The art of persuasion was widely considered necessary for political and legal advantage in classical Athens, and rhetoricians promoted themselves as teachers of this fundamental skill.
[2] Socrates interrogates Gorgias to determine the true definition of rhetoric, framing his argument in the question format, "What is X?"
(462c) Socrates continues to argue that rhetoric is not an art, but merely a knack that "guesses at what's pleasant with no consideration for what's best.
Socrates catches the incongruity in Gorgias' statements: "well, at the time you said that, I took it that oratory would never be an unjust thing, since it always makes its speeches about justice.
I realize that the person who intends to put a soul to an adequate test to see whether it lives rightly or not must have three qualities, all of which you have: knowledge, goodwill, and frankness."
For my part, if I don't produce you as a single witness to agree with what I'm saying, then I suppose I've achieved nothing worth mentioning concerning the things we’ve been discussing" (472c).
Callicles says that Gorgias is a guest in his home, and has agreed to a private audience with Socrates and his friend Chaerephon.
Gorgias admits under Socrates' cross-examination that while rhetoricians give people the power of words, they are not instructors of morality.
Gorgias does not deny that his students might use their skills for immoral purposes (such as persuading the assembly to make an unwise decision, or to let a guilty man go free), but he says the teacher cannot be held responsible for this.
He makes an argument from analogy: Gorgias says that if a man who went to wrestling school took to thrashing his parents or friends, you would not send his drill instructor into exile (456d–457c).
Socrates gets Gorgias to agree that the rhetorician is actually more convincing in front of an ignorant audience than an expert, because mastery of the tools of persuasion gives a man more conviction than mere facts.
Gorgias accepts this criticism and asserts that it is an advantage of his profession that a man can be considered above specialists without having to learn anything of substance (459c).
Socrates calls rhetoric a form of flattery, or pandering, and compares it to pastry baking and self-adorning (kommōtikōn).
Lumping tyrants and rhetoricians into a single category, Socrates says that both of them, when they kill people or banish them or confiscate their property, think they are doing what is in their own best interest, but are actually pitiable.
It follows from this, that if a man does not want to have a festering and incurable tumour growing in his soul, he needs to hurry himself to a judge upon realising that he has done something wrong.
Socrates maintains that, assuming the converse of the previous argument, if your enemy has done something awful, you should contrive every means to see that he does not come before the judicial system.
Then, he berates Socrates for wasting time in frivolous philosophy, saying there is no harm in young people engaging in useless banter, but that it is unattractive in older men.
Socrates returns to his previous position, that an undisciplined man is unhappy and should be restrained and subjected to justice (505b).
Callicles becomes exasperated at the intellectual stalemate, and invites Socrates to carry on by himself, asking and answering his own questions (505d).
Socrates requests that his audience, including Callicles, listen to what he says and kindly break in on him if he says something that sounds false.
Zeus fixed the problem by arranging for people to be dead, and stripped naked of body and made his sons judges, Minos and Rhadamanthus from Europa and Aeacus from Aegina.
Socrates remarks that some people are benefited by the pain and agony of their own punishments (525b) and by watching others suffer excruciating torture; but others have misdeeds that cannot be cured.
He says that the story might sound like nonsense to him, like an old folk tale, and agrees there would be no wonder in despising it if a better and truer one could be found, but observes that none in the group have proved that one should live a different kind of life.