Counter-Currents
Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 538
Greg Johnson on Plato’s Gorgias,
Lecture 1
Counter-Currents Radio
Seated Socrates, fresco from ancient Ephesus
372 words / 1:47:48
Greg Johnson began a five-week course on Plato’s Gorgias on the latest broadcast of Counter-Currents Radio, which will continue for the next four Saturdays (July 1, 8, 15, and 22). The first lecture, which both introduces the dialogue as a whole and also examines Socrates’ argument with the great Sophist Gorgias, can be heard below.
The theme of the course is “Might vs. Right.” Dr. Johnson will be using Donald J. Zeyl’s translation of the Gorgias published by Hackett as both a separate book and as part of their Plato Complete Works volume. You can use other translations, because all Plato translations have a standard citation format known as Stephanus numbers, which appear in the margins of each translation. There are many free online translations, for instance this one at Archive.org. The first lecture ends at Stephanus number 466a.
Every educated person should be familiar with Plato, but higher education today is usually a barrier to understanding the great thinkers of the past. Hence the need for Counter-Currents, which Jonathan Bowden described as an online university of the Right.
The streams will start at noon Pacific, 3pm Eastern Standard Time, 8pm UK time, and 9pm Central European Time on:
DLive: https://dlive.tv/Counter-Currents
Odysee: https://odysee.com/@countercurrents/ccradio
Send questions & donations to Entropy: entropystream.live/countercurrents
Topics discussed in the first lecture include:
00:03:49 Themes of Plato’s Gorgias
00:06:22 What literary genre is the Gorgias?
00:07:50 Characters in the Gorgias
00:09:05 What is sophistry?
00:15:56 On the structure of the dialogue
00:17:51 What is the setting of the dialogue?
00:21:49 How the Sophists valued public perception
00:32:39 Beginning the analysis of the dialogue
00:40:22 To truly have an art, you must be able to teach it
00:44:47 The Socratic concept of “irony”
00:47:59 What is oratory concerned with?
00:53:09 On the distinction between knowledge and opinion
00:58:08 How rhetoric is morally neutral
01:01:53 Rhetoric as the art of tyranny
01:09:09 Shouldn’t we be siding with Gorgias in this debate?
01:15:45 Was the West invented by Jews?
01:17:28 Did the Christians get their morals from the Greeks?
01:20:04 Winning the argument versus finding the truth
01:30:04 Socrates catches Gorgias in a contradiction
01:35:08 Rhetoric as the “controlling art”
01:40:06 On how you can have too much diversity
01:44:02 Why Gorgias deserves some credit
To listen in a player, click here. To download, right-click the link and click “save as.”
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2 comments
This is a short paragraph, part of Polus’ discourse (from an unremarkable translation found on the internet). “What do you mean? If a man is detected in an unjust attempt to make himself a tyrant, and when detected is racked, mutilated, has his eyes burned out, and after having had all sorts of great injuries inflicted on him, and having seen his wife and children suffer the like, is at last impaled or tarred and burned alive, will he be happier than if he escapes and becomes a tyrant, and continues all through life doing what he likes and holding the reins of government, the envy and admiration both of citizens and strangers? Is that the paradox which, as you say, cannot be refuted?”. I don’t understand how Socrates can argue against Polus’ argument here, unless you define happiness as a quality of an eternal soul, completely independent of the physical body. I consider Polus ‘ argument irrefutable, and Socrates ‘ argument untenable , if we assume even the slightest connection between the well-being of the soul and the body.
A most interesting lecture. I would like to see more academic philosophy, especially classical.
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