(Gorgias reads as a continuous discussion, and Plato did not include section divisions in his text. The following section breaks have been made to mark points in the text where the topic shifts. Numbers in the heading refer to the Stephanus pagination, which is the standard system for citing this text).
Summary
The dialogue begins with an exchange between five interlocutors to establish the situation. Socrates and Chaerephon have arrived late to a party and missed Gorgias’ presentation of his “area of expertise,” which Callicles and Polus have seen. Socrates has come to ask Gorgias “what this expertise is and what it can do,” because, he says, what a man does is also what he is (e.g., a shoe-maker). Socrates charges Chaerephon with the questioning, and Polus offers to answer for Gorgias, who has just performed such an exercise for the party.
Polus begins with positive evaluations of Gorgias without speaking to the substance of his work and thereby his being. Socrates interrupts to define rhetoric as “lengthy speech-making” opposed to conversation, which he calls a series of questions with brief answers. Promising to be “precise,” Gorgias enters into a direct conversation with Socrates.
Beginning with the assumption that Gorgias is an expert and teacher of rhetoric, Socrates asks “What aspect of life does [rhetoric] know about?” Gorgias says "speaking," but they conclude that not all speech is rhetoric, because each area of expertise requires speech at some point. Socrates wants to know how all expertise is not then rhetoric if speech is the province of rhetoric and it is common to most areas of expertise. Thus, Gorgias must define the activity, in which rhetoric uses speech to achieve results.
Gorgias suggests that persuasion (“winning over the minds of an audience”) in the political arena is the product of rhetoric. But Socrates observes that all areas of expertise produce persuasion by way of teaching. What kind of persuasion is produced by rhetoric if all areas of expertise produce persuasion? Gorgias says the province is right and wrong in public assemblies.
Socrates then makes a distinction between “being taught” and “being convinced" to say that rhetors may convince the public without teaching them anything. This indicates that knowledge and conviction are distinct, insofar that conviction produces no understanding of right and wrong. Conviction is only the appearance of knowing right from wrong.
Analysis
The first order of business is to distinguish between reality and appearance. Socrates enters this group of people, who are hosting Gorgias, in order to ask Gorgias "who he is." Socrates insists that what a man does is the same as what he is, but he also suggests that rhetoric is nothing. This is clear when Socrates observes that Polus only speaks to the “qualities” of Gorgias rather than what he is. Precision in its brevity should come closer to the essence of a man than pleasurable digressions.
Rhetoric, what Socrates will equate to pleasurable distraction, is a mode of manipulating superficial qualities without care for reality. For example, Socrates wants answers that are “good,” while Polus only offers what is “good enough.” We might say that Polus offers what looks or seems good, rather than what truly is good. Unlike these students of rhetoric, Socrates is “the type of person who engages in conversation purely to understand the topic under discussion” (454b).
Socrates' method of discussion relies heavily on analogy. If a weaver makes cloth, a musician music, a doctor health etc., then what does a rhetorician make? he asks. Because rhetoric produces no understanding, it cannot be a proper art, because an artist, like any expert, must understand his work, that is, the province of his abilities, be that astronomy or sculpture. Persuasion produces no understanding beyond itself.
Gorgias claims that “the province of rhetoric is speech.” It is possible that he means speech is able to work on itself, but Socrates does not allow this possibility. Self-reflexivity in language is a modern phenomenon. Socrates looks at words as tools to produce results in various other fields, like math uses words to talk about numbers or astronomy to talk about the stars. Socrates and Gorgias agree that some experts do not need speech, like painters and sculptors, because they use different materials to achieve their results.
Although Socrates has assured Gorgias that the ensuing conversation is not personal, he makes a point of stating that he has Gorgias’ “best interest at heart,” referring to the potential students in the house and acknowledging that teaching is how Gorgias earns his living. This means that Gorgias' kind of persuasion is connected to convincing students of his own worth.
Socrates says experts cannot be trusted with regard to morality, knowing right from wrong, because each finds his own field most important. Health, good looks and wealth, for example, all seem most important to the doctor, trainer and seafarer, respectively. So we must dig deeper and ask: what is the true value of rhetoric?
