Plato's Gorgias
This character in Gorgias argues that rhetoric is the art of persuasion, even if it involves persuading people to believe falsehoods.
Who is Gorgias?
According to Socrates, being moral and just is preferable to being immoral and unjust because it leads to this, both within the individual and within society.
What is Order (or Harmony)?
In Gorgias, Socrates argues that pleasure is not the same as this, which is the true goal of the soul.
What is Goodness (or "The Good").
According to Plato, these eternal and unchanging concepts exist in a separate realm and are more real than physical objects.
What are the Forms?
Plato argued that this process would occur if we mistakenly become too attached to matter (as pleasure can incline us to do). Furthermore, the death our soul will gravitate back to the material world and enter into another body.
What is reincarnation?
Socrates compares rhetoric to this type of sweet but ultimately unhealthy substance, suggesting it deceives people about moral improvement.
What is candy?
Contrasting with Callicles' conception of power (i.e., the power to do whatever you want or have your enemies killed), Socrates argued that power is truly attained through exercising this virtue.
What is Self-Control?
In Gorgias, Socrates argues that living a life of virtue leads to the soul living in eternal happiness in this paradisal setting.
What is the Isle of the Blessed?
As Plato discusses in his famous allegory of the cave, people tend to be deceived by things appearing to be something they are not, which he says is due to putting too much trust in one’s senses/feelings and thus mistaking the material world (including the body) as more important and even real than it is. This somewhat mimics this pre-socratic philosopher who similarly thought that the senses were deceiving.
Who is Parmenides?
Plato’s allegory of the cave illustrates the philosopher’s journey from this deceptive state to a true understanding of reality.
What is Ignorance or Illusion?
This character in Gorgias believes that the "best" person should pursue as much pleasure as possible, even through immoral actions. Additionally, he thought that pleasure is always good, unless of course he is caught in a contradiction, to which he’ll just claim that he was “joking” with Socrates the whole time.
Who is Callicles?
In this chapter of Gorgias, Socrates examines the question of who is fit or suitable for ruling society.
What is Worthiness?
According to Socrates as well as an ancient Greek myth, living an unvirtuous life may result in one's soul being eternal punished in this region of the underworld.
What is Tartarus?
Plato compared the relationship between the material world and the world of the Forms to this art form, where a physical representation mimics an ideal.
What is a painting (or sculpture)?
Plato believed that this material world, with all its change and disorder, was a lesser form of existence.
What is the world of Becoming?
In Gorgias, Socrates challenges Polus' defense of rhetoric, arguing that power used immorally leads to harming this immaterial part of an individual.
What is the soul?
Socrates argues that this type of power—exercised through immoral acts—will eventually harm the soul.
What is Political Power?
Socrates concludes Gorgias by questioning whether it is worth the chance to live an unvirtuous yet pleasurable life when one's soul could potentially be damned forever. I'm willing to bet that this is a pretty similar concept to the wager that this famous 17th century mathematician and physicist formulated.
Who is Blaise Pascal?
Plato’s concept that learning is not the acquisition of new knowledge but the recollection of truths the soul already knew.
What is Anamnesis?
This ideal world, according to Plato, does not change or even have a physical location. Still, it is a greater realm of existence that the lesser material world merely imitates.
What is the world of Being?