Abstract

ABSTRACTThe Gorgias presents us with a mystery and an enigma: Who was Callicles? And, what was Plato trying to accomplish in this dialogue? While searching for the identity of Callicles, we gain a better understanding of Plato's purpose for this dialogue, which is to use justice as a means for staking out the boundaries of four types of rhetoric. This article argues that Plato uses the Gorgias to reveal the deficiencies of sophistic nomos-centered rhetorics and an unjust sophistic phusis-centered rhetoric, opening the door for a “true” rhetoric that he articulates in the Phaedrus and a universal justice based on virtue that he describes in the Republic.

Journal
Philosophy & Rhetoric
Published
2021-10-01
DOI
10.5325/philrhet.54.3.0263
Open Access
Closed
Topics

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (2)

  1. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  2. Rhetoric Review
Also cites 15 works outside this index ↓
  1. Reason and Emotion: Essays on Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory
  2. Before and After Socrates
  3. Plato: Gorgias
  4. “Why Is the Gorgias So Bitter?”
    Philosophy and Rhetoric  
  5. “The Sounds of Silence: Rhetoric and Dialectic in the Refutation of Callicles in Plato’s …
    Philosophy and Rhetoric  
  6. “The Refutation of Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias.”
    Greece and Rome  
  7. “Justice as a Nexus of Natural Law and Rhetoric.”
    Philosophy and Rhetoric  
  8. “Designer History: Plato’s Atlantis and Fourth-Century Ideology.”
    Journal of Hellenic Studies  
  9. Seeming and Being in Plato’s Rhetorical Theory
  10. “The Socratic Paradoxes.”
    Philosophical Review  
  11. “Socrates and Callicles: A Reading of Plato’s Gorgias.”
    Review of Politics  
  12. The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias: Rhetoric, Justice, and the Philosophic Life
  13. “Ancient Greek Origins of Argumentation Theory: Plato’s Transformation of Dialegesthai to…
    Argumentation and Advocacy  
  14. “Nietzsche and Callicles on Happiness, Pleasure, and Power.”
    Kritike  
  15. “Xenophon and the Socratic Paradoxes.”
    Southern Journal of Philosophy  
CrossRef global citation count: 0 View in citation network →