Platos Gorgias
GORGIAS: You would be quite right, Socrates.
come to you, and first the physician will say: O Socrates, Gorgias is deceiving you, for my art is concerned with the SOCRATES: And now let us have from you, Gorgias, the greatest good of men and not his. And when I ask, Who truth about rhetoric: which you would admit (would you are you? he will reply, I am a physician. What do you not?) to be one of those arts which act always and fulfil all mean? I shall say. Do you mean that your art produces the their ends through the medium of words?
greatest good? Certainly, he will answer, for is not health the greatest good? What greater good can men have, GORGIAS: True.
Socrates? And after him the trainer will come and say, I too, Socrates, shall be greatly surprised if Gorgias can show SOCRATES: Words which do what? I should ask. To what more good of his art than I can show of mine. To him class of things do the words which rhetoric uses relate?
again I shall say, Who are you, honest friend, and what is your business? I am a trainer, he will reply, and my busi-GORGIAS: To the greatest, Socrates, and the best of hu-ness is to make men beautiful and strong in body. When I man things.
have done with the trainer, there arrives the money-maker, and he, as I expect, will utterly despise them all. Consider SOCRATES: That again, Gorgias is ambiguous; I am still Socrates, he will say, whether Gorgias or any one else can in the dark: for which are the greatest and best of human produce any greater good than wealth. Well, you and I say things? I dare say that you have heard men singing at feasts to him, and are you a creator of wealth? Yes, he replies.
the old drinking song, in which the singers enumerate the And who are you? A money-maker. And do you consider goods of life, first health, beauty next, thirdly, as the writer wealth to be the greatest good of man? Of course, will be of the song says, wealth honestly obtained.
his reply. And we shall rejoin: Yes; but our friend Gorgias contends that his art produces a greater good than yours.
GORGIAS: Yes, I know the song; but what is your drift?
And then he will be sure to go on and ask, What good?
Let Gorgias answer. Now I want you, Gorgias, to imagine SOCRATES: I mean to say, that the producers of those that this question is asked of you by them and by me; What things which the author of the song praises, that is to say, is that which, as you say, is the greatest good of man, and of the physician, the trainer, the money-maker, will at once which you are the creator? Answer us.