Last week we examined Literacy Essentials from the macro level and saw how speech grounds every level of human reality. We considered the question of those who threaten our use of language and what purposes they might have.
In Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, Socrates engages in discussion with a sophist named Gorgias. In ancient Athens, the sophists were teachers of rhetoric, philosophy, mathematics, music, and gymnastics. They were paid for their work, often by aspiring statesmen, men who possessed enough wealth to spend their day in study. With this small historical detail in mind, we can understand that Callicles is paying Gorgias for his education. Socrates wants to ask Gorgias what he teaches. Gorgias attempts to get Polus to answer, but Socrates insists that Gorgias answers. Gorgias says that he teaches the art of rhetoric, which is the ability to craft speeches. Socrates finds this odd: speech lays at the backdrop of any art. There is a rhetoric that belongs to medicine, athletics, and music; speech always has some kind of content. What does it mean to teach speech without any kind of content?
Throughout the first third of the dialogue, Gorgias responds elusively, at first saying that he teaches the art that is “A thing, Socrates, which in truth is the greatest good, and a cause not merely of freedom to mankind at large, but also of dominion to single persons in their several cities.” (452d). Shortly, after much pressing from Socrates, he states:
“I call it the ability to persuade with speeches either judges in the law courts or statesmen in the council chamber or the commons in the Assembly or an audience at any other meeting that may be held on public affairs. And I tell you that by virtue of this power you will have the doctor as your slave, and the trainer as your slave; your money-getter will turn out to be making money not for himself, but for another, – in fact for you, who are able to speak and persuade the multitude.” (452e)
Here Gorgias equates the freedom of the masses with their slavery! From these two quotes, it becomes clear that Gorgias is actually teaching a means of manipulating the government by equating two opposites: freedom is slavery, and the rhetoric Gorgias teaches enslaves the masses, perhaps under the illusion of their own freedom. Moreover, it is not clear by what standard these singular men in their cities rule, which Plato elucidates by re-introducing two of Gorgias’ students: Polus and Callicles.
Both of these sections are famous in their own right. Socrates proves to Polus that it is never better, in any circumstance, to do injustice rather than suffer it. In fact, it is better to suffer injustice than to do it. Callicles cannot stand this political view, saying that wrongdoing is only so because of custom, and not nature. Nature is beastly and convention invented virtue to promote peace in the polis. Socrates actually equates nature with virtue, such that the ideal polis is in accordance with nature. Aristotle perhaps articulates this view best in The Politics, that human beings are by nature political and organize themselves in communities.
What is important for our purposes is that these two men believe that they are like Gorgias, but both are progressively worse rhetoricians than Gorgias. Where Gorgias remains shifty and elusive, it is with Polus’ arguments that we understand that the rhetorician is a covert tyrant whose own desires are the measure by which he persuades the Assembly to do his will. Callicles articulates that the desires by which the covert tyrant rules the city are all of this most base human ones, such that justice is the advantage of the stronger. Socrates proves to him that this kind of tyrant is actually enslaved to his desires. It is this enslavement that clarifies the second difference between Polus and Callicles on the one hand and Gorgias on the other: the first two are enslaved by Gorgias, enslaved by his misuse of language, making money off of their desire for power, and telling them that their basest desires will be met should they be his student. The clearest example of this enslavement is that Callicles keeps trying to leave the conversation, but Gorgias forces him to stay in the conversation. Callicles assents, but merely responds in simple affirmatives and negatives to Socrates, indicating a reluctant submission to Gorgias. What is perhaps most striking here, is that Socrates presents a political view, based in an understanding that words must mean what they signify, that could truly free Callicles and Polus from the clutches of Gorgias and their own base desires.
Socrates ends this conversation with a still more startling move: he himself gives a long rhetorical speech. What is the difference? Socrates speaks in search of the truth, where the words mean what they signify, no matter the cost to himself. He is the servant of the “true political art”, examining what is best for the city through philosophical inquiry. Socrates closes this dialogue with a strange vision of the afterlife where men are judged by the gods not according to their appearances, but by their souls. It is in service of these gods that Socrates claims to be, thus clarifying the nature of the true political art. It is this divine judgement that makes Socrates dedicated to the truth, where appearance aligns with reality, which would only be good for political life.
Why pair Literacy Essentials with Gorgias? If the primary virtue taught by LE is care for language as the chariot of meaning, students are able to participate in what is most real: the truth. Just as Socrates sees philosophical inquiry as a search for what is best or true, our students begin this pursuit in learning the sounds of the English language. Students learn that language, both words and sentences, must be used to point to real things.
We have a vision for this pursuit from year to year at our schools. In the Lower School, the students pair their grammatical understanding of language found in LE with a growing understanding of rhetorical skills in IEW’s composition sequence. In the Upper School, students truly begin to integrate logic into their grammatical and rhetorical skills, learning to interpret the Great Books and understand our American cultural history. Eventually, armed with a desire for the good, they become zealous members of their communities who inspire others to the highest human ideals. They recognize that the optimal way to be happy is by being virtuous, acting in accordance with their nature as rational, speaking human beings. They are able to tell when there are snakes in the garden of human life who manipulate language to their own purposes.
