ENG 480

Series 1: Handout #2

Gorgias and Plato

Gorgias of Leontini (c. 483-376 BCE): Classical rhetorician; “sophist” and “sophistry”—subtle argumentation not necessarily based on realism.

His major idea: 1. Nothing exists. 2. If anything did exist it could never be known. 3. If anything did exist and was known, it could never be communicated.

Speech [logos], in other words, has no necessary relation to truth or reality, but people tried to persuade others that it does.

“Encomium of Helen”: a sophist’s defense of Helen based on persuasive power of words. Speech “molds the mind,” functions as a “drug,” and compels like physical force. “Just as different drugs draw forth different humors from the body – some putting a stop to disease, others to life – so too with words: some cause pain, others joy, some strike fear, some stir the audience to boldness, some benumb and bewitch the soul with evil persuasion” And Gorgias uses the same art, cynically perhaps, to move the reader as Paris once moved Helen.

Plato (c. 427-347 BCE): Founding figure in Western philosophy; first literary theorist.

Big literary idea: All art is imitation of nature (mimesis), but the nature or reality that art copies is only a shadow of the more real world of Forms or Ideas. Art is a copy of copy, and, therefore, art is not the path to Truth or Logos. See the “Allegory of the Cave” (64-67). Plato preferred mathematics, logic, and philosophy—which allow you to see the eternal Ideas—to art.

In response to Gorgias, Plato calls him a rhetorician and a sophist rather than a philosopher. Gorgias is not at all concerned with truth; he is not serious.

Epistemology: how do we know what we regard as true? Is there a Logos or not? And, if so, how can we know it? Is literature or art any value for knowing Truth, or is it all deception or sophistry and we might as well profit by it?

But there’s lots of other material of literary interest in Plato: e.g., canons and education (49-50), literature and moral education (50-51), literature generally fails to present Truth, as determined by logic (54-55), what is the purpose of literature? (56-57), should it lead to the love of beauty in form, etc. (64-65), is art more than mere imitation? (69-70) . . .

Some Questions:

Should literature serve morality? Whose morality? Who decides?

Are science, mathematics, philosophy more “objective” than art/literature?

Should we take mere pleasure in art/literature or see it as a political/persuasive tool (of power)?

Consider any of the above for DISCUS.

GORGIAS	PLATO
Form (Style)	Content (Substance[?])
“Truth”	Truth
Advancement	Virtue
Flamboyant	Stolid
Cynical/Nihilistic	Earnest/Idealistic
Rhetorician/Artist	Logician/Philosopher
Paradox	Non-Contradiction
Emotion/Intuition?	Reason/Rationality