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Socrates meets the famous teacher of rhetoric Gorgias and two of his followers, the young Polus and the ambitious politician Callicles, and asks what rhetoric really is. The argument soon becomes a fierce debate about how to live: Callicles insists that by nature the strong should rule and indulge their desires, while Socrates maintains that it is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and that the unjust man is the most miserable of all. The dialogue ends with a myth of the judgement of souls after death.
Context and significance
Plato wrote the Gorgias in the early fourth century BC, and it is one of his most passionate dialogues, written in the shadow of Socrates' trial and death. The translation is by Benjamin Jowett, the Oxford scholar who was Master of Balliol College. Read Plato's Apology and Republic.
About the author
Plato (c. 428–348 BC) was born into an aristocratic family in Athens and became the devoted student of Socrates. After his teacher's trial and execution in 399 BC, he travelled, returned to Athens and founded the Academy, a school that lasted for centuries and counted Aristotle among its students.
Almost all his writings are dialogues in which Socrates questions his fellow citizens about justice, love, knowledge and the soul, from the Apology to the Symposium and the Republic. Known to Arab philosophers as Aflatun, he was read closely by al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd, and Western philosophy has been called a series of footnotes to him.