Gorgias - Softcover

Taking the form of a dialogue between Socrates, Gorgias, Polus and Callicles, the Gorgias debates crucial questions about the nature of government. While the aspiring politician Callicles propounds the view that might is right, and the rhetorician Gorgias argues that oratory and the power to persuade represent 'the greatest good', Socrates insists on the duty of politicians to consider the welfare of their citizens - a duty he believed had been dishonoured in the Athens of his time. The dialogue offers insights into how classical Athens was governed, as well as creating a theoretical framework that has been highly influential on subsequent political debate.

Gorgias is an important Socratic Dialogue in which Plato sets the rhetorician, whose specialty is persuasion, in opposition to the philosopher, whose specialty is dissuasion, or refutation. The art of persuasion was necessary for political and legal advantage in classical Athens, and rhetoricians promoted themselves as teachers of this fundamental skill. Some, like Gorgias, were foreigners attracted to Athens because of its reputation for intellectual and cultural sophistication. (Quote from wikipedia.org)

About the Author

Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)
Plato (wide, broad-browed) (428/427 BC - 348/347 BC), was a Classical Greek philosopher. Together with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the philosophical foundations of Western culture. Plato was also a mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world. Plato was originally a student of Socrates, and was much influenced by his thinking as by what he saw as his teacher's unjust death.

Plato's brilliance as a writer and thinker can be witnessed by reading his Socratic dialogues. Some of the dialogues, letters, and other works that are ascribed to him are considered spurious. Interestingly, although there is little question that Plato lectured at the Academy that he founded, the pedagogical function of his dialogues, if any, is not known with certainty. The dialogues have since Plato's time been used to teach a range of subjects, mostly including philosophy, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, and other subjects about which he wrote. (Quote from wikipedia.org)

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books is a publisher of historic