10.4 Oratory as a Craft
In contrast to the archaic poets who view eloquence as a divine gift, the fifth century BC is conscious of the development of crafts that have advanced civilization. Crafts are discovered and handed down, often improved by generations of craftsmen who understand their subject matter intimately by long training and experience.
Gorgias, in another sample speech, has the mythological hero Palamedes boast of his benefactions, saying, “Who else could have rendered the meager livelihood of man abundant and uncivilized life civilized, discovering military formations vital for conquests; written laws, the guardians of justice; letters, the instrument of memory; measures and weights, the bountiful exchanges of commerce; number, the guardian of property . . .” Gorgias attributes all prehistoric discoveries to a single benefactor, Palamedes. Aeschylus has the Titan Prometheus, the benefactor of mankind, take credit for the arts, from the use of fire to astronomy to metalworking. The arts make civilization possible, and they are developed by mortals, even if in some versions they originate from a divine figure.
What Gorgias can claim is that he has advanced the study of oratory from the level of intuition and inspiration to the level of skill and practice. More than anyone before him, he has identified techniques of composition that make language powerful. Later rhetoricians will give them technical names such as anacoluthon, anadiplosis, anaphora, anastrophe, antistrophe, antithesis.
Yet Socrates is not impressed. For him, a true craft must not be a mere practice or technique (empeiria), but a reliable method for achieving a clearly defined goal, some objective good. Oratory is not a craft but flattery or salesmanship. Persuasion must not be divorced from knowledge; it should not be able to lead people to falsehood. Only persuasion connected with some kind of instruction leading to truth should merit the name of a craft. In modern English we often distinguish an art from a science in terms similar to those Gorgias might approve of: we tend to call a practice an art when it admits of no precise determination, but depends on experience, intuition, and repetition, as for instance in the “art” of negotiation. But Socrates thinks of a technē as something like an applied science, in which knowledge is applied to achieve some objectively worthwhile end. Winning an argument may be subjectively satisfying, but for Socrates only arriving at the truth should matter objectively.
For Socrates, to gain an art is at the same time to commit oneself to the goal of the art. “Isn’t one who has learned the art of building a builder?” he asks Gorgias, who assents. “Likewise one who has learned music is a musician? . . . And one who has learned medicine a doctor? And by parity of reasoning, one who has learned any trade is such as his knowledge makes him?” “Certainly.” “Then by the same token, one who has learned justice is just?” “Presumably so.”
Socrates’ inductive argument leads from the crafts to a virtue. “The just person does just things. Accordingly, the orator [who has learned justice] must necessarily be just, and the just person desires to do just things. … Never will a just person desire to commit injustice. … Consequently, never will the orator commit injustice.”
By this argument Socrates shows Gorgias that learning justice should transform the learner into a practitioner in the same way learning building or medicine should make one a builder or a doctor, respectively. Here is Socrates’ Craft Analogy, in which he likens the virtues to crafts. What he admires about an art or craft is its ability to apply knowledge to achieve a predetermined good — with the emphasis on ‘good.’ The builder builds a house; the doctor heals a patient. By analogy, the just person should produce acts of justice. And an orator who has learned justice should, consequently, compose just speeches.
On the other hand, we know from experience that teaching children, for instance, what is right and wrong does not ensure that they do the right thing thereafter. Socrates’ conclusion seems blatantly to contradict experience. His argument draws on hidden premises and comes to a paradoxical conclusion. Socrates does get Gorgias to contradict himself, for Gorgias had started out saying that oratory could be used for either good or evil ends, and now he admits that it can only be used for good. For Socrates this follows because by Gorgias’ definition oratory makes speeches about justice and injustice, which presupposes that the orator knows about justice, which entails that he has the art of justice.
But Socrates recognizes that the discussion so far has just scratched the surface. “How these things really are, Gorgias, by the dog, will need more than a little inquiry to sort out.” As usual, for Socrates the discovery of a contradiction in your set of beliefs is only the beginning of an investigation into the truth of things.
In the dialogue that ensues, Gorgias, who is exhausted from the presentation he has given to a large audience, is replaced by a couple of his students who are more mercenary than their master in their views of oratory — as if Plato wishes to point out how easy it is to exploit an amoral craft for immoral ends. We shall deal with some of the issues his students raise later (chs. 30–31*). But Socrates’ Craft Analogy comes up again and again in the dialogues. Socrates finds the analogy compelling in some way, and revealing of the role virtue plays, or should play, in human action. He has reasons for thinking of virtue as a craft, but he rarely explains them.
Yet in his inquiries Socrates seems to glimpse a problem for which the Craft Analogy offers a solution, or at least a hint of a solution. The rapid advances of Greek civilization of Socrates’ time, the so-called Greek Miracle, in the fine arts, technology, military science, and government, have not, it seems to Socrates, been accompanied by commensurate advances in human behavior, in moral insight or action.
Moral education seems haphazard at best, non-existent at worst. Leaders renowned for their goodness show themselves capable at times of committing injustices and atrocities. The historian Thucydides will chronicle the moral erosion brought on by the stresses of the Peloponnesian War. If the advances in civilization have resulted from the discovery or improvements of crafts, as arguably they have, why is there no craft of justice, goodness, morality? If only there were, civilization might truly advance to new levels of excellence.
Protagoras thought that everyone had some innate sense of right and wrong that could be cultivated by parents, teachers, and sophists (ch. 5.3 above). But as far as Socrates is concerned, such instruction results in only intermittent success. Sometimes people do the right thing, sometimes not. They tend to do what is right when the action benefits themselves, and hence they seem to act for their own narrow self-interest, not for the sake of the good. If that is all there is, no one has a craft of justice or goodness. People just act for their personal advantage and rationalize their actions to pretend they have noble motives. Like the Athenians responding to the embassy from Leontini.
To study the art of oratory merely as a skill for winning arguments is, Socrates implies, a waste of time and a distraction from the true questions that should engage every human being. What is right and wrong, and how can I do what his right? While the good citizens of Athens were flocking to Gorgias to learn the art of public speaking, Socrates continued searching for the end of all human action and the art that would achieve it.
Socrates’ private inquiries were becoming known around town, not only to his small band of associates, but to intellectuals like Protagoras, Gorgias, and Euripides. They were about to become very public, and Socrates’ life was about to become a lot more complicated.
