Two Types of Power in Plato's "Gorgias"

Author(s): James C. Haden

Source: The Classical Journal, Vol. 87, No. 4 (Apr. - May, 1992), pp. 313-326
Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and South
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TWO TYPES OF POWER IN PLATO'S GORGIAS
According
to its traditional
subtitle,
the
Gorgias
is about rhet-
oric. E. R.
Dodds, however,
sees its central theme as "the moral basis
of
politics,"
and holds that the discussion of rhetoric is entwined with
questions
of eudaimonia.1 Paul Friedlander
virtually
dismisses rheto-
ric,
and believes that there are two levels to the discussion-that of
moral
principles
and that of different
ways
of
life;2
in a rather
cryptic
aside he remarks that war and battle is also a theme. I
propose
that the central
theme,
linking
all the
others,
is that of
power.
Since
"power"
and
cognate
words such as
"strength"
and
"force" stud the
dialogue,
this is
hardly
a
discovery.
But there are two
specific
and
contrasting types
of
power
which need to be illumi-
nated and
distinguished
to
grasp
the
dialogue fully.
Since this is a matter of
interpretation,
the first
step
has to be
to make
explicit
what hermeneutical
principles
are to be used. The
basic one is the
assumption
that Plato
actually
wrote as the artist
he is so often claimed to be. It follows that we are entitled to take
cues from
techniques
more often found in
literary
criticism than in
philosophical analysis.
If we assume that
Plato,
like
any superb
writer,
took
great pains
with what he included in the
dialogue
and with the
precise way
he
expressed
himself,
it seems reasonable that to understand
exactly
what he was
trying
to
say
we
absolutely
must
give
our maximum
attention to
every
detail of a
dialogue
in the
hope
of
insight.
We
cannot afford to
push
aside
anything
on the
grounds
that it is
merely
"literary"-i.e.
ornamental-and not
"philosophical."
That is a mod-
ern
distinction,
stemming
from a
post-Platonic
view of what
philosophy
is;
for Plato there is no chasm between the two.3 The
IPlato,
Gorgias:
A Revised Text With
Commentary
(Oxford 1959)
1-2.
2
Plato 2: The Dialogues. First Period. Trans. Hans
Meyerhoff
(London
1964)
266.
3 It
is true that in the
Republic
Plato
suggests banishing
most
poetry
from
the
polis,
but at the same time he uses
techniques
like the
myth
of Er and the
parable
of the Cave for
philosophical purposes.
Above
all,
he chose to couch
his ideas in the dramatic form of
dialogues.
The Classical
Journal
87.4
(1992)
313-326
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314
JAMES
C. HADEN
spirit
of the
inquiry
here, then,
is well
put by
Ann
Lebeck,
when
she
says, speaking
of the
Oresteia:
Close
analysis
of
language
and
imagery
combined with
analysis
of the ideas involved
yields
the most far-
reaching interpretation.
Such an
interpretation goes
be-
yond
what is stated
directly
and elicits
meaning
from
every
mode of
expression employed by
the
poet.4
Therefore,
taking
Plato as
artist-philosopher
with the utmost
seriousness,
I assume that it was
entirely
natural for him as a
master writer to
convey meaning by literary images,
whether con-
sciously
or
unconsciously.
This is a more controversial
working
as-
sumption,
and even less
customary among philosophers
than the
assumption
of the total
significance
of the
dialogues, though
discussion of
imagery
is taken for
granted
in critical examination
of,
say,
the
tragic
dramatists of the fifth
century,
as the reference to
Lebeck makes
plain.
So it is worthwhile
spelling
out in more detail
what is meant.5
First,
it is
important
to see that an
image
in this sense differs from
the
et&0)ov
which Plato condemned as the shadow of a shadow-the
lowest
segment
of the Divided Line. Here
"image"
stands for a
specific
and concrete but still
partially generalized
idea,
some-
thing
between the data of
perception
and
concepts
of abstraction.
Thanks to its concreteness it can be named and
described,
and
hence the
language
of a text can
express
it
directly
and indi-
rectly
with a vast
range
of shades. A
poetic passage
can abound in
4
The
Oresteia:
A
Study
in
Language
and Structure
(Washington,
D.C.
1971)
1.
5 "Image"
is a term often used
fairly loosely.
G. E. R.
Lloyd,
in a book
containing many interesting
and useful
things (Polarity
and
Analogy:
Two
Types
of Argumentation
in
Early
Greek
Thought [Cambridge
19661),
employs
it con-
stantly
but never clarifies what
precisely
he means
by
it,
sometimes
connecting
it with
analogy,
sometimes with
metaphor.
His
approach
is
primarily logical,
and hence he seems to use the term
broadly
for
any
sort of
concrete
pictorial thought. Sleep,
for
example,
can be
personified
as the "all-
tamer,"
or described as
"poured
over" or
"wrapped
round" someone
(202).
He does
grant
that concrete
images
can and do
express thought
(211),
and in
early
Greek
thinking
were a
way
of
apprehending phenomena
(207).
Not until
Plato is a conscious distinction drawn between
images
and demonstration
(229-300).
Possession of the distinction does not
imply
that both
ways
of
showing
cannot be
used,
of course.
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TWO TYPES OF POWER IN PLATO'S GORGIAS 315
words
suggesting
an
image,
and can thus
convey
a context for the
overt details of the
poem,
as there are references to nets and snares in
Aeschylus's Agamemnon
which
quietly
reinforce the audience's
grasp
of the
plays
action.
Second,
the
explicit concept
of a
literary image
as an artistic
device
belongs,
of
course,
to modern
literary
criticism;
we cannot
know whether or not Plato used it
consciously, although
he
may
have. But its
poetic
use as distinct from its critical function
need not be
explicitly
conscious,
since it is a
technique
which
arises
spontaneously
in a host of
specific
forms such as
simile,
metaphor,
and
trope, part
and
parcel
of the whole
symbolic capacity
of
language.
Lebeck
points
out that in the Oresteia the
images,
such as nets
and
snares,
recur in such a
way
that "each recurrence adds a new
element to those with which it is associated. Often this
expansion
will blend two
images previously separate...." Images
are introduced
proleptically,
where the "word
'prolepsis' ...
denotes a brief initial statement of several
major
themes en bloc....
Significance
increases with
repetition:
the
image gains
in
clarity
as the
action moves to a
climax."6
The
interpreter
must view these recurrent
images
both in their immediate context
and,
more
importantly,
as
bearers of
meaning
which
only emerges
as
they develop through-
out the work.7 This is not a mechanical
process,
but one
subject
to
the hermeneutic circle from whole to
part
and back
again.
When
related to each other and to ideas which
they
illustrate or the
dramatic action which translates them into visual
terms,
the
images
cease to be discrete and
arbitrary pictures
and
emerge
as
important
components
of the
play's significance."8
The more concentrated his or her
poetic expression,
the more
naturally
an author seems to use the
symbolic
resources of
language.
The Greek
lyric poets
use them more than the
epic poets, Aeschylus
more than
Euripides.
In Plato's
case,
the
brevity
of the
early,
Socratic
dialogues
demands use of
imagery,
which is
mainly
abandoned after
6
Lebeck (note 4
above)
1-2.
7 In
The Art and
Thought of
Heraclitus
(Cambridge
1979),
Charles H. Kahn
proceeds similarly
in his
interpretation
of the
fragments, using
the term
"resonance" to
designate something adapted
from Lebeck's
"prolep-
sis,"
since the
original
order of the
fragments
is
unknown,
unlike a
play by Aeschylus
or a
dialogue by
Plato. "On
Reading
Heraclitus"
(87-95),
his discussion of his hermeneutical
principles,
is well worth
consulting.
8
Lebeck (note 4
above)
3.
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316
JAMES
C. HADEN
the middle
period.
The
special point regarding
the
dialogues
which sets them
apart
from
lyric
and
tragic poetry
is that a
deliberately conceptual
dimension
emerges
from the dramatic,
liter-
ary
foundation,
so that the
images conveyed by
the combination
of
concrete detail of
situation, action, character,
and
language
lead the
reader (or
the hearer in ancient Greece)
on to an
explicitly conceptual
level. The aim is the Socratic one of
reaching
clear consciousness
regarding
the crucial
matters,
but Plato is
using
the written word
and indirect contact with his audience instead of Socrates's
face-to-face
style,
which could take
advantage
of the
many
non-
verbal clues one has in conversation as to the
respondent's grasp
of
what one wants to communicate. Hence Plato must
employ
more
tools than the
purely analytical
and
logical
ones of Socratic discourse.
It is this
conceptual
level which is now
normally thought
of as
the
philosophy
in the
dialogues,
and we are
likely
to
depreciate
the role of the
"literary"
level so as to concentrate on the
concepts.9
But the
literary images
in the
dialogues
are
quasi-
conceptual, carrying
a
freight
of
meaning along
with
their
power
to move the audience
emotionally,
a fact which
en-
ables the
literary
critic to find a moral content in a fictional
text,
whether
consciously put
there
by
the author or not. In Plato's case
we do know that the
purpose
of the
dialogues
was a
profoundly
moral
one,
of course.
Being
abstract and
by
the
very
nature of the
dialogue
form not
flatly
stated,
the
conceptual
level
may
be elusive and hard to be
clear about.
If, however,
we
ground
an
interpretation
in the concrete
details of the
text,
which become
guides
to the mid-level
of
images,
and use the
images
to reach the
conceptual
abstractions,
we
can reduce the likelihood of
going astray
at the
philosophical
level.
The test of these
interpretive hypotheses, naturally,
is their
application:
do
they provide
a fuller and clearer view of the
dialogue?
In the
Gorgias,
as in
many
of the
early
and middle
dialogues
if not
all,
the
very
first words
suggest
image
and
theme to
us,
casual as the
opening passage may appear.
Here
9 To
quote
Lebeck
again,
"Plato
employs
two modes of discourse: the
dialectic and the
mythopoeic
or
imagistic.
His
philosophy'
as
emergent
from most of the
dialogues comprises
an interaction of the
two." Here she is
applying
her
technique
to the
Phaedrus,
in "The Central
Myth
of Plato's Phaedrus,"
GRBS 13
(1972) 267,
in a fashion which has
many similarities to what I am
working
out here.
Lebeck has seen this also. On the
Phaedrus
she remarks that "the
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TWO TYPES OF POWER IN PLATO'S GORGIAS 317
Socrates is accosted
by
Callicles,
who
speaks
in the words of what
must have been a familiar
proverb
to a
Greek,
to the effect that
one should arrive
early
at a feast and late at a
fight.
In this case
Socrates has come too late for a feast
(ioprzl)
of rhetoric
just
concluded
by Gorgias,
Callicles
says.
(As
we discover
later,
he has
arrived before a
struggle,
one with Callicles
himself,
who is ad-
dressing
him in such a
friendly
fashion
now.)
Friedlander
points
to the
fight portion
of the
saying,
but
ignores
the other half: in
fact,
both
parts begin
the
process
of
unfolding important images
for
us,
and the "feast" reference is at least as
significant
as the
"fight."
Dodds,
in his comments on this
passage,
discusses the
seeming
superfluity
of
ioprti~
at 447A5. He notes that some editors have
deleted "such
'superfluous'
words,"
and remarks that
they
all "could
be
glosses,
but in most cases there is no
proof
whatever that
they
are,
unless we assume that Plato was
incapable
of
using
an
unnecessary
word."" The
approach
I am
proposing
here does indeed assume
just
that,
since a
major
artist in
any
medium avoids
superfluity
and
includes
only
what contributes to the whole work. Hence the
word is not superfluous but functional and used by choice.12 It
emphasizes by repetition
the first
suggestion
of an
image, namely
eating
or
ingesting,
which will
prove
to be the
image
of one kind of
power,
the reference to
fighting being
an
image
for the other kind.
At this
very early point
what is
being
said is
naturally
taken
merely
at face
value,
as
inconsequential pleasantry,
but it is in
fact
proleptic,
in Lebeck's useful
term,
and leaves a trace which
will be broadened and
deepened
as we advance.
As the
dialogue
continues the
image
of
eating
is
suggested again
and
again,
and
developed
in various
ways.
The second occurrence is in
the discussion with Polus at
462-63,
where Socrates sets
up
his
elaborate
proportion
in which
gymnastic
is to cosmetics as medi-
cine is to
cookery,
and
legislation
is to
sophistic
as
justice
is to
rhetoric. In the remainder of the
dialogue
Plato is
mainly
in-
terested in
only
half of this
proportion,
the one in which
justice
prologue
and
following
conversations between Socrates and
Phaedrus
... set
in motion
major
themes of the
dialogue
here enacted on the level of
banter and small talk"
(ibid. 283),
but she reads backwards to
point
to the
adumbrations and does not use them to
help
understand later
passages.
11"Dodds
(note
1
above)
189.
12
We
cannot
ignore
the
possibility
of additions
by
other
hands,
but that
should be the last resort in
interpretation.
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318
JAMES
C. HADEN
:
rhetoric
:
medicine:
cookery.
We hear no more of
cosmetics,
but a
great
deal about
eating
and
cooking.13
The
eating image
is
picked up again
in Socrates's
colloquy
with
Callicles,
where the life of
pleasure
advocated
by
the latter is said to
consist of
maximum,
perpetual
intake,
for which
eating
and
drinking
are the
image
(494-96).
At 494B the Calliclean ideal is said to be
the life of a stone
curlew,
popularly
believed to be
constantly
ingesting
and
excreting.
And at 495D there is a little
exchange,
in
which Callicles and Socrates address each other
formally, naming
the other's deme. Deme names were
regularly punned
on in Old
Comedy,
and commentators have noticed that Socrates's
deme,
Alopek&,
can be read as a
pun
on
"fox,""14
but
they
have not seen that
Callicles's
deme, Acharnai,
is also a
pun.
In his
History of
Animals
Aristotle
says
that there is a voracious
fish,
the
&xd&pvaq,
which
has the
unpleasant
habit of
biting
off the
posterior
half of the
grey
mullet as the latter swims in
schools.'5
Simply by
itself this
might
be
merely
coincidental,
but
given
the
way
in which the
eating
image (especially prominent just
here)
runs
through
the whole dia-
logue,
the
pun
seems intended and
significant.'
The
only
other
interpretation
of this
passage
that has been
proposed
is that the
two are
parodying legal writs,17
but even if we
accept
that,
it is
entirely compatible
with the
punning;
a
literary passage may
do
two
things
at once.
13
E.g.,
491A,
500B &
E,
518B for
cooking.
14 Fox = O&cXnti. For deme names in
comedy,
see David
Whitehead,
The
Demes
of
Attica
508/7-ca.
250 B.C.: A Political and Social
Study
(Princeton 1986)
328-38. In Greek folklore the fox was
proverbial
for
cunning
and shiftiness.
There is also the
very
old
saying, perhaps going
back to the
pseudo-
Homeric
Margites
and used
by
Archilochus in a famous
fragment,
about
the fox
knowing many
small
things
and the
hedgehog
one
large thing
(see
J.
M.
Edmonds,
Elegy
and Iambus Vol. 2
[London
1931], p.
174,
fr.
118).
At
Republic
365C
Plato,
in
speaking
of virtue which is
only
a
facade,
approvingly quotes
a few words from Archilochus on the fox's
deceptive-
ness. Aristotle mentions at Hist. An. 607a3 a breed of Laconian
hunting dog,
the
&Xwnsei,
which was
thought
to be a cross between
dog
and
fox;
later
in the
dialogue
(515E)
Callicles hints at Socrates's
Spartan sympathies.
15
Hist. An. 610b11-19.
The modern name of the
&~adpva;
has not been
determined.
Perhaps
the
pairing
of
&X&pvac
and
&wisic;
is another
parallel
to the
feast-fight
contrast.
16 Indeed,
the form in which Callicles's deme
appears, 'AXapvei;,
sounds
very
like an alternative form of
a&Xpva;,
namely
&Xapvc6;.
17 Dodds
(note
1
above)
308.
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TWO TYPES OF POWER IN PLATO'S GORGIAS 319
This
image
of
eating,
then,
gives
us the clue to the first kind of
power
in the
dialogue. Ingestion
or
engulfing,
in which the eater
negates
the
independent
selfhood of the
other,
is a
metaphor
or
image
for the
power
of the
sophist.
This
may
look farfetched at first
sight,
but let us
pause briefly
to view the
general problem
of
interper-
sonal contacts.
When two individuals
meet,
especially
for the first
time,
there is
always
a
question
as to
just
what the relation between the two will
be,
even
though
the
uncertainty may
lie below the threshold of
ordinary
consciousness. Underneath their overt words and
gestures
two
per-
sons
touch,
so to
speak,
in a
way
that is
usually
indeterminate at
first,
needing
to be resolved. This is
obviously
a delicate
matter,
requiring
not a little self-awareness to detect
fully.
Since social
forms and habitual behavior
patterns
often mask what is
happen-
ing, normally
we are
likely
to notice it
only
in certain
striking
instances.
Easy
as it is to dismiss on
positivistic grounds
this almost
ectoplasmic
shock of self on
self,
in the case which interests us
here,
that of the
Greeks,
there can be no
dispute
about the
reality
in
ancient Greece of what has been called the "contest
system,"
in
which
everyone competes against everyone
else for
public pres-
tige.'8
The contests are zero-sum
"games":
i.e.,
someone must lose
when someone else wins.
Winning
occurs when either
by
use or
by
threat of force
something
valuable
(life,
goods,
land,
and so
on)
is
taken from the other
person;
or,
more
peaceably, by publicly
competing
with others in a formal situation where there are
judges
who award the
prizes.
We can add to this the
taking
of
something through
stealth and
craft,
as Hermes stole the cattle of the
Sun. The most
important prize
is
esteem,
whatever else
may
be
included;
a wreath of wild
olive,
wild
celery
or laurel has little
intrinsic value.
At the encounter of two individuals each must resolve the
question
of his or her status relative to the other. The status
may
be
decided
by
a contest between them for one to dominate the
other,
but there are other
possible
resolutions. The
meeting
can be
aborted,
either
by
one
refusing
the encounter
through timidity
or
by
one
simply ignoring
the other
through
indifference or disdain. The
contact
may
then be broken off
entirely
or be artificial and lifeless.
18 See Alvin W. Gouldner, The Hellenic
World,
A
Sociological Analysis,
Part
I of Enter Plato: Classical Greece and the
Origins of
Social
Theory
(New
York &
Evanston
1969),
Chapter
2: "The Greek Contest
System:
Patterns of Culture."
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320
JAMES
C. HADEN
In a third
resolution,
also
non-competitive,
the
persons may
re-
cognize
and value each other as
equals.
We
may suppose
this to
be the common
case,
but in
practice
it is rarer than either of the
first
two,
however admirable it
may
seem. In a variant of this third
resolution,
one
person may
sense that he or she is
stronger
than the
other,
but want to use his or her
strength
to enhance the
strength
of the
other,
moving
toward
equality.
The
question appropriate
to the
dialogue
is,
how to see an en-
counter between a
sophist
or an adherent of
sophistic persuasion
and
another
person.
The
position
of the historical
Gorgias appears
to have
been that the
psyche
is
integral
with the
body,
and that
logoi,
words,
act on the
psyche
in a
quasi-physical
manner
parallel
to the
action of
drugs
on the
body. According
to
Gorgias,
the
power
of
logos
is to
manipulate
and mold the
psyche
"as it wishes."19
Further,
logos
is not
subject
to
objective reality,
but is itself an
independent agent;
speech being
a human convention which we cannot
transcend,
together
with its relations to
psyche
it
effectively
defines
reality
for us. The closest we come to truth is
86?a, opinion,
and
persuasion
operates through
a kind of
deception,
&~Airl,
hardly
a view
acceptable
to Plato.
If we look at
irrational,
emotional
persuasion,
it does seem to be
most like the first form of
encounter,
domination of one
by
the
other. Its character is in fact easier to
present
in an
image
than
analytically
in words. The aim of the
persuader
is to assimilate
the other to himself or
herself,
to make the other like himself or
herself or conform to his or her
wish,
and in
doing
so to override the
difference and
independence
of the other. Even if the
persuader
does
not himself or herself in fact subscribe to what he wants the other to
accept,
as in the case
Gorgias
mentions
(465B)
of a
sophist's ability
to
persuade
a sick man to submit to
unpleasant
treatment
by
a
physician,
in order to be effective the
persuader
must
appear
to the
other to accept it himself or herself.20 The appearance of sincerity is
crucial to the
actor,
the
politician,
the seducer. Genuine
sincerity,
in
fact,
is even more
powerfully convincing,
in
proportion
to the
intensity
of the conviction.21
19
The most relevant texts here are
Gorgias's
Helen and
Palamedes,
especially
Helen 10-14. See Charles P.
Segal, "Gorgias
and the
Psychology
of
the
Logos,"
HSCP 66
(1962) 99-155,
for a detailed
study
of the matter.
20
We might think of the homely picture of a parent trying to get a
recalcitrant child to take a medicine or to eat a disliked food
by going
through
the motions of
enjoyment.
21
Gregory
Vlastos
says, apropos
of
Protagoras:
"A man who bases his
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TWO TYPES OF POWER IN PLATO'S GORGIAS 321
In the case of someone who does
sincerely accept
what he or she
wants to
persuade
the other
of,
but whose
acceptance
is
only
emotional and who has
only
emotional
ways
of
persuading
the
other,
any
resistance of the other to
persuasion
is
irritating.
The
persuader
is not interested in reasons for
resistance;
his or her
urge
is to eliminate the irritant from his or her consciousness.
Making
the other like or subservient to himself or herself will
achieve
that,
and Socrates
points
out to Callicles how the
tyrant
generates
his own likeness in those close to him
(510B-E; cf.
513B-C).
If,
of
course,
the other
stubbornly persists
in his or her
oppo-
sition,
the
urge
can
bring
different solutions to the
problem.
The irritation can be
disposed
of
by breaking
off contact
with the
other,
or in the extreme case
by eliminating
the other
altogether.
Polus talks
good
deal about the
desirability
of
being
able to kill whomever one
will,
in one breath with the de-
sirability
of
despoiling
others of their
goods
(466D, 468E, 471).
Although
Polus seems to derive his
enjoyment simply
from
contemplating
such
bloodthirsty
notions, Callicles,
as the man of
action,
is the sort of
person
who would be
willing
to do more than
imagine,
and it is that third section of the
dialogue
where the
image
of
ingestion
is most
elaborately developed
and attached to
Socrates's
respondent.
Socrates,
we
note,
has
quietly challenged
Callicles
early
on to convince him and
bring
him to
agreement
(488A),
as he did earlier with Polus
(472B),
and until the end of
the dialo ue he remains
unpersuaded
and hence an irritant to
Callicles.
claim to wisdom on his mere
ability
to
impose
his
thoughts
on others is much
less
likely
to succeed in this
very object
than one who bases it on his
ability
to
change
their views in such a
way
that the result will be for their own
good-
their
good
as
judged by
themselves and
by
whatever norms are
accept-
able to themselves. A doctor who does not undertake to do his best to
make his
patients
feel
well,
and
says
his
job
is
just
to make their
feelings
agree
with
his,
is not
likely
to have
any patients."
(Introduction
to the
Protagoras [Indianapolis
1956] xxii).
But this fails to
analyze
the
sophistic
stance
deeply enough;
it cannot
distinguish
between a conscientious doctor
and a "Doctor
Feelgood,"
who
gratifies
his
patients by liberally dispensing
mood-altering drugs.
The root issue is one of
objective
welfare versus
subjective
welfare and the
propriety
of the
very
norms of the
patient,
in
Plato's view.
22
Another
way
to look at this kind of interaction is from a more
phenom-
enological psychological standpoint.
A version of this can be found in
my
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322
JAMES
C. HADEN
Eating
is the first
image
of
power
in the
dialogue.
But Plato's
purpose
seems to be not
only
to exhibit the nature of
sophistic
power
but to contrast it with a different
sort,
just
as there is both
false and true rhetoric
(503A). Indeed,
rhetoric and
power
are
not
only
twinned,
but one is a
reversed,
mirror
image
of the
other,
as
suggested
in the matched articulation of
flattery
and
tendance Socrates offers Polus at 464-65.
The
proleptic presentation
of beneficial
power
at the
outset,
where the second half of the
proverb speaks
of
fighting
as
op-
posed
to
feasting, provides
the clue to its nature. What we thus
expect
to find is a thread of reference to conflict and contention
running through
the entire text. In
fact,
overt references of that
kind are fewer than references to
ingestion,
but this is not
surprising
since the whole
dialogue presents
an
image
of
struggle
simply by showing
Socrates at
grips
with three different
oppo-
nents. In the
proverb, "fighting" suggests something
to be avoid-
ed,
yet
as with most of the
concepts
in the
dialogue
there is an
ambiguity
that needs to be resolved.
From the Socratic
point
of view what looks like
fighting
is not
necessarily
a bad
thing,
to be shunned. War is not the
only
kind of
contest,
nor need all contests be zero-sum. There is also the
example
of the athlete
striving against
a
respected opponent,
where one can lose with
honor,
or of the trainer
contesting
with
the athlete in order to
develop
the latter's
body
and skills.
The
key
text comes late in the
dialogue,
after what
began
as
Socrates's rather
friendly sparring
with
Gorgias
has escalated to the
intensity
of his
engagement
with Callicles. The theme of
therapeia
is
introduced
early,
when
Socrates,
in
setting up
the elaborate
proportionality
at
463,
contrasts it as tendance of the soul with
coxacei'a,
flattery
or
pandering,
and it is referred to often there-
after. At 521A Socrates calls his effort to care for the
Athenians,
his
therapeia,
a
struggling
with them,
8taaXoOeat-precisely
what we
have seen him
doing
with his fellow
citizen,
Callicles. This is not a
desire for domination or
elimination,
as is made
plain by
the relaxed
tone of his
exchange
with
Gorgias
himself;
in dialectical
engagement
with others Socrates has
carefully
disclaimed that he is
acting
from
<ptkovtida,
love of
victory
for its own sake.
(457D-E, 515B;
at 505E
<ptkovttda
is said to
apply only
to the
discovery
of the truth.)
article "Did Plato Refute
Protagoras?" History of Philosophy Quarterly
1.3
(1984)
225-40.
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TWO TYPES OF POWER IN PLATO'S GORGIAS 323
By looking
at
just
what
happens
in all three
parts
of the
dialogue
as marked off
by change
of
respondent,
we can see
Socrates's
constant
technique
and
aim,
as
adapted
to the
unique
character of each of his interlocutors. The thrust of his
question-
ing
is to find in the other some solid
point
of
value,
where the
other will take a stand. As Robert Cushman has
noted,
Socrates's
pur-
pose
in the
Gorgias
"was to arouse from slumber true
opinions
which
each[respondent]feigned
to disavow but
really
believed."23
In
terms of the
wrestling image,
his aim is to make his
respondent
find one firm
spot
on himself on which to maintain his balance
and to use as a fulcrum around which self-reconstruction can
begin.
In the case of
Gorgias,
this balance
point
is the admission of the
importance
of arete in those who
acquire
rhetorical
technique
from him
(459D-460A).
With
Polus,
it is the admission that
doing
wrong
is
uglier
than
suffering wrong
(474C).
Callicles is a
tough-
er
case,
and Socrates must
probe very deeply, going
so far as to
hold
up
before him the
spectacle
of a catamite's
enjoyment
of
pleasure
before he will admit that some
pleasures
are
squalid
(494E).
But in each instance the
message
is that here is a value
which the
respondent accepts
and that to abandon it is to lose
one's
footing
and one's
bearings
in life.
Consistency
within
oneself is vital
(482C),
but
consistency
obtained
by renouncing
all
values other than
pleasure
or
power
leads
only
to a
pleonectic
Barmecide feast.
With each
respondent,
also,
a vision of others is involved.
Gorgias
must be concerned with virtue in his
students,
Polus must
recognize
that the
ugliness
of
wrongdoing
announces
something
about the
wrongdoer,
and Callicles must see that one
engulfed by
loathsome
pleasures
is one who has abandoned
any
claim to
respect.
And at the same
time,
each must see himself in the mirror of the
other:
Polus,
for
instance,
must realize that
by
his own admitted
principle
if he does
wrong
he himself is
ugly
to behold.
It is
easy
to confuse Socratic
therapeia through
dialectical
inquiry
with
sophistic persuasion.
The effect of
logic
and rational
analysis
on those more accustomed to emotional
governance
of
their minds can feel like a sort of domination and loss of
self,
especially
when the
logic
leads to uncomfortable conclusions. It is
easy enough
to observe this reaction
today;
in Plato's time
logic
was
embedded in
thought
and
discourse,
more felt than
seen,
so
Socrates's cheerful
willingness
to "follow the
argument
where it
23
Therapeia: Plato's
Conception of Philosophy (Chapel
Hill
1958)
308.
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324
JAMES
C. HADEN
leads" was a
strange
and unfamiliar stance. For
others,
the
power
of reason would seem a
threatening,
alien
force,
not
readily
distinguishable
from
sophistic engulfment.
Callicles illustrates this in his
responses
to
Socrates's
argu-
ments. At one
point
(505 ff.)
he
just
withdraws from the dialectic to
escape
it,
and
eventually
remarks
(513)
that
although
he
obscurely
feels that what Socrates has said is
right,
still he cannot
bring
himself to believe
it,
that
is,
to
identify
himself with it. For the
self-centeredness which craves
sophistic power, reasoning
is
merely
a tool like
any
other,
as the real-life
Gorgias
viewed
words as
entirely comparable
to
drugs.
The
sophistic personality
dislikes and distrusts
submitting
to the
impersonal power
of
reason,
which is
controlling
and not
controlled,
out of fear of loss of
individuality.
But the central
point
is
exactly
the
question
of the individual
person.
Here
again
Gouldner's
analysis
can
help
us. Various
people
have
pointed
out that the time of Socrates is the time when
a new and more individualistic sense of self is
coming
into
being
in
Greece,
fostered
by
the dissolution of time-hallowed social
pat-
terns. As Gouldner
says,
this new sense of self has two main factors:
first,
a
feeling
of
potency,
and
second,
a
grasp
of
personal
individ-
uality
and
identity.
In archaic
culture,
derived from tribal soci-
ety,
the
person
was to a
very large
extent a function of the
group
or
groups
he or she
belonged
to
by
birth. Even the hero of
legend
obtained his
qualities by
descent from a
god
or
demi-god
and from
membership
in a natural elite.
When this
enveloping
structure
crumbles,
the sense of secu-
rity
and
potency
it
gave
to individuals vanishes.
Yet,
as Gouldner
points
out,
One of the most
important
elements in the Greek con-
ception
of self is a sense of its individual
power,
the
feeling
that it is
able,
or
ought
to be
able,
to
influence or control
things
in a
sphere
around it. To a
great
extent the Greek
image
of the
person,
or what
one needs to be and to have in order to be a
person,
centers on the
possession
of
power,
on the
imputed
ability
to make decisions
governing
one's
own actions and
to live under no one else's constraint.24
24
Goulder (note
18
above)
101-102.
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TWO TYPES OF POWER IN PLATO'S GORGIAS 325
This sense of
power
is
especially
crucial in a
highly competitive
society
where one's
self-image
must
continually
be validated.
Further,
the contest
system sharpens
the sense of the bound-
aries of one's self
through
resistance to others' demands or
by
imposing
one's will on others.25 But there is another
path
to self-
definition,
and that is to see oneself from outside. To do this one
needs to
put
oneself in a
variety
of
roles,
including
the role of one's
opponents.
"Once the self can
adopt
the
standpoint
of
widely
different others toward
itself,
the more individual the
person
comes to feel: for each of the others sees him in somewhat different
ways."26
Dialectical reason acts
by stimulating
the
respondent
to
reorganize
his or her
personal
chaos of
concepts
and values
so as to enhance himself or herself as an individual. That
is,
individ-
uality
arises when the
components
of a self are knit
coherently
together,
and its boundaries are drawn more
definitely
and con-
sciously.
And this is
power,
in the Socratic sense. In
trying
to
formulate a Platonic definition of
power, taking
into account the
whole of the Platonic
corpus, Rupert Lodge
arrives at the state-
ment that
power
is "the creation of value
by
the least
possible
reorganization
of what otherwise remains chaotic."27 The self
which is coherent and
clearly
defined is
effective,
in the Greek
sense of arete (cf. 503E-506E).
If one submits to the rule of
reason,28
it not
only provides
the
tool and standard of
self-criticism,
but also
changes
one's
view of a relation to another
person.
When
nothing
stands above
the
self,
then selves are
inevitably
in
competition,
but under the
impersonal
standard of
reason,
which humbles the
self,
the other
takes on worth and interest and becomes someone to understand
and to
value,
rather than to dominate or eliminate. The
right
25
Ibid. 106.
26
Ibid. 115. Gouldner discusses the
important
social role of drama in
ancient Greece in this
connection;
the
dialogues
are,
of
course,
dramas. It is
worth
noting
that
Socrates,
when Callicles withdraws from the discussion in
a sulk takes on his role also
(505D ff.).
2FRupert
C.
Lodge,
Plato's
Theory of
Ethics: The Moral Criterion and the
Highest
Good
(London 1928)
380. The whole of
Chapter
14 is devoted to the
problem
of
power.
28
I
do not intend to
identify
reason,
in the classical and
especially
the
Platonic
sense,
with
logic
as such. A
logical
strand can be abstracted from
it,
but a
Plato-primarily-as-logician
is a
gross
distortion of Plato-as-artist-
philosopher.
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326
JAMES
C. HADEN
course of action becomes that of
preserving
or,
even
better,
enhancing
the other's
personhood-which
is
precisely
the Socratic
mission of
improving
his fellow citizens. The
object
of Socrates's
dialectic in his function as the true
practitioner
of the
political
art
and citizen of the
polis
(521D)
was to stimulate his
respondents
to
become
thinking
and
acting
citizens,
gaining individuality
and inde-
pendence
under the
guidance
of
reason,
not to make them imita-
tions of himself.
Early
in the
Gorgias Chaerephon attempts
to
play
the role of
Socrates,
and shows that he lacks Socrates's
power
in
discussion;
imitation is an insubstantial
shadow,
and the true aim
should be to act from oneself.29
The
purpose
of Socrates's rational
power,
then,
only
looks
super-
ficially
like
battering
down the
independence
of others or
making
them resemble himself. In
aiding
them to become the kind of
deeply
rational
person
that he
represents,
he is in fact
freeing
them to be
independent
of and therefore to be other than himself.
Rationality
as
authentic in the sense
employed by
various existentialists-"the neces-
sity
for each of us to realize his own
uniqueness""3--is
fundamentally
different from reason as a tool of emotion or as imitative or
superficial.
It is
by surrendering
oneself to the
lucidity
of
reason,
which Callicles is
unwilling
to
do,
that one makes oneself authen-
tically
rational, i.e.,
an
agent
who identifies with reason and acts
from it. That is Socratic
power.
t
JAMES
C. HADEN
The American
School
of
Classical
Studies,
Athens
29
In becoming an individual one does not become "like" another individ-
ual;
individuality,
like
existence,
is not a
general quality.
30 Mary
Warnock,
Existentialism
(Oxford 1970)
55-56. She
puts
the matter
clearly
when she
says:
"Authentic existence can
begin only
when we have
realized and
thoroughly
understood what we are. Once we have
grasped
that
human
reality
is characterized
by
the fact that each human
being
is
uniquely
himself and no one
else,
and that each of us has his own
possibilities
to
fulfill,
then our concern with the world ... can become authentic
concern,
to fulfill our
real
potentiality
in the world"
(55;
emphasis
in the
original).
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