving the city, are being exiled or executed and Socrates is not touched. He doesn't leave, he doesn't get exiled and nobody threatens to execute him. He looks like he might not be terribly pro-democracy. All of these things may have contributed to the fact that he was executed in Athens. His official charges were impiety and corruption of the youth. Impiety meaning he didn't believe in the same gods as the city, or to tell if that's true or not possible. Corruption of the youth, very wide charge. What could that mean exactly? It could mean if he doesn't believe in the same gods as the city that he's teaching a new religion, that would be bad. It could mean that he's teaching the youth to question their elders, to go around questioning them like Socrates does. It could mean that he's teaching the youth to rebel against the democracy, which has just only now been reinstated a few years before his trial. There's evidence that people did think Socrates was a danger and that he might be working behind the scenes to try to get rid of democracy. That may have gone into his trial. Regardless, he's executed in 399 BCE. Now you see in the text a number of references to Socrates' trial, or at least to Calakles saying, you know Socrates, if anybody ever takes you to court on an unjust charge or otherwise, you're not gonna be able to defend yourself because you don't know how to use oratory. You just do philosophy. Philosophy is for children, I think Calakles says at one point. It's not for mature men. For mature men should engage in politics the way we are doing oratory. And if you don't know how to do that, you're gonna be in trouble when someone takes you to court. And of course, this is a foreshadowing after the fact of Socrates' trial. Plato wrote this text after Socrates was dead. All right, I think that's it for my introduction. Oh, I did wanna say one other thing. No, there's Plato and Socrates. Forgot about them. These are actually, I think they were made in the first century CE. So we don't, you know, they're still pretty far away from when Plato and Socrates actually lived. We don't know if they are actual likenesses or not, but these are the pictures you'll often see of Plato and Socrates. And here's a very famous picture of Socrates' death scene, Jacques Louis David, the death of Socrates. And in this picture you've got this typical image of Socrates that even when he's about to go to death, the way they put him to death is to give him hemlock to drink. Even when he's about to die, he's still philosophizing. He's still talking. Plato has a book called Fido, P-H-A-E-D-O, which is about Socrates' death. And according to Plato's account, yes, Socrates is continuing to argue and philosophize up until the very end, although he's talking about the existence of life after death. So it makes sense. And then here's another very similar image from the same year, 1787, but a different painter. All his followers and the people around him are extremely upset, but Socrates is still talking. Very typical. And this is the beginning of Plato's Gorgias in a manuscript from around the ninth century, so somewhere in the, we might call the Middle Ages. I just find it interesting to look at these really old texts, that this is one of the places that we get this book and other of Plato's books. There are a few sources, there are a few manuscripts here and there from quite a while ago from which we get our texts today. And it's always amazing to me to think that I hold in my hands, somewhere, wherever it is, have this text that existed over 2,000 years ago and somehow has still made it to me today and that we can still read it. I find that fascinating. But also before we get into the main arguments of the texts, I wanna think about the characters and the first couple of pages. So like I said before, Gorgias was a real person. Gorgias was a rhetorician, he taught rhetoric and he was an orator. You can still find some texts written by him, so he definitely was a real person. But he's almost the least interesting character in this text. I mean, he does start off the text, he does give us some basic ideas, but he's refuted fairly quickly and it's really polis and calliclies who start to go further down the road of being brazen, one might say, and frank in not just accepting what most people think is good or just. Gorgias tends to go along with the ideas of what people would like to hear about oratory. Gorgias says, at one point when Socrates asks him, if your student didn't know what was just or unjust before they came to you, would you teach them? And Gorgias says, yes, I think I would teach my students how to be just and what injustice is. But Gorgias then also says, well, oratory shouldn't be used unjustly as if that does happen, indicating that maybe he's not really quite sure if people who practice oratory do have to be just and know what's just, maybe he does or does not actually give them that knowledge, but he thinks Socrates wants to hear that, that oratory is all about making people just and giving people the knowledge of justice. But polis and calliclies as we go further down into the text, especially calliclies, are no longer worried about what people want to hear about justice and what's right and what's wrong and what orators do. Calliclies is the most brazen. He says, look, as far as I'm concerned, the best sort of life is to just get as much as you can to fulfill your appetites, even if that means being unjust to do so. That what justice really means is that the stronger should rule over the weaker and the weaker should submit. And everybody else is just too ashamed to say that because they're just too worried about what most people think about justice, but I'm just gonna tell you what's really true. So there by the end, Socrates is really getting to the opposite of Socrates' own views and trying to convince that person, calliclies, which ends up failing, unfortunately. So that's calliclies. Calliclies seems to be some kind of youngish man. It's not clear how old he is. He has just begun to enter into the world of politics, which would mean he's at least 20 or 30. So he's going to the assembly. He's making speeches. He might even be serving on the council. Polis, on the other hand, is introduced as a very young person. And one of the things that's really cool about Plato's dialogues is that you can get a lot about the characters just by how they act. Plato's, the people in his dialogues are not terribly well-rounded. It's not a play, it's not a novel. He doesn't really fill out who they are that well. But you can get a little bit here and there. So with Polis, of course, one of the footnotes in the text says his name means Colt, young Colt. And at the time, that would probably mean somebody who hasn't been trained yet, somebody who's just eager, right, but is kind of not organized yet, is not trained, is not disciplined. And you get that sometimes by the way Polis acts. So the very beginning, Socrates wants to talk to Gorgias about what oratory is at the very beginning. And Polis jumps in on page two and says, oh, oh, Gorgias is tired from that long speech he's just given me, why don't you ask me? And Socrates kind of does, but then wants to move away from him and go back to Gorgias. Socrates starts ignoring him a little bit. Socrates is like, you know, I'd actually rather ask Gorgias, so can you step aside for the moment? But Polis is really eager, he really wants to jump in and eventually does jump in, right, after Gorgias gets criticized by Socrates. So you can start to just watching a little bit how these characters act, you can see a little bit about them. Socrates also doesn't think Gorgias, no, sorry, Socrates doesn't think Polis is good at the sort of question and answer type of thing that Socrates wants to do. And this is around page 22 to 23. So Polis is too eager to jump to new ideas instead of really digging into the issues that they're talking about. So Socrates says, Polis, look, you're trying to figure out what I think Oratory is and you're jumping to whether or not it's admirable or not, but you haven't figured out what it is. You're not very good at this question and answer thing. So I'm gonna tell you what to ask me. Polis, ask me this, Polis asks. Okay, next, ask me this, and he asks that. So Socrates really isn't respecting him very much. You know, you're not very good at this, I'm just gonna have to teach you because you don't know what you're doing. So in order to engage in a question and answer, I have to tell you what to ask me. Okay, last thing before we look deeply into the arguments of the text, let me find my book here. It is the very beginning. And again, you can get a lot of meaning even beyond just what the characters say by looking at things like the setting. And you might not think so with this text because there's not much setting. We don't know where it takes place. We don't know what has just happened, but we do know a couple of things. Gorgias has just given a long speech and Socrates and Charifon have missed it. That doesn't tell you very much, does it? Except that they've all been listening to this long oratory speech, that is Polis and Calakles. And Socrates and Charifon have come up later. So they're interested in this stuff, Polis, Calakles, Gorgias, they wanna talk about oratory, they wanna participate in oratory and they're all sitting there listening. Socrates and Charifon are not interested. At least certainly Socrates. Socrates has missed the long speech and I don't think he cares. I think he's actually probably happy that he has missed the long speech because now he has a chance to ask Gorgias to engage in, as he calls it, page five, alternately asking questions and answering them. Can you now put aside for another time this long style of speech making? So we're done with that. We're not gonna think about that except I'm gonna ask you about speech making but I don't want you to do it, right? So we have to pull away from the speech making. The other thing that I find really interesting about the beginning of this text is the first couple of lines. Calakles, this they say is how you're supposed to do your part in a war or a battle. Socrates, Socrates. Oh, did we arrive when the feast was over? As the saying goes, are we late? Can you get any sort of significance out of starting the text that way? Usually when I read these things I just kind of skip over the first few lines. Yeah, yeah, they just have to say something and then let's get to the meat of things. Yes, Devon. It really gives no importance whatsoever to the actual speech. Okay, so how does it give no value or no significance to the oratory? It's like a sarcastic. Oh, yeah. Oh, too bad, are we late? Yeah, anything else? The first line even, this they say is how you're supposed to do your part in a war or battle. Took me a while to think that this meant anything or that it might mean something. But after a while I started to notice that there are a lot of references to wars, battles, fighting and winning in their discussion of oratory. So oratory is connected to engaging in fights and winning. And I'll put that up on the screen in a little bit. And Calakles is perhaps the most combative person in the dialogue with Socrates. The one who, well, Calakles at least is the only one who accuses Socrates at one point of trying to win in the dialogue. And Calakles is at least one who's willing to say whatever he thinks and not hide anything for shame, but he is also the one who is the most at odds with Socrates in his views. And to say Socrates, you're supposed to, this is how you're supposed to do your part in a war or battle. Looking at the footnote that suggests that it's, he's saying, well, you're late to the battle. And maybe some people think being late to a battle is a good thing because then you miss it, right? But Calakles is also here by, I think, foreshadowing through Plato, obviously, that Calakles doesn't think Socrates is gonna be any good at any battles, any fighting, anything that's gonna have to do with him having to defend himself, especially in a court. Because for Calakles, the best way you do that is through oratory. And he doesn't think Socrates is any good at that, right? Of course, Socrates talks about a feast. Well, maybe that's part of the saying, right? Socrates doesn't care so much about battles. He's like, oh, did we miss the feast? He wants to have it. He wants to have a discussion, maybe have some food together, right? Except there is one battle that Socrates is interested in fighting and we'll get to that in a little bit. All right, that is it for the introduction to the text. I want to ask you, so I can stop talking for a little bit. If you had to name two or three main topics or main arguments in this text, what are you getting out of it? Yes. What is just and what is unjust? What is just and what is unjust? Yeah, although I'm not sure. I'm not sure he gives a super clear answer to those, but that's certainly one of the topics. Is it worse to do what's unjust or to suffer? Yeah. Now they keep coming back to it. Exactly. So that's in the discussion with Polis, especially. Polis thinking it's worse to suffer injustice. So it's worse to have injustice done to you than to do it to somebody else, which is a feeling that many people might have. I thought one of the main topics was how one should know. Mm. And what do you think might have been an answer to that topic, how one should live? Just the injustice. Yeah. Okay, so for Socrates, justice is a big part of living correctly, but we're not entirely sure. I think in this particular text, what that means exactly. I mean, there's numerous things you could say about what it means to live justly, but that is one of his big things. And then also to focus on the truth, to try to get knowledge, to try to get what's, get at what is true through your discussion with other people, not to try to just win in discussion with other people, but to try to find out what's really the case, because that's what he's attempting to do with all three of these people. So yeah, that is a big part of how he thinks we should live as well. Anything else? Yes. I'm trying to think of exactly where that comes in. There is a place in the discussion with Calakles, where Calakles says the only good for human beings is pleasure. And I've got that on the slides here. So that if that's the only thing that's good about life, if there's nothing about life besides pleasure that's good, then what should motivate us? And what does motivate us? Then what should motivate us? And what does motivate us is pleasure alone. And then Socrates is going to disagree with that. The good is not simply pleasure. Okay, those couple slightly different, but very similar to what I've got. Of course, you know, the most boring one except for the value part. What is oratory and what is its value? I mean, that's how they start, right? That's the whole discussion with Gorgias. And you don't have to write down everything on the slides because I will post the slides on the arts one digital site. And there will be quite a bit of words on these things. So what is oratory, what might it be good for and how does it differ from philosophy? The discussion of philosophy in this text is not huge. I mean, it's not direct. He doesn't always say, well, philosophy is this and oratory is that, but he doesn't mention it a few times. And I think you can think about the differences between how the orators act and what they say they're doing and how Socrates acts and what he says he's doing as possibly differences between oratory and philosophy. And then by the end, we're gonna see that Socrates thinks he's the only person who actually helps to make people good in Athens or at least one of the few whereas the orators don't. So the orators don't, what it's good for is not for helping people to live better lives whereas philosophy might be. What is the best kind of life? Is it worse to do or to suffer injustice? Is it better to live justly and keep your appetites under control or be unjust in order to fulfill our appetites? That's Calakles that last one. So that's where he thinks that's what he thinks the best sort of life is. The one before that is it worse to do or suffer injustice. That's the discussion with Paulus. To where Socrates says it's worse to do injustice and if you do injustice, you should get punished because that's second worst, right? The best is to not do injustice at all. But if you do it, you should get punished because then that will help to remodel your soul. It'll help make your soul better. But if you do it and don't get punished, that's the worst. And then third, this one is the one I'm thinking that comes out towards the last third or so of the text. And it's not as directly clear, I think is the first two that I've listed here. But I do think that by the end, Socrates and Calakles start talking about what kind of craft it is that politicians should practice to promote the best kind of life for citizens. And it's pretty clear by the end that that's not oratory. And if you recall, Calakles is asking Socrates at the beginning of Calakles' own statements and again towards the end to start practicing oratory. Give up on philosophy. You're doing childish things. And so when Socrates argues that oratory is not what's going to be useful for the citizens, he's suggesting that that's not what Socrates himself ought to be doing. He ought to keep doing what he is doing, which is what will make citizens better, philosophy. Okay, who would be? Sometimes you can kind of get what the orators were in ancient Greece sort of, especially if you hear about the democracy and how you had to be able to speak well to get much done in the assembly, et cetera. Who would be orators today? What, if you were trying to think of orators versus somebody else, who would that be? Yeah, Andrew. Political pundits. Political pundits, okay. Yep. Advertising agency. Oh, advertising agency, oh yeah. Cause you're talking about persuasion, right? For sure. Yes, yeah, competitive debate. I'm only trying to think that for Socrates at least, orators are not terribly interested in getting to what's true. And more about pleasing people. And although I think debaters are, maybe. Could do well, possibly not. Yes. Yeah, marketing, advertising. Devin. Criminal defenders. All right. Or prosecutors. Lawyers in general. Yeah, I guess potentially especially defenders, but possibly prosecutors as well. Maybe more interested in persuading than getting to. Yeah, interesting. Those are all good examples. All right, well, what does it look like in this text? They make long speeches for the sake of persuasion. And again, all these numbers for the pages and all that will be up online. And in particular, in this text, oratory is about political practices. So oratory, I mean, yes, I think advertising would certainly fit for us. But in this particular text, this is what Plato's interested in. He wants to know what kind of political practice is going to be a good thing for people to engage in. Because the other thing is, in Athens, engaging in politics as a young man and as an older man was a very important part of being a good citizen if you were one of the sort of higher upper classes. So how, that's part of being a good person and having a good life if you're a male and you're part of the upper classes. So if that's part of how you're supposed to live, how do you do it well? Do you engage in oratory like Polis, Gorgias and Calakles do, or do you do it in a different way? So how do you engage in persuasive speeches in courts, in council meetings and assemblymen or in other political gatherings? And Gorgias also claims that oratory is concerned with those matters that are just and unjust. So this is just his quote, right? But here's where Socrates starts to question. It gets even more clear later. Socrates says orators don't even need to have knowledge of what they're talking about, that in fact what they are meant to do, and Gorgias ends up agreeing with this on page 18, is to stand up in front of people who don't know anything about what the orators talking about and persuade those people that they do know. So let me just read that. This is a nice way of thinking about Socrates' view of oratory, page 18. Page 18, right at 459 C. The same is true about the orator and oratory relative to the other crafts too then. Oratory doesn't need to have any knowledge of the state of their subject matters. It only needs to have discovered a persuasion device in order to make itself appear to those who don't have knowledge that it knows more than those who actually do have it. One of those lovely platonic sentences that can turn you in knots a little bit. Of course if you remember Socrates gives the example of, actually I think Gorgias comes up with this first, of a doctor and an orator both standing in front of the assembly trying to say something about medicine and who should be hired as a good doctor. And Gorgias saying well the orator is gonna be more persuasive regardless of how much the doctor knows. Because the orator is good at persuasion. The doctor may know a lot about medicine and may have good things to say about who we should hire as a doctor or anything else about medical policy. But they're not gonna be as persuasive as the orator. And that's when Socrates comes in and says so basically what you're telling me Gorgias is that all that orators do is they stand in front of people who don't know about something. And they make those people think that the orator does know that thing when they really don't. So that's what oratory is and ultimately that ends up being what Gorgias has to agree to. So is it really concerned with those matters that are just and unjust? Well maybe in a general sense but orators don't have knowledge of what is just and unjust according to Socrates. And then also questioning this claim of Gorgias, oratory is a knack that aims at pleasure. And we'll look at this in a moment. Not a craft that aims at doing good things to people's souls. So oratory is not something that can be used to remodel people's souls, to make people's souls better. All it does is aim at pleasing them. And in that it's called a knack as opposed to a craft which I'm not terribly concerned about except that you need to understand his terminology to understand the text. So we'll look at that. Oh yeah, here's, I forgot this. Amazing, what's here? Look at what I did. Oratory is linked to battle, to fighting and winning. First couple of lines. I'm just gonna tell you about this and then we'll take a break. Gorgias links oratory to physical training on page 15. Gorgias says, this is where he says, look, people who use oratory unjustly shouldn't, it shouldn't be their teachers who are blamed for that. Just like people who teach others how to fight and engage in physical training that is fighting shouldn't be blamed if their pupils use that fighting in an unjust way. It was meant to be used justly and the pupils used it unjustly so the teacher shouldn't be blamed. Well, that's how all this comes up. But what I wanna emphasize here is that Gorgias is directly linking oratory to learning how to fight. And as we'll see, he's linking it to physical training which Socrates later says is a certain kind of craft that makes the body better. Physical training, exercise is something that's good for the body. So in a certain way, physical training would be a craft that makes the body better. But oratory is not really like that. Oratory is not a craft that makes the soul better. It's a flattery. It's something that just aims at pleasure unlike physical training would aim at making the body healthy. Though I do wonder if even in this section, Plato means that physical training focused on fighting may not be the right kind of craft to make the body healthy. Just like oratory is not the right kind of practice to make the soul healthy. I'm not quite sure about that. It's kind of a guess based on the links he's making. And in a number of places, Socrates notes that, look, he says this to Gorgias a couple of times. He says it to Calakles at least once that I'm not just trying to win in this discussion. I'm not just trying to get at you and show you that you're wrong. That's not what I'm doing. And the point I think is that that's what these people expect. That's how you engage in discussion. If you're an orator, you try to persuade others to come to your side and you try to win. And Socrates is trying to distinguish his way of talking by saying, no, I'm not just trying to win. I'm actually trying to get to what's the truth. And of course Calakles still accuses him of trying to win because that's what he knows Calakles. That's what he thinks everybody does. And last thing before the break, Socrates does however think there's one contest worth fighting, one battle worth fighting. And that's on page 111 and 112. Bottom of 111, I disregard the things held in honor by the majority of people. And by practicing truth, I really try to the best of my ability to be and to live as a very good man. And when I die to die like that. And I call on all other people as well as far as I can. And you especially Calakles, I call on in response to your call because Calakles is called on Socrates to live like an orator. I call on those to live to this way of life, this contest that I hold to be worth all the other contests in this life. And I think what he means by this contest, this battle, this fight, is trying to live like a good person, no matter how difficult that is. Trying to live justly, trying to have, as we'll see in a moment, discipline in your soul rather than letting your appetites go without any discipline. All right, but I wanted to separate out the way oratory is presented and the way Socrates is presented. Because I think even though in some ways they are similar and Socrates does end up giving speeches, he's trying to separate out what he's doing, whether that succeeds or not is another question. All right, let's take a break. Let's come back about two minutes after two. Yeah, somewhere around there, about two minutes after two. And we will look a bit more at some of the specifics of the text. Let's come back, everybody. I just wanna ask you quickly, if you had to characterize Socrates' method of discussion, and in fact, sometimes people do call it the Socratic method, how would you describe it? Andrew, I'm sorry, I missed the first part. Okay, good, find an argument that's as free from contradictions as possible because that is what he finds a lot in the other people's views in this text, right? They finds that they have inconsistent views. Yes, in the back. It's really aggravating. Okay, it's really aggravating. Yes, that's why I use the word characterize because I want you to feel free to even say things like that. Why is it aggravating? I suppose that's true. I'm trying to think in what way Socrates would take emotion into account. He does want to persuade people. He even says to Calcly towards the end, I'm hoping to persuade you of my view, but he's not really doing it in an emotional fashion, right? So it's calculated in cold. I wonder, that might be very typical of philosophy generally, I'm not sure. Is that your hand up? No, okay. I think, after TV, I haven't spoken yet. Yeah, and there, Polis says, look you, you asked Gorgias, would you teach your students what is just and unjust if you didn't know it already? And Gorgias was like, well, yes, I guess I would. And turns out through that, he ends up getting into a contradiction, which you can look at more clearly in your seminars if you want to. But that's when Polis says, well, Gorgias was just ashamed to say what he really thinks, right? But at the same time, Gorgias is probably getting to feel a little bit of shame that not having his view shown to be inconsistent. And same with Polis. Polis's view ends up being shown to be inconsistent. And then Calacly jumps in. And Calacly just simply stops playing the game. He stops talking to Socrates, except insofar as to say, yeah, if you say so, you know, fine, I'm just going along, whatever. And then of course, at one point, Socrates even has to have a conversation with himself because no one will talk to him. Where are some hands up back here? Makes nothing for granted. So by that, do you mean he just continually asks about anything that anybody says? Yeah. And that's very typical in philosophy, I think, generally, is that you'll take a claim, an argument, and you won't just say the things that seem pretty clear, you'll just accept. You'll still try to dig into all parts of it and make sure that it all has a good solid foundation. Yes, you're right. I mean, he only talks about doing justice or suffering injustice. And it's not doing justice most of the time, but sometimes not, you know? Or aiming for what's the best life and trying to do it, but sometimes failing. He doesn't really talk in those terms. He only talks in terms of what is the best life? What does it mean to be just? Should you always be just or not? That's true. I hadn't really thought about that before. I wonder if he's aiming for ideals. You know, this is defining what the ideal is and then try to aim for it. But honestly, I'm not sure. Anything else? Oh, two at the same time. Go ahead. You go first on the next one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I found it interesting what you said. He already knows in advance what he's gonna say. And of course, Plato wrote this, you know? So Plato knows what Socrates is going to say. But I do wonder, like, could anybody really be that good? Because he doesn't know for sure what Paulus is gonna say or Calakles is gonna say and yet he responds in a way that manages to show what's wrong. That's pretty impressive if he really was that good. And yeah, he seems most interested in refuting their views. I mean, that's what he does in this text. That's what he does in other texts. But I think there's a reason. I think that as he puts it towards the end, and I'll show that on a slide in a minute, what he's doing is he's trying to come up with ideas and arguments that have not yet been refuted. So you keep trying to refute them. You keep trying and trying and trying. And if they don't get refuted, you say, all right, that's probably true. So that's really the test. It seems, at least the way he describes it in this text, of truth. So it's not, again, he has to say, I'm not just trying to cut people down. I'm not just trying to win. I'm really trying to get to the truth and this is how I do it. Yeah, Socrates is not so confident about his views, perhaps, as the people that he's talking to. Though in this particular text, he does seem to be a little bit more so. But he does say in his trial, in Plato's account of Socrates' trial, that he thinks he's the wisest because he at least doesn't think he knows what he does not know. And whenever he doesn't know something, he won't say that he does. So he is quite self-reflective, I think, in trying to figure out what it is that he really does know and not try to say things unless he has good reason to do so. All right, well, we need to keep going. Now I wanted to point out just a couple of things I find puzzling about this method in this particular text. Because usually, he'll often start off the text by asking someone their view of some topic, like piety. There's a dialogue called the euthyphro where he asks euthyphro, what is your version of piety? And then he goes through and questions that, et cetera. In the Republic, he asks about justice. In the Symposium, he asks about love. Actually, no, he doesn't ask about it. They're just talking about it at a dinner party, but he later asks about it. But in this text, it's really strange. This is the first time I've seen this in a text by Plato. He asks someone else to ask Gorgias the first question. And then, of course, later on, Socrates then starts engaging in question and answer with Gorgias and Polis and Calakles himself. But the beginning is he says, Caraphon, go ahead, ask him. This is on page two. Caraphon says, ask him what? What he is. What do you mean what he is? And Socrates goes on and says, well, you know, if he practiced making shoes, we would call him a cobbler. If he were practiced medicine, we would call him a doctor or so, et cetera. So Caraphon starts this discussion. And then pretty soon Socrates jumps in. And I honestly don't know what to make of that. I find it very strange that Plato would choose to have Socrates not be the first person to ask the question. That one I'm not gonna say much about, but I do wanna say a little bit about the next one. He uses a series of questions to get the other person to see for themselves the problem with their view. And this is a pretty typical idea of Socratic method that not only is he looking to try to find the problems with the other person's view, he's doing it by asking questions. And those questions are designed to elucidate that person's other views. So he will ask them, well, if you believe this thing you just said, do you also believe this? Or what about this? And then they will come to say what their other beliefs are. So that by the end of the discussion, Socrates has a list of all their beliefs on the table. These are all the things you agreed to. And now look, this one and this one are inconsistent. Now I think, for me, I think the idea of that is if you can get the other person to give their own views and to go through that process with you and to see, oh, wow, my views are inconsistent. Hopefully you'll actually end up changing your views. Hopefully you won't just think Socrates is a jerk for trying to show you what's wrong. But that is not what always happens in Plato's dialogues. And I'm sure it was not what always happened in real life that people didn't just go say, wow, my views are inconsistent. I guess it's time to change. But the way I think about it is that's probably what he was trying to do, because you can see your views and you can see how inconsistent they are. Sometimes in these dialogues, there's no answer to the question. But in this one, that's different. And then a few of them, that's different. In Republic, that's different too. You do get an answer to the question in Republic of what is justice. Here, you do get Socrates' views on what oratory is and what it's good for. But it's partly through a question and answer with himself. This is another really strange part of this dialogue that usually Socrates is going through a question and answer with other people, and he does that for the most part. But then after a while, Calakles just gives up and says, Socrates, why don't you just talk to yourself? And Socrates says, okay, and he actually asks himself questions and answers questions himself. This is very strange. I'm still working on what I make of that. Like, why would Plato write that? That was a conscious choice. I think there's gonna be a significance to that, and I'm still working it out, and I'm gonna talk in seminar about what I think by the time I get there. That's very interesting. All right. Quickly, I wanna look at the second point here. What Socrates says about the value of his method of question and answer, it allows one, this is what I mentioned earlier, to establish something as likely true and act accordingly, but keep examining it. So you have to keep looking to try to refute it. And if it's not refuted, then you say, all right, that's probably true. And that's what he says on page 89 to Calakles. Look, these are the things I think are true. Nobody, including you, has yet been able to refute them, so that's what I'm gonna hold to for the moment. For this to work, you have to be willing to accept refutation by others. You have to look for others to refute you. And then when they do, you have to be happy about it. And that's what Socrates says he is on those pages. I welcome being refuted. I will not get angry if you refute me, like you get angry when I refute you. I want you to do that, because that way, I will hopefully eventually get to the truth. And the other thing that has to happen is the person that Socrates is talking to needs to say what she or he really thinks. Because if they're just going along with the discussion because they're tired of it and they want Socrates to shut up, which is what Calakles seems to do by the end, then you're not gonna get the possibility of really getting the view refuted if it's refutable. So Calakles is no longer playing the game by that point. And what Socrates is doing in talking to himself, unless he can refute himself, this is not reaching the goal either. This is one of the reasons why I find this puzzling when he talks to himself. Okay, but we need to look quickly at, I'm trying to think what we should move to given our time frame. I think we can talk about that. Okay, so just going back quickly, you can talk about this more in seminar and this will be up on the Arts One Digital site. Oratory is not a craft that aims at the goodness what's good for a body or a soul, but rather flattery, which he calls a knack, which is aimed instead at producing pleasure only. And then on page 24 to 26, he makes this not quite a diagram, but I've made it into a diagram of four different things. And this does connect to our theme in the sense that the things on the right called flattery under body and soul are all in some sense imitations or in some sense not quite the real thing of the craft that are on the left. So briefly, there's the two parts to the person. There's the soul, which includes not just the thing that goes on after death, which Plato does think exists, but also anything that has to do with one's psyche. So one's thoughts, one's feelings, one's desires, one's appetites, all those are part of the soul. And then the body is all the physical things like your arms and your legs, et cetera. And crafts, he says, those are things that aim at what is good for either the body or the soul. And crafts also can give a rational explanation of what things are good, why, and how. So the craft of physical training aims at the good of the body, it aims to make the body healthy. And if you're a good physical trainer, you can give a rational account, you can explain what makes the body healthy, what health is, why what you're assigning people to do as part of their training is aiming for health. Medicine is similar for the body, what is medicine? Well, it is those things that you would do to help people when they're sick, but many times when Socrates is talking about doctors, he's also talking about nutritionists, dieticians, people who say what kind of food is good for the body? So that would go under medicine as opposed to physical training. Both of those things are needed for the good of the body. What are the imitations? The things that are not don't actually aim at that, but kind of look like they might are sort of putting on a mask. As he puts it on pages 24 to 26, those are flattery, cosmetics and pastry baking. Pastry baking is a very unfortunate word, I think, for what Plato is talking about here. You gotta think about what is it that's like gymnastics, but is only aiming for pleasure and not the good of the body, not health of the body? And what is it that's like medicine, but is not really aiming at the good of the body, doesn't really know what it's doing, doesn't know what's actually good, but just sort of aims for pleasure? Okay, when I think about it that way, I think, okay, cosmetics would be makeup because you doesn't like make your body actually healthy, but it might make you look healthy, right? Maybe, like with these days, cosmetic surgery, right? Make you look like your body is in good shape, but you just created it that way. Pastry baking, what do you think he means by that? But it's like medicine sort of, but an imitation? I'm ashamed of this, and then first we move back. We know what you mean. Yeah, okay, good. So it does aim at pleasure, and medicine would make you feel better too. Yeah, in the back here. Is it here now? Yeah, that's better. Cookery is better. Yeah, yeah, because that's how I think about this. It's not just pastries, although pastry is an example of something that is designed to be eaten for pleasure only, and you're not too worried about the nutritional value. Donuts, I don't know. Okay, one last thing, Ola. Ah, I see you. Yeah, yeah, and the idea is it's mostly, it's only aimed at pleasure, right? So these flatteries, these things aren't crafts, are only aimed at producing pleasure, and not aimed at what's really good. So then on the other side, these are a little harder to understand. The soul being the psyche, legislation and justice would somehow be correlated in the soul to gymnastics and medicine, and honestly, this is really difficult to figure out exactly what it would mean, except in so far as those two things are supposed to be aiming at what's good for the soul, and justice is correlated to medicine. Well, one of the ways he talks about medicine in this text is that medicine gets rid of corruption, it gets rid of diseases in the soul, right? And justice, he also speaks of in the same way. When someone is committed a wrongdoing, he talks to Polis, they have corrupted their soul in some way and they need to be treated with justice. The discipline that they get is justice. So somehow justice may be connected to punishment, it may be connected to correcting people, right? And then that would be for the good of the soul. What is legislation as a craft that aims at the good of the soul? That is really not clear in this particular text. Something like physical training for the body. Legislation has to do with law, it could have to do with with your mind trying to place certain rules and order on the soul. Things that you ought to do in order to have a good soul in order to perhaps be a good person. So these rules that you ought to follow. That's a guess, I'm not quite sure. But of course, oratory is not one of the crafts. It does not aim at what is really good for the soul, it aims at pleasure. It aims at doing what people want to hear and you use that, whatever they want to hear, whatever's gonna make them feel pleasure to hear, you use that then to persuade them to do something, right? Whereas if you were actually engaging in justice or legislation, you would be trying to make those people better. Now that's a tough, very abstract section in the text and that's pretty much the best I can do with that one. Okay, how ought we to live then? And this will get us to what sort of craft allows us to make citizens in a state live better? Are orators good for the citizens or is it something else? Well by now you already know the answer to that one, but we can go through some of the arguments. So how ought we to live? Which is worse, doing justice or suffering injustice? And of course Socrates' idea is that doing what's unjust is actually the greatest of evils. And if you notice on page 20, no, sorry, page 39 to 40, note 21, evil also means harm. So he's trying to say doing unjust things, doing wrong things is going to harm your soul and in fact it's going to be the greatest harm. And I'm not gonna go through the specific arguments that each person gives because you can do that in seminar if you want to. I'm just pointing out some interesting things about these and how they fit together. One interesting thing, Holis tries to refute this claim. And what does he do? He says, well Socrates, most people don't agree with that. I mean, is it better to suffer injustice, excuse me, yeah, to suffer injustice than to do injustice? Is doing injustice the worst evil that you can have? Holis says, just ask any one of these people. Just look around at the kings that exist right now. Are they really unhappy because they've done injustice? Would anybody agree that it's worse to do injustice than suffer injustice? This is Holis's refutation. And Socrates basically says, you're being an orator. That's how orators refute things. How, why? Because they're worried about what most people think and they think about what most people think and they have to try to appeal to what most people think in order to get listened to and then perhaps try to sway that in a different way. That's not what I'm worried about, he says to Holis. I don't care how many people disagree with me. I'm not looking for a vote. I just want to have this discussion with you to try to figure out what is really the case. Now this is where we're gonna start getting to the third question about how do we make people good? What's the best way to be a politician in the city? And I also, in this third bullet point here, I also want to point out the medical imagery that you get pretty much throughout the text. And this is just another way to think about the text beyond the surface, even right at the very beginning, before I get to that third bullet point. We start talking about doctors. And this is page three. Caraphaun is asking, Polis and Gorgias, what is Gorgias? And Caraphaun says, suppose that Gorgias, this is page three, we're an expert in his brother, Herodicus' craft. What would be the right name for us to call him by then? Isn't it the same one as his brother's? Polis, yes it is. So we'd be right in saying that he's a doctor. Polis, yes. And then he goes on to talk about painters. And then he goes on to talk about other things. But doctor comes first. And it's gonna be clear later that the kind of craft that actually makes people good is like medicine. It is justice is like medicine. Oratory tries to be like medicine, but it's not really. It's a fake imitation. Gorgias is not a doctor. His brother is a doctor. Gorgias is an orator. But Plato through Socrates wants to come up with some craft and wants people to practice the craft that would treat souls like doctors treat bodies. And you get this image of doctors and medicine and corruption and disease many times throughout the text. So Socrates' injustice is the worst kind of corruption and harm and we need a craftsperson. We need some kind of practice, some kind of craft. Who will give justice as a medical treatment? Who is this going to be? That's the kind of politician we need. Is it gonna be orators or is it gonna be something else? And I'm gonna skip this one. Sorry, because we're running out of time. We have time to talk here. Okay, how should we engage in politics to model souls for the best life? Because I do wanna leave a little bit of time for questions. So if we need a craftsperson to make us good, to shape our souls, what is that person going to look like? What kind of craft is that going to be? In the previous slide, Socrates argues that pleasure is not the same as good. And Calakles seems to agree that we should only fulfill those pleasures that are good. And we need some kind of craftsman to teach us what those are. Now, because orators are only aimed at pleasure and not at good. And because Calakles and Socrates have already come to the conclusion, although Calakles doesn't really agree, that pleasure and good are not the same, therefore it is not going to be the orator who is the person who should be running our cities. And in a way, the orators did run this city to some extent back in ancient Greece. Because if you've got this democracy made up of all the citizens, anybody who can speak well is really going to have a lot of power. Anybody in the assembly could get up and speak. Anybody who was a citizen could go stand up on that speaker's platform on that hill and say something. But if they weren't very persuasive and they weren't very good at speaking, no one was gonna listen. And they'd probably shout them down. And that sort of thing would happen. So who is actually running the city at the time? It is a lot of way to think about this is that it is the people who are speaking well. They can choose where the policies are going to go. So right now in Athens, according to Socrates, it is the orators who are running things. But it shouldn't be because they're aiming merely at pleasure. We need some other craftsmen that will be able to determine which pleasures are good and bad and which pleasures we should try to fulfill and which we shouldn't. And this craftsman should get order and organization to the soul like the physical trainer does for the body. So where are we going to find that person? Is it oratory? No. But there are two kinds. And this is where it gets interesting for me anyway. There's the kind that aims at flattery. That's the kind we've been talking about. That's the kind that polis and calliclies and gorgias practice. He also says it's similar to what happens in the theater. You get a sense of Plato's view of the theater, which comes out in a different text called the Republic where he says that tragedies are just aiming at the emotions and appetites of people and are not really trying to give people the truth or give people knowledge. And for Plato, that means they're not very good. Well, you kind of get that here too. Because he says the theater, what happens there is basically just oratory plus music, meter and rhythm. Take those away. You've got oratory. They're more or less the same. So if he doesn't think oratory is such a useful thing, he's not gonna think theater is such a useful thing either. Then there's the second kind of oratory. That of getting the souls of the citizens to be as good as possible and of striving valiantly to say what is best, whether the audience will find it more pleasant or more unpleasant. Well, this starts to sound a little bit like Socrates. Will people find it pleasant or unpleasant? What he is saying, pretty much unpleasant for the most part. Does he give long speeches in front of the assembly? No. Does he do it in front of courts? Turns out he did maybe. Plato's description of Socrates' trial does have Socrates give a fairly long speech here or there. And Socrates ends up giving speeches here in this text. Remember, at certain points, he says to Paul listen calically as, oh my goodness, you've led me to give long speeches even though I told you you couldn't do that. Well, I had to do that because you weren't playing the game of question and answer. You weren't answering me, so I guess I just have to give a speech. And you could think of that as Socrates just falling into oratory in the bad way. Or you could think about it in terms of this second kind of oratory that he says. So on pages 1881, that's where he distinguishes the two. Is he trying to make people better? Is he trying to say what is best? Is he aiming to make listeners have justice and self-control in their souls? It's hard to tell perhaps what he's thinking in his head, what his motivations are, but is what he's doing possibly going to do that. And I think of this as a practice of remodeling souls. He wants to instill self-control and justice and goodness in people's souls where it might not be there already. As opposed to a flatterer who would just take you as you are and try to say things that are going to please you, but not change what would please you, except insofar as they're trying to persuade you to something else, but they're not really changing you at a deep level as Socrates claims he's trying to do. Does anyone do this? Calacly says, no. Calacly says he's not met anybody who does this second kind of oratory. I think I have that on here. No, I don't. But Socrates says he does. Socrates, I think, is the remodeler of souls or at least claims to be so here in this text. I am one of a few Athenians to take up the true political craft and practice the true politics. This is because the speeches I make on each occasion do not aim at gratification, but at what's best? Well, that's the way he thinks of himself, anyway. He's trying to come up with what's really true by refuting people. He may make them angry. It may not be pleasant, but he thinks it's for the good of their souls. Last thing. Socrates at one point makes it clear he's trying to remodel Calaclies. He's trying to make him change. Where's my book? Page 85. And I missed this the first few times I read it, but the other day I was like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what he's trying to do to Calaclies. So page 85 right at 505C. Well, it's right above the top. So to be disciplined, this is Socrates, is to be better for the soul than lack of discipline, which is what you yourself were thinking just now. Calaclies, I don't know what in the world you mean Socrates, ask somebody else. This is where he gives up, and Socrates has to start talking to himself. Socrates, this fellow won't put up with being benefited. And with his undergoing the very thing this discussion is about with being disciplined. He won't go through the thing the very discussion is about. Socrates is trying to discipline Calaclies. He's trying to make Calaclies better and to get Calaclies to practice the true oratory and the right way of discussion, which would be more like philosophy, than the flattery oratory. But it doesn't work. Socrates has to talk to himself. Calaclies jumps in at a certain point, starts talking again, but it's really clear. He's not into it, and he doesn't really believe anything he's saying. And at one point Socrates says, well, if we had some better way to talk about these things on page 95, you would be convinced. And that's actually quite telling because Plato is writing this book. Plato is writing Socrates failing to convince Calaclies. Plato is writing Socrates saying this method is not working. We need some better way to try to convince people. Does Plato come up with a better way? Not in this book, because nothing works out in the end. Socrates does not convince anybody. He even gives a myth of the afterlife or a story of the afterlife to try to convince. Look, if you don't want to be good in this life, how about the afterlife? That doesn't work either. But in the Republic, which Plato writes later, we're not quite sure how much later, but later than this book, he does go about it in a slightly different way. He says, let's imagine an entirely new city, an entirely new state, and let's imagine what we would have to do to educate and raise people in that state so that they would think justice is a good thing. It's as if he thinks we have to start over because people like Calaclies, people like Polis, and maybe even Gorgias are too far gone to be convinced by this question and answer. He's trying, but it's not working. So if we could raise people from the start in a different way, then maybe they would actually become just people. So that little statement of a better way is actually very significant. It turns out for how Plato writes a later text on the same issues. All right, and that is all I have. So let me open it up. We have a couple of minutes for questions. Five minutes or so. Anything I haven't talked about. You're wondering about. Take this. I was curious, since you said at the very beginning that Gorgias is more of a black person. Yeah, he feels like it. Why? It could be. And you know, that's a really good question because it's quite possible that even in the ancient Greek text it wasn't called that or it didn't have a title. I don't know. It is quite possible that later people put titles on these things, right? And the discussion with Youth Afro is called Youth Afro. And Gorgias is the first person, so let's call it Gorgias. I honestly don't know. I do though think the Republic, which is that text that we talked about, the allegory of the cave from, I think that did have a title. I'm pretty sure. That's a good question. Anything else? The Isle of the Blessed? Yeah, so in the last story about what happens after death, Sisyphus has to keep staying in his punishment forever. I mean, that's part of the myth and Plato certainly is going along with that. Sorry, it's a little loud up there. But he says that people who are incurable will have to keep going through this punishment forever and ever. But some people are curable and they will have some punishment and then they can get better and it's just like justice, you know, treating your soul and then you can go up to the Isle of the Blessed. So I guess Sisyphus is incurable under that interpretation. Certainly Camus' interpretation is very different, right? Okay, there's nothing else? Then we will, oh yes, quickly. Banter-y? So what do you mean by the conversation sounds like banter? You're excited to be more formal. Yeah, part of it is the translation, but there really are jokes going back and forth and Socrates as a character in Plato's text really is quite witty. And there are some funny moments. You know, this brings up a really interesting question that I think would be fun to talk about in seminars if you're interested. I'm not sure if we made, I can't remember if we made a paper topic about this. The whole idea of writing a philosophical text or an argumentative text of any kind as a dialogue. Like what does that do? Was that something that, can it be more effective than just writing it as a straight argument in some ways? Would it be less effective? And so your question about the nature of that dialogue could come into that. But as far as I know, yeah, maybe this translation is a little bit more colloquial down to earth than some other translations, that's for sure. But I wouldn't say that there isn't that sense of back and forth and dialogue. It does, they do feel like they're real conversations to some extent. I mean, after a while, you know, Plato, or excuse me, Kyle Eccles just says, yes, Socrates, you're right, Socrates, okay, Socrates, that's not a real conversation, right? Yeah, yeah, Socrates says that. And I think what he means by not wanting to be contradicting in yourself is that it's, it's the sense of internal battle maybe is a way to think about it. That if you have one belief that contradicts another belief, you are internally inconsistent. And so you are contradicting yourself. And that I think for Socrates is a really big problem. And I suppose he wouldn't think it's nearly as bad to, although he wouldn't want to say anything that's contradictory to what's true. He might contradict what someone else has said if he thinks that thing isn't true. Yeah. But which actually, you know, when in the break, Professor Crawford came up to me and said, well, maybe the kind of battle that Socrates doesn't mind engaging in, remember that last quote towards the end that there are certain contests that he thinks are important. The one that he thinks is important is an internal one to make sure that you are being consistent with yourself and always looking to see if you can refute yourself or not. And maybe that's why he starts talking to himself because you can even do this inside yourself. Maybe you don't even need another person to engage, although it's better because they'll come up with more ideas than you will. So I just thought of that as he mentioned it. Last one. But harm and benefit are not the same as pleasure and pain either necessarily. It's possible to be harmed without pain. And it's possible to be benefited without pleasure. I mean, maybe the second one's easier. You can go to the dentist and be benefited and it's painful. Can you be harmed without pain? I think Socrates does think so and you may or may not go along with this, but he thinks that if you let your appetites run wild and you are not disciplined and you engage in unjust things to fulfill those appetites, your soul is being harmed. So for Socrates, that's certainly possible. Whether or not he's given a good enough argument that pleasure is not the same as good and pain is not the same as bad or harm. Whether he's given a good enough argument for that in this text is an entirely different question. I think he probably hasn't. But you can look at those things specifically in seminars. All right. I think that's it for today. See you in seminars. Thank you.