Gorgias

work by Plato

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June 29, 2026

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The dialogue Gorgias by Plato features Gorgias of Leontini, a prominent Sophist and rhetorician. The dialogue explores whether rhetoric is a genuine art or merely a form of flattery. Socrates, as presented by Plato, argues that true arts aim for the good, while rhetoric, like cookery, merely imitates them by prioritizing pleasure over genuine well-being.12

The work delves into the nature of justice and the soul, questioning whether it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it. It also touches upon the Sophists' role in Athenian democracy, where rhetoric was taught as a central educational discipline, though Plato's portrayal critiques their methods and emphasis on persuasion over truth.23

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Plato
Early dialogues of Plato
The more elaborate Gorgias considers, while its Sophist namesake is at Athens, whether orators command a genuine art or merely have a knack of flattery. Socrates holds that the arts of the legislator and the judge address the health of the soul, which orators counterfeit by taking the…
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The more elaborate Gorgias considers, while its Sophist namesake is at Athens, whether orators command a genuine art or merely have a knack of flattery. Socrates holds that the arts of the legislator and the judge address the health of the soul, which orators counterfeit by taking the…
Read More

Sophist
Theoretical issues
…doctrine of Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias that might, if one possesses it, is actually right), and it was this, more than anything else, that gave support to charges against the Sophists of immoral teaching. On other occasions the terms of the antithesis were reversed and human laws were explicitly acclaimed…
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…doctrine of Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias that might, if one possesses it, is actually right), and it was this, more than anything else, that gave support to charges against the Sophists of immoral teaching. On other occasions the terms of the antithesis were reversed and human laws were explicitly acclaimed…
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Western philosophy
Life
…He wrote a dialogue, the Gorgias, violently denouncing political oratory and propaganda, and then traveled to southern Italy in order to study political conditions there. Again, however, he found the much-vaunted dolce vita of the Greeks there, in which the rich lived in luxury exploiting the poor, much worse than…
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…He wrote a dialogue, the Gorgias, violently denouncing political oratory and propaganda, and then traveled to southern Italy in order to study political conditions there. Again, however, he found the much-vaunted dolce vita of the Greeks there, in which the rich lived in luxury exploiting the poor, much worse than…
Read More