Chapter XXIV · GORGIAS. (continued 2)

Sokrates feels his own isolation from his countrymen. He is thrown upon individual speculation and dialectic.

The reasons which Sokrates gives here (as well as in the Apology, and partly also in the Republic) for not embarking in the competition of political aspirants, are of very general application. He is an innovator in religion; and a dissenter from the received ethics, politics, social sentiment, and estimate of life and conduct.119 Whoever dissents upon these matters from the governing force (in whatever hands that may happen to reside) has no chance of being listened to as a political counsellor, and may think himself fortunate if he escapes without personal hurt or loss. Whether his dissent be for the better or for the worse, is a matter of little moment: the ruling body always think it worse, and the consequences to the dissenter are the same.

Antithesis between philosophy and rhetoric.

Herein consists the real antithesis between Sokrates, Plato, and philosophy, on the one side — Perikles, Nikias, Kleon, Demosthenes, and rhetoric, on the other. “You,” (says Sokrates to Kalliklês),120 “are in love with the Athenian people, and take up or renounce such opinions as they approve or discountenance: I am in love with philosophy, and follow her guidance. You and other active politicians do not wish to have more than a smattering of philosophy; you are afraid of becoming unconsciously corrupted, if you carry it beyond such elementary stage.”121 Each of these orators, discussing political measures before the public assembly, appealed to general maxims borrowed from the received creed of morality, religion, taste, politics, &c. His success depended mainly on the emphasis which his eloquence could lend to such maxims, and on the skill with which he could apply them to the case in hand. But Sokrates could not follow such an example. Anxious in his research after truth, he applied the test of analysis to the prevalent opinions — found them, in his judgment, neither consistent nor rational — constrained many persons to feel this, by an humiliating cross-examination — but became disqualified from addressing, with any chance of assent, the assembled public.

Position of one who dissents, upon material points, from the fixed opinions and creed of his countrymen.

That in order to succeed politically, a man must be a genuine believer in the creed of King Nomos or the ruling force — cast in the same spiritual mould — (I here take the word creed not as confined to religion, but as embracing the whole of a man’s critical idéal, on moral or social practice, politics, or taste — the ends which he deems worthy of being aspired to, or proper to be shunned, by himself or others) is laid down by Sokrates as a general position: and with perfect truth. In disposing of the force or influence of government, whoever possesses that force will use it conformably to his own maxims. A man who dissents from these maxims will find no favour in the public assembly; nor, probably, if his dissent be grave and wide, will he ever be able to speak out his convictions aloud in it, without incurring dangerous antipathy. But what is to become of such a dissenter122 — the man who frequents the same porticos with the people, but does not hold the same creed, nor share their judgments respecting social expetenda and fugienda? How is he to be treated by the government, or by the orthodox majority of society in their individual capacity? Debarred, by the necessity of the case, from influence over the public councils — what latitude of pursuit, profession, or conduct, is to be left to him as a citizen? How far is he to question, or expose, or require to be proved, that which the majority believe without proof? Shall he be required to profess, or to obey, or to refrain from contradicting, religious or ethical doctrines which he has examined and rejected? Shall such requirement be enforced by threat of legal penalties, or of ill-treatment from individuals, which is not less intolerable than legal penalties? What is likely to be his character, if compelled to suppress all declaration of his own creed, and to act and speak as if he were believer in another?

Probable feelings of Plato on this subject. Claim put forward in the Gorgias of an independent locus standi for philosophy, but without the indiscriminate cross-examination pursued by Sokrates.

The questions here suggested must have impressed themselves forcibly on the mind of Plato when he recollected the fate of Sokrates. In spite of a blameless life, Sokrates had been judicially condemned and executed for publicly questioning received opinions, innovating upon the established religion, and instilling into young persons habits of doubt. To dissent only for the better, afforded no assurance of safety: and Plato knew well that his own dissent from the Athenian public was even wider and more systematic than that of his master. The position and plan of life for an active-minded reasoner, dissenting from the established opinions of the public, could not but be an object of interesting reflection to him.123 The Gorgias (written, in my judgment, long after the death of Sokrates, probably after the Platonic school was established) announces the vocation of the philosopher, and claims an open field for speculation, apart from the actualities of politics — for the self-acting reason of the individual doubter and investigator, against the authority of numbers and the pressure of inherited tradition. A formal assertion to this effect was worthy of the founder of the Academy — the earliest philosophical school at Athens. Yet we may observe that while the Platonic Sokrates in the Gorgias adopts the life of philosophy, he does not renew that farther demand with which the historical Sokrates had coupled it in his Apology — the liberty of oral and aggressive cross-examination, addressed to individuals personally and indiscriminately124 — to the primores populi as well as to the populum tributim. The fate of Sokrates rendered Plato more cautious, and induced him to utter his ethical interrogations and novelties of opinion in no other way except that of lectures to chosen hearers and written dialogue: borrowing the name of Sokrates or some other speaker, and refraining upon system (as his letters125 tell us that he did) from publishing any doctrines in his own name.

Importance of maintaining the utmost liberty of discussion. Tendency of all ruling orthodoxy towards intolerance.

As a man dissenting from received opinions, Sokrates had his path marked out in the field of philosophy or individual speculation. To such a mind as his, the fullest liberty ought to be left, of professing and defending his own opinions, as well as of combating other opinions, accredited or not, which he may consider false or uncertified.126 The public guidance of the state thus falls to one class of minds, the activity of speculative discussion to another; though accident may produce, here and there, a superior individual, comprehensive or dexterous enough to suffice for both. But the main desideratum is that this freedom of discussion should exist: that room shall be made, and encouragement held out, to the claims of individual reason, and to the full publication of all doubts or opinions, be they what they may: that the natural tendency of all ruling force, whether in few or in many hands, to perpetuate their own dogmas by proscribing or silencing all heretics and questioners, may be neutralised as far as possible. The great expansive vigour of the Greek mind — the sympathy felt among the best varieties of Greeks for intellectual superiority in all its forms — and the privilege of free speech (παῤῥησία), on which the democratical citizens of Athens prided themselves — did in fact neutralise very considerably these tendencies in Athens. A greater and more durable liberty of philosophising was procured for Athens, and through Athens for Greece generally, than had ever been known before in the history of mankind.

Issue between philosophy and rhetoric — not satisfactorily handled by Plato. Injustice done to rhetoric. Ignoble manner in which it is presented by Polus and Kalliklês.

This antithesis of the philosophical life to the rhetorical or political, constitutes one of the most interesting features of the Platonic Gorgias. But when we follow the pleadings upon which Plato rests this grand issue, and the line which he draws between the two functions, we find much that is unsatisfactory. Since Plato himself pleads both sides of the case, he is bound in fairness to set forth the case which he attacks (that of rhetoric), as it would be put by competent and honourable advocates — by Perikles, for example, or Demosthenes, or Isokrates, or Quintilian. He does this, to a certain extent, in the first part of the dialogue, carried on by Sokrates with Gorgias. But in the succeeding portions — carried on with Pôlus and Kalliklês, and occupying three-fourths of the whole — he alters the character of the defence, and merges it in ethical theories which Perikles, had he been the defender, would not only have put aside as misplaced, but disavowed as untrue. Perikles would have listened with mixed surprise and anger, if he had heard any one utter the monstrous assertion which Plato puts into the mouth of Polus — That rhetors, like despots, kill, impoverish, or expel any citizen at their pleasure. Though Perikles was the most powerful of all Athenian rhetors, yet he had to contend all his life against fierce opposition from others, and was even fined during his last years. He would hardly have understood how an Athenian citizen could have made any assertion so completely falsified by all the history of Athens, respecting the omnipotence of the rhetors. Again, if he had heard Kalliklês proclaiming that the strong giant had a natural right to satiate all his desires at the cost of the weaker Many — and that these latter sinned against Nature when they took precautions to prevent him — Perikles would have protested against the proclamation as emphatically as Plato.127

Perikles would have accepted the defence of rhetoric, as Plato has put it into the mouth of Gorgias.

If we suppose Perikles to have undertaken the defence of the rhetorical element at Athens, against the dialectic element represented by Sokrates, he would have accepted it, though not a position of his own choosing, on the footing on which Plato places it in the mouth of Gorgias: “Rhetoric is an engine of persuasion addressed to numerous assembled auditors: it ensures freedom to the city (through the free exercise of such a gift by many competing orators) and political ascendency or command to the ablest rhetor. It thus confers great power on him who possesses it in the highest measure: but he ought by no means to employ that power for unjust purposes.” It is very probable that Perikles might have recommended rhetorical study to Sokrates, as a means of defending himself against unjust accusations, and of acquiring a certain measure of influence on public affairs.128 But he would have distinguished carefully (as Horace does) between defending yourself against unjust attacks, and making unjust attacks upon others: though the same weapon may suit for both.

The Athenian people recognise a distinction between the pleasurable and the good: but not the same as that which Plato conceived.

Farther, neither Perikles, nor any defender of free speech, would assent to the definition of rhetoric — That it is a branch of the art of flattery, studying the immediately pleasurable, and disregarding the good.129 This indeed represents Plato’s own sentiment, and was true in the sense which the Platonic Sokrates assigns (in the Gorgias, though not in the Protagoras) to the words good and evil. But it is not true in the sense which the Athenian people and the Athenian public men assigned to those words. Both the one and the other used the words pleasurable and good as familiarly as Plato, and had sentiments corresponding to both of them. The pleasurable and painful referred to present and temporary causes: the Good and Evil to prospective causes and permanent situations, involving security against indefinite future suffering, combined with love of national dignity and repugnance to degradation, as well as with a strong sense of common interests and common obligations to each other. To provide satisfaction for these common patriotic feelings — to sustain the dignity of the city by effective and even imposing public establishments, against foreign enemies — to protect the individual rights of citizens by an equitable administration of justice — counted in the view of the Athenians as objects good and honourable: while the efforts and sacrifices necessary for these permanent ends, were, so far as they went, a renunciation of what they would call the pleasurable. When, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, the Athenians, acting on the advice of Perikles, allowed all Attica to be ravaged, and submitted to the distress of cooping the whole population within the long walls, rather than purchase peace by abnegating their Hellenic dignity, independence, and security — they not only renounced much that was pleasurable, but endured great immediate distress, for the sake of what they regarded as a permanent good.130 Eighty years afterwards, when Demosthenes pointed out to them the growing power and encroachments of the Macedonian Philip, and exhorted them to the efforts requisite for keeping back that formidable enemy, while there was yet time — they could not be wound up to the pitch requisite for affronting so serious an amount of danger and suffering. They had lost that sense of Hellenic dignity, and that association of self-respect with active personal soldiership and sailorship, which rendered submission to an enemy the most intolerable of all pains, at the time when Perikles had addressed them. They shut their eyes to an impending danger, which ultimately proved their ruin. On both these occasions, we have the pleasurable and the good brought into contrast in the Athenian mind; in both we have the two most eminent orators of Grecian antiquity enforcing the good in opposition to the pleasurable: the first successfully, the last vainly, in opposition to other orators.

Rhetoric was employed at Athens in appealing to all the various established sentiments and opinions. Erroneous inferences raised by the Kalliklês of Plato.

Lastly, it is not merely the political power of the Athenians that Perikles employs his eloquence to uphold. He dwells also with emphasis on the elegance of taste, on the intellectual force and activity, which warranted him in decorating the city with the title of Preceptress of Hellas.131 All this belongs, not to the pleasurable as distinguished from the good, but to good (whether immediately pleasurable or not) in its most comprehensive sense, embracing the improvement and refinement of the collective mind. If Perikles, in this remarkable funeral harangue, flattered the sentiments of the people — as he doubtless did — he flattered them by kindling their aspirations towards good. And Plato himself does the same (though less nobly and powerfully), adopting the received framework of Athenian sentiment, in his dialogue called Menexenus, which we shall come to in a future chapter.

The Platonic Idéal exacts, as good, some order, system, discipline. But order may be directed to bad ends as well as to good. Divergent ideas about virtue.

The issue, therefore, which Plato here takes against Rhetoric, must stand or fall with the Platonic Idéal of Good and Evil. But when he thus denounces both the general public and the most patriotic rhetors, to ensure exclusive worship for his own Idéal of Good — we may at least require that he shall explain, wherein consists that Good — by what mark it is distinguishable — and on what authority pre-eminence is claimed for it. So far, indeed, we advance by the help of Plato’s similes132 — order, discipline, health and strength of body — that we are called upon to recognise, apart from all particular moments of enjoyment or suffering, of action or quiescence, a certain permanent mental condition and habit — a certain order, regulation, discipline — as an object of high importance to be attained. This (as I have before remarked) is a valuable idea which pervades, in one form or another, all the Hellenic social views, from Sokrates downward, and even before Sokrates; an idea, moreover, which was common to Peripatetics, Stoics, Epikureans. But mental order and discipline is not in itself an end: it may be differently cast, and may subserve many different purposes. The Pythagorean brotherhood was intensely restrictive in its canons. The Spartan system exhibited the strictest order and discipline — an assemblage of principles and habits predetermined by authority and enforced upon all — yet neither Plato nor Aristotle approve of its results. Order and discipline attained full perfection in the armies of Julius Caesar and the French Emperor Napoleon; in the middle ages, also, several of the monastic orders stood high in respect to finished discipline pervading the whole character: and the Jesuits stood higher than any. Each of these systems has included terms equivalent to justice, temperance, virtue, vice, &c., with sentiments associated therewith, yet very different from what Plato would have approved. The question — What is Virtue? — Vir bonus est quis? — will be answered differently in each. The Spartans — when they entrapped (by a delusive pretence of liberation and military decoration) two thousand of their bravest Helot warriors, and took them off by private assassinations,133 — did not offend against their own idea of virtue, or against the Platonic exigency of Order — Measure — System.

How to discriminate the right order from the wrong. Plato does not advise us.

It is therefore altogether unsatisfactory, when Plato — professing to teach us how to determine scientifically, which pleasures are bad, and which pains are good — refers to a durable mental order and discipline. Of such order there existed historically many varieties; and many more are conceivable, as Plato himself has shown in the Republic and Leges. By what tests is the right order to be distinguished from the wrong? If by its results, by what results? — calculations for minimising pains, and maximising pleasures, being excluded by the supposition? Here the Sokrates of the Gorgias is at fault. He has not told us by what scientific test the intelligent Expert proceeds in determining what pleasures are bad, and what pains are good. He leaves such determination to the unscientific sentiment of each society and each individual. He has not, in fact, responded to the clear and pertinent challenge thrown out by the Sokrates of the Protagoras.

The Gorgias upholds the independence and dignity of the dissenting philosopher.

I think, for these reasons, that the logic of the Gorgias is not at all on a par with its eloquence. But there is one peculiar feature which distinguishes it among all the Platonic dialogues. Nowhere in ancient literature is the title, position, and dignity of individual dissenting opinion, ethical and political — against established ethical and political orthodoxy — so clearly marked out and so boldly asserted. “The Athenians will judge as they think right: none but those speakers who are in harmony with them, have any chance of addressing their public assemblies with effect, and acquiring political influence. I, Sokrates, dissent from them, and have no chance of political influence: but I claim the right of following out, proclaiming, and defending, the conclusions of my own individual reason, until debate satisfies me that I am wrong.”