Plato’s Ambivalence About Rhetoric in the Gorgias

Abstract

The main thesis of the present paper is that Plato’s attitude towards rhetoric appears to have been complex to the point of ambivalent, for as one reads the Gorgias, one cannot avoid getting the impression that in spite of his overt castigation of rhetoric, the philosopher did covertly resort to it in the very dialogue. Thus, the article will seek to demonstrate that even though Platonic Socrates repudiated rhetoric understood as political demagoguery and cynical adulation, he did employ some sort of art of persuasion designed to inveigle his interlocutors into accepting a worldview that must have appeared extremely paradoxical for the then mentality.