I think the most relevant quote from Gorgias comes at 452e:
Gorgias: "I'm talking about the ability to use the spoken word to persuade- to persuade the jurors in the courts, the members of the council, the citizens attending the assembly- in short, to win over any and every form of public meeting of the citizen body. Armed with this ability, in fact, the doctor would be yours to command, and that businessman would turn out to be making money not for himself...[but] for you."
Gorgias doesn't see a difference between expertise and the appearance of expertise. Socrates points out that there is a difference between what someone believes to be true and what is actually true and that the latter is always preferable. Rhetoric seeks to convince people of expertise without actually having knowledge in the given field. Socrates compares rhetoric to cookery and flattery in that it has the appearance of substance without actually being substantive. Like cookery if a person eats a meal prepared by the chef and a meal prepared by a doctor they will probably prefer the chef's but the doctor's will probably be better for them (read: good, just, ect).
Socrates: "So we'd better think in terms of two kinds of persuasion, one of which confers conviction without understanding, while the other confers knowledge" (454 e)
Polus steps in and claims that doing harm, while not noble, is almost always preferable to having harm done to you and especially so if you go uncaught and guilt-free. He concedes, however, that doing harm is much more contemptable than having harm done to you. Socrates counters that punishment is like a corrective medicine- and like medicine it would be childish to refuse or try to shirk treatment. "So if doing wrong is more contemptible than suffering wrong, then either it's more unpleasant and it's more contemptible because it exceed the alternative in unpleasantness, or it's more contemptible becuase it exceeds the alternative in harmfulness or in both qualities at once. Isn't that bound to be the case?" (475 b). Socrates believes that because doing harm is contemptible it must be bad or that people prefer to be harmed than to harm because it is more pleasant (and maybe both).
2 comments:
I agree with what you have stated in your blog and I find it quite funny how ironic it is that Socrates has managed to switch Gorgias' and Polus' positions around. It seems that Socrates is a true rhetorician, but he doesn't use his powers in bad ways. The point I made in my blog was that Polus always needs specific examples to prove his point while Socrates makes a general statement, convinces Polus of that statement and then continues on in that fashion until he is able to convince Polus of the overall scheme.
I also agree that Socrates is using rhetoric. The one thing I noticed, however, is that although Socrates gains assertion that his point is correct from both Polus and Gorgias, I am not sure they (P and G) actually agree with his (S) statements.
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