ABSTRACT
Plato’s response to Gorgias in his dialogue the Gorgias is to present us with the most emphatic reaffirmation of the Parmenidean ideal, a scheme of philosophical dialectic utterly distinct from and immeasurably superior to rhetoric, which is fiercely castigated as nakedly exploitative emotional manipulation. The terms of the contrast are of course by now thoroughly familiar; what Plato does is to reinstate systematically all the great polarities which Gorgias just as studiously, if with profound ambiguity, occluded. One running theme of our investigation has been the skill with which Gorgias paradoxically encourages us to place his very own words within the scope of his rhetoric about rhetoric. In consistency we must ask how the Gorgias itself fares according to its author’s strictures on the use and abuse of language. Gorgias insists that his logos constitutes no exception to the way words work, because they all work to the same purpose; but Plato’s writing is informed by an incomparably higher degree of tension, because his Socrates claims that there is all the difference in the world between a philosopher and a
rhetorician. To avoid damning incoherence, this had better not be just another rhetorical claim.
