Georgias-Critical Thinking - Plato's Dialogues

In one of Plato's dialogues, Gorgias, Plato portrays rhetoric as a "technique or knack rather than an art" (Foss et al., 2002). It is a dialogue in which Plato puts the rhetorician and the philosopher into opposition.

Plato presents the definition, the rules and requirements for participants, and the techniques used in the dialectical argument. The dialogue begins as a discussion about the true nature of oratory. One of the characters Socrates represents the philosopher who points out the political danger posed by careless education. The discussion is split up into three parts, one for each of Socrates' subjects that he converses with. Plato cleverly accomplishes the issue of presentation through a well developed and comprehensive dialogue between Callicles (defender of naked power politics), Socrates (sophist, they were experts in public speaking, political campaigns, litigation. Plato saw them as the source of moral decadence), Chaerephon (a friend of Socrates), Gorgias (the rhetorician, a respectable sophist, who is skeptical about philosophy but not about morals), and Polus (a student of Gorgias, younger character who becomes object of Socrates' first interrogation). Each of these men has a different point of view on the subject of politics, especially when speaking of justice and politics together in an argument (Nichols, 1998).

Socrates treats Gorgias very well during their discussion, as a respectable man with whom he disagrees, and Gorgias for his part is never flustered by Socrates' description of his art as a knack and as a form of pandering. He is instructing Socrates exclusively in the art of Rhetoric during all dialogue. Gorgias claimed not to teach virtue, arête, because virtue is different for everyone. He argues that political, excellence, and moral virtues differ from person to person. The focus of Gorgias is rhetoric. Plato's views eventually work their way to the surface though his representation of characters in the dialogues. Some of the rhetorical views Plato presents in Gorgias are the roles flattery plays in persuasion, the relationship between knowledge and truth, and a just use of rhetoric. Gorgias taught a technique recognizing and acting at the opportune time, dialectic. It involves having the right words to say at the right time and waiting for the best moment in time to make a statement or ask a leading question. The one has to know what to say, what they are not allowed to say, and then decide between side stepping an issue and countering (Nichols, 1998).

From Plato's Gorgias, dialectic can be defined as a form of argumentation that deals with scholastic principles and valid inferences and demonstration. "Questions are asked and answered in a uniform manner"(Nichols. 1998, p.131). The principles are mostly that of reasoning. Plato demonstrates the technique of the art of dialectical argumentation through investigative dialogue, like that