Filosofia politica: analisi di Gorgia e Tucidide e le loro teorie

Gorgia: Filosofo e Sofista Siceliota

Gorgia (Leontini, 485 B.C. or 483 B.C. - Larissa, 375 B.C.) was a Siceliot rhetor and philosopher. Disciple of Empedocles, he is considered one of the greatest sophists, theorizer of an absolute ethical relativism, founded on the morality of the contingent situation, pushed to nihilism. Typical of the oratory of Gorgia was the wide use of complex rhetorical figures, derived from poetic and epic language. He also mocked those who claimed to be able to teach virtue, and boasted of knowing how to give a speech on any subject, as also testified by Plato. Together with Protagora, Prodico and Ippia of Elis, he is traditionally remembered as one of the «great sophists».

Encomio di Elena di Gorgia

Gorgia, Commendation of Helena (415 BC). In the Commendation, Gorgia defends Elena from being accused of having been the cause of the Trojan War, with her decision to betray her husband Menelaus and follow Paris. Elena is innocent, because she acted or moved by a principle higher than her (be it the gods or the Ananke, the Necessity), or kidnapped by force, or persuaded by speeches (logoi), or conquered by love. In any case the motive remains outside his responsibility.

Argomentazioni di Gorgia sulla colpevolezza di Elena

Schematizing, the Gorgian argument is reduced to four arguments: Elena had fallen in love with Paris; she had been kidnapped by Paris; she was persuaded by Paris; she was kidnapped for divine will.

In the first case Elena is a victim, because Aphrodite promised to Paris that in exchange for the Golden Apple, she would make fall in love with him the most beautiful woman in the world, precisely Elena. In the second case Elena is kidnapped, so she is a victim, and the fault is to be attributed to Paris. In the third case if it was the power of the word to convince her also in this case, it is not his fault because the word is a great dominatrix. And if it was for the last case, it was not by her will but by that of the gods whose plans cannot be prevented by our precaution or providence.

Il Potere del Linguaggio e la Persuasione

The idea of the power of human language and speech used to persuade will be analyzed starting from the philosopher sophists Gorgia to contemporaneity. After the Persian wars, Athens and Sparta were the most powerful cities in Greece. The Athenian power grows and therefore the city attracts numerous philosophers and intellectuals. Gorgia came from Sicily, from Magna Graecia and we know that he arrived in Athens by Lentini. The prose of Gorgia is perfect and his ability to persuade through language is great. What the sophists do is completely different from what Socrates and Plato did; Plato says that, while they use dialogue to arrive at the truth and were really interested in the answers of the interlocutors (they had therefore an interest, moral of the truth), the sophists use language to deceive and are interested exclusively in their opinions, the sophists want to win the debate anyway. Our view of sophists today is influenced by that of Plato. Plato said that if you can speak and you can manage the art of rhetoric but do not use the research of the truth you could become dangerous, you could become a tyrant.

In the first century there was the academy of Plato and that of Aristotle. Gorgia influenced Athens but also Athens influenced Gorgia. Athens became one of the most powerful cities in Greece at the end of the Persian wars and, after the defeat of the Persians, the Greeks could decide whether to return home or whether to continue the fight against the Persians. (Organization of the league - court that judges). Gorgia arrives in Athens and notes with astonishment (being a foreigner) the way the Athenian court works.The speech is a powerful tool: for Gorgia it works like drugs in our body, on other souls. The evocative power of speech is underlined by pronouncing certain words, by repeating certain words we produce certain things. We are at that phase of Greek civilisation where Greek authors are understanding the power of language: this will remain in our europeean thought and constant theme of inquiry.

Conclusioni di Gorgia sull'Encomio di Elena

Gorgias concludes at the end of chapter 18: love is sometimes called a god. If it is, how can a human being resist the power of a god? Helen is blameless. The conclusion of all this reasoning is in chapter 20: in every case she escapes every accusation. The nature of this work is also an amusement of itself, beside being an encomium of Helen.

A beautiful piece to show the power of rhetoric.

Commenti sull'Encomio di Elena

• The speech must contain arguments
• The etymology of Elena is 'destroyer'
• Gorgia assumes that we know the facts and we know Elena
• In the Greek civilization beauty was equivalent to moral greatness (even Kant, in his Critique of pure reason, states that beauty is a concrete representation of moral greatness)
• After a brief introduction, Gorgia exposes the possible reasons why Elena decided to follow Paris to Troy
• The invention of barbarism dates back to this period: Paride, a Trojan, is called 'barbarian' by Gorgia. It is with the Greeks that the concept of propaganda was born, with the defeat of the Persians who began to be considered as barbarians and as inferior to the Greeks. Barbaro, literally, indicates someone who speaks badly Greek and this makes him, in the eyes of the Greeks, inferior. Grecita exists only when there is also the other, the barbarian, it is a dialectical relation. The Persians who are defeated on the field of battle also become so in the cultural field.
• In paragraph 8 we find the core of the discourse: the immense power of the word. The Aristotelian theory of the power of poetry and the cleansing capacity of tragedy is also present here.
• The power of speech is like a spell, like a sorcery. Words are magic.
• It is important to know the art of speech to recognize false speeches
• Gorgia states that speech must be used in a useful way, Gorgia is a moral person
• Gorgia is referring to astronomy. Anassagora is the first to affirm that celestial bodies are not deities but "stones". Astronomers, at this time, need to persuade the crowds to gain acceptance and credibility and for this they need the power of speech.
• Speech acts on the mind exactly as a drug acts on the body

=> Plato learned from Sofists the notions of the power of persuasion.

Gorgia e la Verità

Gorgia states, generalizing that we cannot know the truth because we cannot have access to the current reality of things. Truth is not the correspondence between what I say and what it is, truth is the result of a procedure, just as it happens within a court. There is the case of the prosecution and the case of the defense, judgment is the only truth that man can know.

Gorgia states that since we have no access to the Truth (with a capital T), we must rely on persuasion.

Gorgia is a prophetic philosopher.

The thought of Gorgia is metaphysical, Gorgia says that 'nothing is' and even if something should be, this would not be known by humans and therefore could not be transmitted.Protagora, another important sophist, was paid a fortune for his lessons. The ability to choose a popular topic and talk about it to persuade the crowd was "sold" by sophists.

Logos e il Potere Persuasivo

Gorgia defends the behavior of Elena, who leaves her land to follow Paris. Gorgia proceeds with the defense analyzing all the causes that could have caused Elena to behave in this way.

The most important case concerns language and the persuasive power of the word.

Parmenide e il Problema Linguistico

Parmenides is here also analyzing a linguistic problem: being is also the verb to be. Parmenides is talking about the relationship between the verb to be and the beings we see in the universe. If I can think and talk about things that do not exist, what is the relationship between language and the existence of things? This relationship is problematic because we can use language also to mix being and not being.

The goddess told him to bear in mind that there are two ways by which we can conduct research: the power of opinion (doxa) and the path of truth which is the way of being. The first one is the one of being and not being.

Unlike Parmenides, Gorgia speaks of language in a different way, and sees language as a sovereign creator.

These authors are careful observers of the reality of their days and were very interested in what the rhetorics said.

Gorgia is interested in the performative aspect of language while Parmenides observes the theoretical relationship between language and being. The beautiful rhetorical figures used by Gorgia have a very precise function, they want to push people into actions.

He is an absolute contemporary with Parmenides: he came from Elea (in Campania) and he is the author of this poem where he argues that one day he was taken by superhuman forces and taken up in the sky. He is also telling us something about relations between being, from the verb to be, and beings, as creatures in the universe.

He tells us in his evocative way that the relationship between language and existence is problematic.

Gorgias is interested in the persuasive way of language.

L'Influenza dei Sofisti su Platone

The persuasive power of language is also taken from Plato. He tries to distinguish what he was doing from what the sophists were doing.

This is the great lesson that Plato learns from Gorgia and the sophists: the persuasive power of the word. Despite the negative opinion that Plato has regarding the sophists, we cannot but affirm that he owes them this important teaching: to produce an effect with our language we must persuade. Plato dedicates his dialogue to Gorgia, a dialogue entitled Gorgia in which Gorgia is one of the characters named Kallikles, a character who has a typically sophistic position and talks about the difference between justice according to law (what it makes men do is the opposite of what they would do) and justice according to nature (big fish eats small fish). Socrates proves to Kallikles that he is wrong but Kallikles replies that although Socrates has beaten him, he has not persuaded him.

Plato realises that the sophists were right: to reject something logical but not to be persuaded has no effect. Once you are convinced, that's when you start acting differently. A demonstration must convince our reason but also our emotions to be able to persuade us.

Coraggio e Paura in Gorgia

Gorgia talks about courage and its counterpart: fear. Courage is one of the most important virtues for a Greek citizen as they were often at war. Courage is one of the central civic virtues of the Greek citizen.