Dear Ascend Book Club Members,
Plato’s Gorgias is a war, as evidenced in the very first line (“In war and battle, this is the way to do your part,” 447a), for the souls of Athens’ youth and for every reader who has ever wondered how we ought to live. Socrates faces three escalating confrontations: the celebrity rhetorician Gorgias, his spirited student Polus, and the shameless Callicles. What begins as a polite inquiry into the nature of rhetoric quickly exposes the terrifying truth: rhetoric divorced from philosophy is tyrannical, a “freedom for oneself and empire over everyone else” (452d) that leaves both the speaker and polis diseased.
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Socrates counters with a vision of two kinds of rhetoric: the shameful kind that panders to pleasure (like pastry-baking for the soul) and the rare, noble kind that “makes the souls of citizens as good as possible” and dares to say “what is best” whether the crowd likes it or not (503a)—the kind he claims to be the only Athenian practicing (521d). Through relentless dialectic, shocking analogies (leaky jars, catamites, tyrants who have no real power, etc.), and finally the great myth of naked souls judged by dead judges (523a–527e), Socrates proves that doing injustice is always worse than suffering it, that the unpunished tyrant is the most miserable of men, and that the cosmos itself is ordered toward a final justice no rhetoric can escape.
Here is everything you receive in the guide:
A 21-page guide (11,400+ words)
An introductory letter from Dcn. Garlick
Detailed preliminary questions to consider before you read
37 thorough questions on Plato’s Gorgias
Athens is about to kill its only true statesman, but the Gorgias ends with the quiet, defiant promise that the just soul will ultimately shine while the scarred souls of the unjust stand exposed. This is not a polite discussion about public speaking; it is a war over whether life is mere power and pleasure or something infinitely higher.
Below is the full guide available to download.
I am indebted to the guests who helped me navigate this text: Athenian Stranger, Johnathan Bi, Dr. Matthew Bianco, and Dr. Gregory McBrayer. I am thankful for their commentary and various interpretations of the text, as iron sharpens iron, so too did working through this text with different perspectives sharpen my appreciation for the dialogue.