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Gorgias and the Socratic Principle Nemo Sua Sponte Peccat

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Guido Calogero
Guido Calogero
Affiliation:
University of Rome
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Extract

More than a century ago the great German scholar Welcker tried to confirm the tradition that amongst the sophists the real master of Socrates had been Prodicus. Welcker called him his ‘forerunner’. In our century this valuation was once exaggerated to the extent of maintaining that the ‘principle of Prodicus’—that is, the care for the exact distinction and usage of the meanings of synonyms—had been the starting-point for every sound development in logic, whereas the methodical pattern presupposed by Socrates in his discussions was, on the contrary, a Prinzip der absoluten Vieldeutigkeit, a principle of absolute equivocation and ambiguity, and therefore the starting-point for every kind of trouble in that field.

Of course, the connection of Socrates with Prodicus was justified by the fact that both, in their conversations, appeared frequently to be dissatisfied with certain answers or expressions of their interlocutors, and therefore discussed the meanings of certain terms used by them. But the difference between the two approaches was very sharp, as appears from every passage of the Socratic dialogues of Plato, in which Prodicus is introduced to explain the demands of his synonymies in the midst of the debate. He wants everybody to use, for example, the verb εὐφραίνεσθαι in some cases and the verb ἥδεσθαι in some others, following what he thinks to be the right usage, the ὀρθότης ὀνομάτων; whereas Socrates does not care what kind of words one may use, but is only interested in what one really expresses by these words, that is, the meaning which he gives to them. Both search for meanings of words: but Prodicus' question is: What does it mean?—and Socrates' question is: What do you mean?—Prodicus says: ἀνδρεία means this, θρασύτης means that: so you shall use ἀνδρεία in the first case and θρασύτης in the second. Socrates asks: What do you mean by ἀνδρεία? (τί λέγεις τὴν ἀνδρείαν;).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , November 1957 , pp. 12 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1957

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References

1 ‘Prodikos von Keos, Vorgänger des Sokrates’, in Rhein. Mus. f. Philol., 1832 and 1836, reprinted with additions in Kleine Schriften, II (Bonn, 1845), 393–541. Socrates himself says, in Plato's, Meno 96DGoogle Scholar, that Prodicus had been his teacher. But even if this is not a joke, to study under somebody and to be a disciple of him are not the same thing.

2 Ranulf, S., Der eleatische Satz vom Widerspruch, Copenhagen, 1924Google Scholar; and cf. my criticism, ‘Una nuova concezione della logica prearistotelica’, in Giorn. crit. d. filos. ital., VIII (1927), 409–22.

3 See e.g. the passages quoted in Diels-Kranz, 5th ed. 84A, 13–18.

4 May I refer for this to my article ‘Socrate’ in Nuova Antologia, November 1955, 291–308, and to ‘Logo e Dialogo’, Milan, 1950.

5 Helena and Palamedes are still considered only as ‘exercises’ by Freeman, K. (The Pre-Socratic Philosophers, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1949, 359)Google Scholar and as ‘jeux d'esprit’ by Dupréel, E. (Les Sophistes, Neuchâtel, 1949, 61)Google Scholar, although he has carefully analysed many aspects of Gorgias' ethics. As to the interpretation of Gorgias by Untersteiner, M. (I Sofisti, Turin, 1949, 114–248)Google Scholar, I find it very difficult to understand it, even in the English translation by Freeman, K. (The Sophists, Oxford, 1954, 92–205).Google Scholar

6 Laudatio Helenae, 14–15. That Isocrates' quotation of the γράψαντα περὶ τῆζ Ἑλένης really refers to Gorgias and not to another apologist of Helen, is now generally accepted.

7 §2. The quotation is from the summary given by Freeman, K. in her Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1952), 131.Google Scholar

8 The feeling of the difficulty of his task is again expressed by Gorgias some lines farther on, if the beginning of §9 has, as I think, to be read with Immisch (all other readings give a poor sense).

9 From the summary of K. Freeman (see above, note 7), which is here almost a complete translation.

10 Compare, for example, what §§16–17 say about the φόβος as engendered in the soul by the notion of a ‘future danger’ with the definition of δεινά as μέλλοντακακά and θαρραλέα as μέλλοντα ἀγαθά and of the ἀνδρεία as ἐπιστήμη τῶν δεινῶν καὶ τῶν θαρραλέων, in Laches 198B ff.

11 This principle, which is clearly ascribed to Socrates also by Xenophon and Aristotle, was evidently considered so important by Plato that he never disowned it through all his life, although he did not follow it in many developments of his philosophy. Cp. e.g. Apol. 25D–26A; Protag. 345E; Hipp. Minor 376B; Hipp. Maior 296C; Gorgias 488A, 509E; Resp. 336E, 589C; Tim. 86D–E; Leg. 734B, 860D. By the way, as in De iusto 374A, Socrates quotes this principle as expressed by ‘a poet’ who said οὐδεὶς ἑκὼν πονηρὸς οὐδ' ἄκων μάκαρ (which seems to be Epicharmus fr. 7 Diels-Kranz with the last two words so changed from ἄταν ἔχων), and as in Protag. 345E he ironically finds it expressed in Simonides' poem, I wonder whether this sort of play with ancient poets (which is referred to also in Plato's Apol., 22B) may not have been extended by Socrates also to Homer. In this case, οὐδεὶς ἑκὼν ἐξαμαρτάνει may have been the witty inversion of K372 ἑκὼν δ' ἡμάρτανε φωτός. As a matter of fact, some MSS. (quoted by Allen, ad loc.) say at this point that some people changed the first hemistich to that of Λ350, reading therefore They probably wanted to restore the harmony between Socrates and Homer, showing that the of Diomedes was not a real ἁμάρτημα, otherwise it could not have been ἑκόν!

12 See my commentary on the Hipparchus (Florence, 1938)) where I have also tried to show that there are many reasons to believe in its authenticity.

13 It is also to be remarked that a few lines before Socrates had asked Meletos: (25D), which corresponds to the (or if one prefers Radermacher's to Diels' conjecture) ἀγαθῶν of Gorgias' passage; whereas the term ἁμαρτήματα, corresponding to ἐξαμαρτάνειν and ἁμαρτίας of Gorgias, appears in what immediately follows in Plato's Apology (26A).

14 Gorgias' ἀβίωτος βίος (21)and βίος οὐ βιωτός (21) literally correspond to Plato's βίος οὐ βιωτός, which appears just a little farther in his Apology (38A). It is to be remarked that such expressions, according to the ‘Wort index’ of Kranz in Diels' Vorsokratiker, are used only here in all the pre-Socratic period (ἄβιος in Antiphon has just the opposite meaning). I cannot, therefore, understand why Untersteiner, in his commentaryon this passage (I Sofisti: testimonianze e frammenti, II, Florence, 1949, 123–4), says that Gorgias'ἀβίωτος βίος is an ‘espressione empedoclea’, quoting Empedocles fr. 2, 3 as reading ζωῆζ ἀβίον. This is only a conjecture of Scaliger, the text given by Sextus is ζωῆσι βίον.

15 And possibly also discuss topics which became at the same time well-known points of departure for Socratic discussions: for example, the relation between ἀδικεῑσθαι and ἀδικεῑν (Palamedes, 31, and cf. Crito, 49Bff.) or the idea that one has to help friends and injure enemies (Pal., 18).

16 ‘Des Gorgias Palamedes und Xenophons Apologie’, in Hermes, LXI (1926), 467–70.

17 Nestle, W., ‘Xenophon und die Sophistik’, in Philologus, XCIV (1939–1940), 31–50.Google Scholar On the influence of Gorgias upon Xenophon see also Schacht, H., De Xenophontis studiis rhetoricis, Berl. Diss. 1890Google Scholar, and Münscher, K., in Philologus, Suppl. Band 13, 1920, p. 3.Google Scholar

18 Nestle sees in Gorgias' philosophy the common source of what is said in this passage, in Δισσοὶ λόγοι, 3, and in Plato, , Resp., 331E ff.Google Scholar

19 Every criticism by Socrates of the single traditional ἀρεταί in the early Platonic dialogues might be quoted as an example for this (e.g. the discussion of the σωφροσύνη in Charmides: σωφροσύνη is not equivalent to walking in a slow and dignified manner, because in certain cases it is more σῶφρον to hurry, and so on).

20 ‘Gorgias und Parmenides’, in Hermes, 1941, 393–407. Certain coincidences between Palamedes and Plato's Apology had also been noticed by Gomperz, H. (Sophistik und Rhetorik, Leipzig, 1912, 9–11)Google Scholar in his defence of the authenticity of Gorgias' discourses.

21 The history of the defences of Helen has been studied by Khafaga, M. S., ‘Absolutio Helenae’, in Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts, Cairo, 1950, 85–98Google Scholar, which unfortunately I was unable to trace. The fact that Gorgias' discourses do not consider any individual circumstance of Helen's and Palamedes' actions, but generally prove every adultery or treason to be either impossible or unintentional, had been stressed also by Gomperz, H. (Soph. und Rhet., 11 ff.).Google Scholar But, considering such demonstrations simply as absurdities, he saw in them only the proof that Gorgias' discourses were mere jokes.

22 Through a similar reduction of the real arguments to their external structural pattern Gomperz, H. (Soph. u. Rhet., 1–35)Google Scholar had already arrived at the conclusion that the was a pure display of rhetorical ability, no less than Helena and Palamedes. I believe that I have proved, on the contrary, that also the is neither a joke nor an exercise, but a highly ironical reductio ad absurdum of the Eleatic philosophy (especially of Zeno): see the chapter on Gorgias, in my Studi sull'Eleatismo, Rome, 1932, 157–222.Google Scholar

23 Helena is placed by Preuss, (De Eurip. Helena, Leipzig, 1911)Google Scholar between the Troades and the Helena of Euripides, in 414 B.C., and by Pohlenz, (Nachr. d. Gött. Ges. d. Wiss., 1920, 166)Google Scholar before the Troades (see also Freeman, K., Pre-Socr. Philos., 363Google Scholar). The Palamedes is dated before 411 by Maas, E. (in Hermes, XXII, 1887, 579).Google Scholar

24 In Plato's Gorgias 452D–E Socrates asks Gorgias what he thinks to be the μέγιστον ἀγαθόν, and how he can give it to men: he answers that it is the πείθειν τόῖς λόγοις, because it ensures the ἄρχειν ἑκάστẉ, making everybody else a δοῦλος. The same idea is attributed to Gorgias in Phileb., 58A–B. So πειθώ, which was the essential instrument of any democratic opposition to a tyrannical βία, becomes the instrument of a new sort of tyranny (βία δι' ἑκόντων), until it is checked by διάλογος.

25 Plato, Apol., 38A, 41B; and cf., for the interpretation of these passages, my article ‘Socrate’ quoted above, note 4.

26 This explains also the fundamental value of the opposition between the sophistic μακρολογία and the Socratic in Plato's Protagoras. According to Dupréel (‘Sophistes’, 80–1), Gorgias 449B–C might be considered as a proof that the κατά βραχὺ διαλέγεσθαι was at least less alien to Gorgias than to Protagoras. This could be another sign of his particular proximity to Socrates. In any case, the only one who had not understood anything at all was poor Prodicus. Confronted with the choice between μακρολογία and βραχυλογία, he just recommended a moderate length! (Phaidros, 267B).