I just watched a BBC special on the "Men Who Made Us Fat" and the associations in the program sure reflect exactly what Socrates says in Gorgias -it seems the majority of Britain and America are diet hedonists with plenty of holes in their jars. What makes all these people fat? Perhaps they are all personal tyrants and unknowingly ignorant to the cause of their affliction since they didn't examine themselves or the suggestions of the "experts" carefully enough - eventually personifying the unhappy tyrant's life.

It's been 2500 years and we're still doing the same silly things? Personally I think many of Platos dialogues should be mandatory in final year public school and definitely in first and second year university. I didnt have any offered to me in either my science or business degree except as an elective and at the time I didnt even know what philosophy was. Shouldnt we heed Socrates in the Euthydemus and first make sure we are good before we're given the power to become a scientist, banker, politician or any citizen possessing any degree of power and the will to use it?

Question:

What word is missing below?

Oratory is to the ignorant demos as ___________ is to the enlightened minority.

OR

Oratory is to emotion as ___________ is to reason.

Incidentally, I like when Socrates explains, at 453c, why he is constant questioning: "It is not you I'm after; it is to prevent our getting in the habit of second guessing and snatching each others statements away. It is to allow you to work out your assumption in any way you want to."

I don't know how it is in the UK but it seems in North America most have been trained to do exactly what Socrates advises against. Perhaps our educational system needs a little Socratizing so we can work our problems out with others dialectically?

In the Gorgias Socrates implies the following:

There are people who learn and are convinced
There are people who learn and are not convinced.
There are people who don't learn and are convinced.
There are people who don't learn and are not convinced.

Later his says

Flattery consists of: cosmetics, pastry baking, sophistry, and oratory/rhetoric.
............ consists of: gymnastic, medicine, legislation, and Justice.

So gymnastics is to cosmetics as medicine is to pastry baking as legislation is to sophistry as justice is to oratory.

Now how can all the above be reconciled.
What is the rational measure that separates cosmetic from gymnastic or pastry baking from medicine or sophistry from legislation or oratory from justice

I've been re-listening to the podcasts, and around the time I got to this lecture my partner started reading the book "To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others" by Daniel Pink. I find it very similar to what sophists did, teaching how to be persuasive on any subject. In other words, how to "win friends and influence people."

This sound like manipulation to me. Why is it called "selling" if we are only talking about effective communication? Why call it "influencing" people when we only mean to demonstrate or prove the truth to them? What is the difference between a doctor communicating effectively the medical procedure and "selling" it? Are we using the same word for the same action now, or does selling have to be manipulative, at least a little? Does it have to do with uncertain cases, that you can't actually prove something? Or the seller has to personally benefit from the sale? I find it disturbing that phrases like "everyone works in sales now" have become mainstream in the US (in my circles at least), and I don't understand them properly yet.

I'm reading Gorgias now and I hope socrates will give some answers.

I find it rather ironic that Socrates is employing the leaky jar allegory to make a point when it so perfectly describes himself.

He gulps down countless empty calories of conversation and is constantly suffering from a perplexing withdrawal syndrome.

His addiction is so far out of control that Socrates even resorts to his own brand of street mugging - anything for another fix.

Meanwhile he berates everyone for having a sealed jar because all convictions contained within are rotten.

Talk about the empty vessel calling the jar leaky!

(Also, thanks for the podcast. It is so delicious and nutritious that it might even have quelled Socrates' thirst for a while.)

I have a question about Plato: do you think that scholars give him too much credit?

After listening to the Partially Examined Life perform the first half of Gorgias, I was inspired to get the book from the library. In the scholarly notes it was said that one of the things that makes the dialogues so great is the personal dimension. We get a sense of the dialogues being a real drama, involving real people with a lot of status and face and pride and personal enmity and jibes and cliques and factions and ego on dispaly. Just like a squabble on an internet forum. I loved it when Callicles had a pop at Socrates for basically being useless. However, having read a few more dialogues, I haven't seen much of this personal drama other than in the first half of the Gorgias. Much of the time it's "yes Socrates", "of course Socrates" and "no doubt Socrates".

Then there's the claim that Plato is often being ironic. When Socrates describes himself as a midwife to other people's ideas, that's a self-aware in-joke about the fact that so many of Socrates' interlocuters are reduced to "yes Socrates", "of course Socrates" and "no doubt Socrates". Instead of being an ironic, self-aware in-joke, is another explanation that Plato was blind to the limitations of his own writing?

Finally, in the notes, scholars will often identify flaws in Socrates' logic. He didn't address this possible explanation or he missed crucial steps in going from here to there. That's  sometimes brushed aside as Plato deliberately using flawed logic as a teaching device for his students. The idea being that his students were intended to identfy those mistakes. Again, an alternative explanation is simply that Plato wasn't aware of these logical flaws. If Plato had written a treatise, those flaws probably wouldn't be brushed aside as teaching devices.

I've only read a few dialogues, perhaps not all that thoroughly. So I ask this with respect to you and your colleagues, while openly acknowledging I don't really know what I'm posting about: is Plato given too much credit? I feel like there might be a self-selecting bias at work. The people most likely to write books, scholarly commentaries and introductions to Plato are those people who esteem him most, meaning they may have a rose tinted view of his work. I can see the rich vein of ideas in his writing, I swoon for the character of Socrates and the frequent foreshadowing of his death is very effective dramatically, but it still seems to me that at times the scholars are too generous.

Wonderful podcast, thank you. The link to Doyle's papers doesn't seem to be active anymore.

1. Language theme - Rhetoric being a major theme in this dialogue, Orator can appear more knowledgeable than he is because of his Oratory skills, thus the 'power of words'.

2. Literature - Plato's dialogue, can you also add this 'Literature' theme to this episode aswell 

https://historyofphilosophy.net/plato-charmides-euthydemus

3. Epistemology - Difference between true knowledge and   Rhetoric (opinion/persuasion)

Professor can you tag the following BBC In Our Time episode on Plato's Gorgias (2021) to the Further Reading List

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0011rzy

Also I mentioned in an earlier episode to have the following tag; Ethics (Virtue) to this interview episode by McCabe on Plato's knowledge 

https://historyofphilosophy.net/plato-knowledge

As you can see in my comment in that episode; 'Professor you can add the theme (Ethics) since Plato's concept of Virtue is important and the connections it has with knowledge (ordinary moral questions and practical questions, not sage related knowledge for example). '