Gorgias

By Plato

Categories: Politics & Social Sciences

Socrates faces three defenders of rhetoric in this dialogue by Plato: the visiting teacher Gorgias, his young follower Polus, and the ambitious Athenian Callicles. The question begins with what rhetoric is and widens into how a person ought to live. Socrates argues that doing wrong is worse than suffering it and that rhetoric aimed at pleasing crowds is a kind of flattery. Callicles replies that natural justice means the strong ruling the weak.

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