Plato’s Gorgias

Week 6: Callicles’ intervention (481b-527b)

Callicles grows weary with Polus’ wrestling with the topic, and tries to intervene by turning the tables yet one ore time. He indulges in several forms of classic ad hominem argument, belittling Socrates and sounding in many ways like certain modern politicians who substitute sneering for reason. Socrates carefully wins from him an agreement to carry on the conversation civilly, but he doesn’t actually do so, and eventually falls into a sullen silence, insisting that Socrates just go on and say whatever he wants to say, while lobbing in occasional grumbles and grouses. If nothing else, it’s a masterpiece of the portrayal of passive-aggressive behavior. Even Gorgias himself objects to Callicles’ rudeness.

Socrates is not particularly happy with that state of affairs, but does go on to say what he has to say. He invites questions from all the interlocutors, but in the long run his own presentation turns into something very like a protracted speech itself. Irrespective of the exchanges that occasioned it, does this vitiate Socrates’ own approach to rhetoric, and his claims about it?

The dialogue winds down to its conclusion more or less as a single voice — Socrates’ — and Callicles just mostly sits on the sidelines grumbling about how it’s all rather stupid. Philosophy, he argues, is all well and good if you’re a youngster, but grown-ups have real-world issues to address, and ought to set about addressing them without all this fol-de-rol. The dialogue ends with a general air of discontent on his part, while Socrates seems vaguely but distractedly content.

For discussion:

• Note how Callicles continues to shift the ground as he finds himself getting headed off in each direction. Is this effective argumentation, or is it just the petulant response of someone who sees that he is beaten but doesn’t want to admit it?
• At some points it looks as if Socrates is saying certain things just to torment Callicles (you can have your own opinion of whether he deserves it or not). Is this really Socrates’ agenda, or is it simply the case that his whole view of the world and of the nature of truth is almost diametrically opposed to Callicles’?
• When all is said and done, does the dialogue come to anything you would consider a settled conclusion? Does it address the moral obligations incumbent upon anyone who sets out to persuade? Can persuasion be validly used in a noble cause to persuade people to do the right thing?
• Does this qualify as an aporetic dialogue — that is, one that ends in aporia — “stuckness” — no way through? Many of the earlier dialogues of the the What is <abstract-noun>? sort wind up this way, and we have gone through several of them over the years (Euthyphro and Laches, in particular). This however may be different.