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Gorgias
Lysis - Symposium - Gorgias
Gorgias: (c. 480 - c. 375 B.C.) Celebrated orator, rhetorician and philosopher from Leontini in Sicily. He was numbered among the leading Sophists. He spent the major part of his long life in Greece, particularly in Athens. The Platonic dialogue bearing his name indicates in some measure the high esteem in which he was held. -- L.E.D.
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8 Gorgias
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1:The man who deceives shows more justice than he who does not ~ Gorgias, #NFDB
2:Being is unrecognizable unless it manages to seem, and seeming is feeble unless it manages to be. ~ Gorgias, #NFDB
3:I answer, Socrates, that rhetoric is the art of persuasion in courts of law and other assemblies, as I was just now saying, and about the just and unjust. ~ Gorgias, #NFDB
4:Men who neglect philosophy while busying themselves with ordinary affairs are like the Suitors [in the Odyssey] who desired Penelope but went to bed with her maids. ~ Gorgias, #NFDB
5:Speech is a powerful master and achieves the most divine feats with the smallest and least evident body. It can stop fear, relieve pain, create joy, and increase pity ~ Gorgias, #NFDB
6:Nothing exists; even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and even if something can be known about it, knowledge about it can't be communicated to others. ~ Gorgias, #NFDB
7:Man and woman and speech and deed and city and object should be honored with praise if praiseworthy and incur blame if unworthy, for it is an equal error and mistake to blame the praisable and to praise the blamable. ~ Gorgias, #NFDB
8:Aristoteles'in Fizik veMetafizik'te tartıştığı üzere, Platon'dan önceki filozoflar, ya varolanları oluşturan ilkeyi (Thales, Anaksimandros, Anaksimenes, Herakleitos, Pythogoras, Empedokles, Anaksagoras, Demokritos) ya da varlığın varlığı-yokluğu (Parmenides, Gorgias) sorununu konu edinmiştir. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
9:Plato in both the Gorgias and the Republic looked back to Socrates and asserted that "it is better to suffer tortures on the rack than to have a soul burdened with the guilt of doing evil." Aristotle does not confront this position directly: he merely emphasizes that it is better still both to be free from having done evil and to be free from being tortured on the rack. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre, #NFDB
10:The effect of speech upon the condition of the soul is comparable to the power of drugs over the nature of bodies. For just as different drugs dispel different secretions from the body, and some bring an end to disease and others to life, so also in the case of speeches, some distress, others delight, some cause fear, others make the hearers bold, and some drug and bewitch the soul with a kind of evil persuasion. ~ Gorgias, #NFDB
11:The Gorgias presented by Plato would agree with this. He tells Socrates that if a doctor and a rhetorician debate in front of an audience about how best to cure a patient, the audience will agree with the rhetorician and not the doctor (456b–c). He gives examples to prove his point: for instance, it was the great orator Pericles who persuaded the Athenians to build a defensive wall, not a bunch of stonemasons, who are experts in wall-building (455e). ~ Peter Adamson, #NFDB
12:How to define a name, may not only be an inquiry of considerable difficulty and intricacy, but may involve considerations going deep into the nature of the things which are denoted by the name. Such, for instance, are the inquiries which form the subjects of the most important of Plato's Dialogues; as, “What is rhetoric?” the topic of the Gorgias, or, “What is justice?” that of the Republic. Such, also, is the question scornfully asked by Pilate, “What is truth?” and the fundamental question with speculative moralists in all ages, “What is virtue? ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
13:For some months I had been ill in health, but was now convalescent, and, with returning strength, found myself in one of those happy moods which are so precisely the converse of ennui — moods of the keenest appetency, when the film from the mental vision departs — the αχλυς ος πριν επηεν — and the intellect, electrified, surpasses as greatly its every-day condition, as does the vivid yet candid reason of Leibnitz, the mad and flimsy rhetoric of Gorgias. Merely to breathe was enjoyment; and I derived positive pleasure even from many of the legitimate sources of pain. I felt a calm but inquisitive interest in every thing. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
14:Gorgias, que llegó a Atenas durante las primeras fases de la Guerra del Peloponeso (427 a. C.) y vivió hasta una edad muy avanzada, ofreció grandísimos ejemplos de virtuosismo retórico. Demostró que era posible convertir un argumento débil en uno potente mediante una cuidadosa construcción y elaboración, y enseñó su arte a una buena cantidad de alumnos aplicados. Gorgias entendía las palabras como si fueran una verdadera fuerza física. Podían causar dolor y alegría: «Algunas infunden temor, otras elevan a la audiencia y la envalentonan, otras paralizan o embrujan el alma con maligna persuasión». En uno de los escasos discursos que han llegado hasta nosotros, ~ Lawrence Freedman, #NFDB
15:SOCRATES: Then let me raise another question; there is such a thing as ‘having learned’? GORGIAS: Yes. SOCRATES: And there is also ‘having believed’? GORGIAS: Yes. SOCRATES: And is the ‘having learned’ the same as ‘having believed,’ and are learning and belief the same things? GORGIAS: In my judgment, Socrates, they are not the same. SOCRATES: And your judgment is right, as you may ascertain in this way:— If a person were to say to you, ‘Is there, Gorgias, a false belief as well as a true?’—you would reply, if I am not mistaken, that there is. GORGIAS: Yes. SOCRATES: Well, but is there a false knowledge as well as a true? GORGIAS: No. SOCRATES: No, indeed; and this again proves that knowledge and belief differ. ~ Plato, #NFDB
16:War and battle' are the opening words of the Gorgias, and the declaration of war against the corrupt society is its content. Gorgias, the famous teacher of rhetoric, is in Athens as the guest of Callicles, an enlightened politician. It is a day of audience. Gorgias receives visitors and is ready to answer all questions addressed to him. Socrates, with his pupil Chaerephon, calls at Callicles’ house in order to see the great man. The ultimate motif of the battle is not statedexplicitly but indicated, as so frequently with Plato, through the form of the dialogue. Gorgias is somewhat exhausted by the stream of visitors and the hours of conversation, and he lets his follower Polus open the discussion; Socrates leaves the opening game to Chaerephon. The battle is engaged in as a struggle for the soul of the younger generation. Who will form the future leaders of the polity: the rhetor who teaches the tricks of political success, or the philosopher who creates the substance in soul and society?
The substance of man is at stake, not a philosophical problem in the modern sense. Socrates suggests to Chaerephon the first question: Ask him “Who he is” (447d). ~ Eric Voegelin,#NFDB
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8 Philosophy
3 Christianity
6 Plato
2 Plotinus