(483—375 B.C.E.)
GorgiasGorgias was a Sicilian
philosopher, orator, and rhetorician. He is considered by many scholars to be
one of the founders of sophism, a movement traditionally associated with
philosophy, that emphasizes the practical application of rhetoric toward civic
and political life. The sophists were itinerant teachers who accepted fees in
return for instruction in oratory and rhetoric, and many claimed they could
teach anything and its opposite (thesis and antithesis). Another aspect of
their method was the ability to make the weaker argument the stronger. The term
sophist in classical Greek was a general appellation denoting a "wise
man." They were important figures in Greece in the 4th and 5th centuries,
and their social success was great. Plato was the first to use the term
rhêtorikê, while the sophists termed their "art" logos .
Nevertheless, Gorgias is commonly associated with the development of rhetoric
in classical Greece. The democratic process in Athens supplied the need for
instruction in both rhetoric and philosophy.
Despite efforts by G.W.F Hegel
and George Grote toward rehabilitating the reputations of Gorgias and the other
sophists in the 19th century, the sophists still had a foul reputation well
into the 20th century (as evidenced by the pejorative term
"sophistry"). In 1930, French philosopher Jacques Maritain remarked
"[s]ophistry is not a system of ideas, but a vicious attitude of the
mind;" the sophists "came to consider as the most desirable form of
knowledge the art of refuting and disproving by skillful arguments"
(32-33). In recent years, however, modernists and post-structuralists have
found great value in the philosophy of Gorgias, especially his theories on
truth and language.
1.
Life and Works
Gorgias (483-375 B.C.E.) came
to Greece from Leontini in Sicily. Little is known of his life before he
arrived in Athens in 427 B.C.E. as a political ambassador seeking military
assistance against Syracuse, a city-state in Sicily. He delivered a series of
speeches that dazzled the Athenian audiences and won him fame and admiration.
Upon completion of his mission, he traveled throughout Greece as a teacher of
rhetoric and as an orator, and according to Aristotle, spoke at the Panhellenic
festivals (Art of Rhetoric 1414b29). He was a student of Empedocles, and
according to Quintilian and others, was the teacher of Isocrates. Plato
identifies Meno (Meno 76Aff) among the students of Gorgias, and he may have
been one of Aspasia's instructors as well. Many of the sophists set up schools
and charged fees in return for instruction in rhetoric, and Gorgias was no
exception. Philostratus (Lives of the Sophists I 9, I) tells us that Gorgias
began the practice of extemporaneous oratory, and that he had the boldness to
say "'suggest a subject' ...he was the first to proclaim himself willing
to take the chance, showing apparently that he knew everything and would trust
the moment to speak on any subject." He died at the age of 108 at Larissa
in Thessaly.
Four works are attributed to
Gorgias: On the Nonexistent or On Nature, the Apology of Palamedes, the
Encomium on Helen, and the Epitaphios or Athenian Funeral Oration. The original
text of On Nature has been lost, and survives only in two different
paraphrases, one in Sextus Empiricus' Against the Professors and another in an
anonymous work entitled Melissus, Xenophanes, Gorgias. There are two different
manuscripts of Palamedes and Helen (the Cripps and Palatine versions), one
slightly different than the other. Legal historians consider the Defense of
Palamedes to be an important contribution to dicanic [explanatory]
argumentation, and some cultural historians believe the Epitaphios was used as
a stylistic and genre source for Plato's Menexenus (Cosigny 2). Gorgias'
rhyming style is highly poetic, and he viewed the orator as an individual
leading a kind of group incantation. He employs metaphor and figurative
expressions to illustrate his assertions, and even uses humor as one instrument
of refutation. The term macrologia (using more words than necessary in an
effort to appear eloquent) is sometimes used to describe his oratorical
technique (Kennedy 63).
2.
Philosophy
Any student of Gorgias must
immediately mark the distinction between his philosophy as expressed by Plato
in the dialogue Gorgias (see below) and his philosophy found within the three
works: On the Nonexistent, the Apology of Palamedes, and the Encomium on Helen.
a.
Ontology & Epistemology
Nowhere is Gorgias'
sophistical love of paradox more evident than in the short treatise On the
Nonexistent or On Nature. The subject of this work is ontological (concerning
nature of being), but it also deals with language and epistemology (the study
of the nature and limitations of knowledge). In addition to this, it can be
understood as an exercise in sophistical rhetoric; Gorgias tackles an argument
that is seemingly impossible to refute, namely that, after considering our
world, we must come to the conclusion that "things exist." His
powerful argument to the contrary proves his abilities as a master of oratory,
and some believe the text was used as an advertisement of his credentials.
Gorgias begins his argument by
presenting a logical contradiction, "if the nonexistent exists, it will
both exist and not exist at the same time" (B3.67) (a violation of the
principle of non-contradiction). He then denies that existence (to on) itself
exists, for if it exists, it is either eternal or generated. If it is eternal,
it has no beginning, and is therefore without limit. If it is without limit, it
is "nowhere" (B3.69), and hence does not exist. And if existence is
generated, it must come from something, and that something is existence, which
is another contradiction. Likewise, nonexistence (to mê on) cannot produce
anything (B3.71). The sophist then explains that existence can neither be
"one" (hen) or "many" (polla), since if it were one, it
would be divisible, and therefore not one. If it were many, it would be a
"composite of separate entities" (B3.74) and no longer the thing
known as existence.
Gorgias then turns his
attention to what is knowable and comprehensible. He remarks, "if things
considered [imagined or thought] in the mind are not existent, the existent is
not considered" (B3.77), that is to say, existence is incomprehensible.
This supposition is backed up by the fact that one can imagine chariots racing
in the sea, but that does not make such a thing happen. The operation of the
mind (intellection) is fundamentally distinct from what happens in the real
world; "the existent is not an object of consideration and is not
apprehended" (B3.82). It is helpful to think of apprehension here in
Aristotelian terms, as simple apprehension, the first operation of reasoning
(logic) in which the intellect "grasps" or "apprehends"
something. Simple apprehension happens when the mind first forms a concept of
something in the world, and is anterior to judgment.
Finally, Gorgias proclaims
that even if existence could be apprehended, "it would be incapable of
being conveyed to another" (B3.83). This is because what we reveal to
another is not an external substance, but is merely logos (from the Greek verb
lego, "to say"--see below). Logos is not "substances and existing
things" (B3.84). External reality becomes the revealer of logos (B3.85);
while we can know logos, we cannot apprehend things directly. The color white,
for instance, goes from a property of a thing, to a mental representation, and
the representation is different than the thing itself. In its summation, this
nihilistic argument becomes a "trilemma":
i. Nothing exists
ii. Even if existence exists,
it cannot be known
iii. Even if it could be
known, it cannot be communicated.
This argument has led some to
label Gorgias as either an ontological skeptic or a nihilist (one who believes
nothing exists, or that the world is incomprehensible, and that the concept of
truth is fictitious). But it can also be interpreted as an assertion that it is
logos and logos alone which is the proper object of our inquiries, since it is
the only thing we can really know. On Nature is sometimes seen as a refutation
of pre-Socratic essentialist philosophy (McComiskey 37).
b.
Rhetorical Theory
Most of what we know
concerning Gorgias' views on rhetoric comes from the Encomium. This work can be
understood as a sophistical effort to rehabilitate the reputation of Helen of
Troy. In it, Gorgias attempts to take the weaker argument and make it the
stronger one, by arguing for a position contrary to well-established opinion:
in this case, the opinion that Helen was to blame for the Trojan War. Gorgias
argues that Helen succumbed either to (a) physical force (Paris' abduction),
(b) love (eros), or (c) verbal persuasion (logos), and in any instance, she
cannot be blamed for her actions. According to Gorgias, logos is a powerful
force that can be used nefariously to convince people to do things against
their own interests. It can take the form of poetry (metrical language), divine
incantations, or oratory. Logos is described as a "powerful lord"
(B11.8) and "[t]he effect of speech upon the condition of the soul is
comparable to the power of drugs over the nurture of bodies" (B11.14).
This should be contrasted with the view of Isocrates that logos is a
"chief" or "commander" (Nicoles 5-9). The difference here
is subtle, but Gorgias' dynastic concept of logos clearly turns it into a
despotic overlord, while Isocrates' "commander" is a leader with
delegated authority, an individual who fights along side his troops.
Examples of persuasive speech,
according to Gorgias, are the "conflicts among the philosophers’ arguments
in which the swiftness of demonstration and judgment make the belief in any
opinion changeable" (B11.13). This is similar to the assertion of Sextus
Empiricus that equally convincing arguments can be formed against, or in favor
of, any subject. Gorgias may have believed in a relative notion of truth that
was contingent upon a particular kairos (an opportune moment or
"opening"), that is to say, truth can only be found within a given
moment. He seems to reject the idea of truth as a philosophically universal
principle, and thus comes into conflict with Plato and Aristotle. Nevertheless,
the rhetor (orator) is ethically obligated to avoid deception, and it is
"the duty of the same man both to declare what he should rightly and to
refute what has been spoken falsely" (B11.2). Ultimately, Gorgias’ opinion
concerning truth is difficult to ascertain, but from his writings, we can
conclude that he was more concerned with rhetorical argument than the truth of
any given proposition or assertion.
In the epideictic speech
Defense of Palamedes, Gorgias uses a mythical narrator (Palamedes) to further
illustrate his rhetorical technique and philosophy. In the Odyssey, Palamedes
was responsible for revealing Odysseus' "madness" as a fiction, an
act for which the latter never forgave him. Ultimately, Palamedes was executed
for treason, after Odysseus accused him of conspiring with the Trojans. Gorgias
focuses on the invention of arguments (topoi) necessary to exonerate Palamedes
within the setting of a fictional trial, all of which depend upon probability.
Palamedes could not have committed treason with a foreign power since he speaks
no language other than Greek (B11a.6-7), and no Greek desires social power
among barbarians (B11a.13). In the second example, we see that topoi
"embody the values of the community, in the sense that they comprise what
the community considers important" (Cosigny 84). A fundamental difference
between the topoi found within Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric and Gorgias' topoi
is that Aristotle's are "acontextual, while Gorgias places his in the
narrative context of the Palamedes myth" (McComiskey 49). Therefore, there
is a direct relationship between kairos and invention.
Gorgias rejects the use of
pathos (emotional appeal) in his Defense, with the assertion that "among
you, who are the foremost of the Greeks ...there is no need to persuade such
ones as you with the aid of friends and sorrowful prayers and
lamentations" (B11a.33). He prefers to use ethos (ethical appeal, or
arguments from character) and logos, as his instruments of persuasion.
3.
Critics
Gorgias' most famous critic is
Plato. In the dialogue Gorgias, Plato (through his mentor Socrates) expresses
his contempt for sophistical rhetoric; all rhetoric is "a phantom of a
branch of statesmanship (463d) ...a kind of flattery ...that is
contemptible," because its aim is simply pleasure rather than the welfare
of the public. Nor can rhetoric be considered an art (technê), since it is
irrational (465a). The end result of rhetoric is a cosmetic alteration of
language that conceals truth and falsity (465b). Furthermore, rhetoric is
"designed to produce conviction, but not educate people, about matters of
right or wrong (455a). The character of Gorgias in the dialogue is forced to
admit that his "art" deals with opinion (doxa) rather than knowledge
(epistemê); that its intention is to persuade rather than to instruct, and that
rhetoric deals with language without regard to content. Gorgias is portrayed as
a man with an ambivalent attitude towards truth, a relativist, who boldly
asserts that it does not matter if one truly has knowledge of any given subject,
only that he is perceived by others to have knowledge, and that
"[r]hetoric is the only area of expertise you need to learn. You can
ignore all the rest and still get the better of the professionals!"
(459c).
There are a number of
explanations for Plato's antipathy towards sophistic rhetoric. The first is
simply philosophical; Plato was not a relativist, nor did he believe rhetoric
had a pedagogical value. But there is also a political element to be
considered. Bruce McComiskey points out that Plato believed in an
"oligarchic government" for Athens, while many of the sophists
"favored the Athenian Democracy the way it was" (20). It is important
to point out that during Gorgias' lifetime, both Leontini and Athens were
democratic city states and a loose alliance existed between the two. On a more
practical level, the Greek city states also served as a market for those who
would sell instruction in rhetoric.
Aristotle dismisses Gorgias as
a "frigid" stylist who indulges in excessive use of compound words
such as "begging-poet-flatterers" and "foresworn and
well-sworn" (Art of Rhetoric 1405b34). He also faults Gorgias for overly
poetic language (1406b4), and we can see examples of this in Gorgias'
description of logos as a great dynast or lord (B11.8) and as a "drug"
(B11.14). The sophist compares orators to "frogs croaking in
water"(B3.30), and philosophers to the "suitors of Penelope"
(B3.29).
Despite efforts by G.W.F Hegel
and George Grote toward rehabilitating the reputations of Gorgias and the other
sophists in the 19th century, the sophists still had a foul reputation well
into the 20th century (as evidenced by the pejorative term
"sophistry"). In 1930, French philosopher Jacques Maritain remarked
"[s]ophistry is not a system of ideas, but a vicious attitude of the
mind;" the sophists "came to consider as the most desirable form of
knowledge the art of refuting and disproving by skillful arguments"
(32-33). In recent years, however, modernists and post-structuralists have
found great value in the philosophy of Gorgias, especially his theories on
truth and language.
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