Plato’s Gorgias

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Plato’s most striking dialogues, in which he addresses the real nature of power and freedom, and the relationship between pleasure and true self-interest. As he tests these ideas, Plato creates powerful speeches, notably from Callicles who claims that laws of nature trump man-made laws, that might is right, and that rules are made by weak people to constrain the strong in defiance of what is natural and proper. Gorgias is arguably the most personal of all of Plato’s dialogues, with its hints of a simmering fury at the system in Athens that put his mentor Socrates to death, and where rhetoric held too much sway over people.

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Guests

• Angie Hobbs 24 episodes
  Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield
• Frisbee Sheffield 3 episodes
  University Lecturer in Classics and Fellow of Downing College, University of Cambridge
• Fiona Leigh No other episodes
  Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at University College London

Reading list

• Classical Philosophy: History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
  Peter Adamson Google Books →
• Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
  Edward Craig (ed.) Google Books →
• Socrates and Gorgias
  J. Doyle
• A History of Greek Philosophy vol. IV, Plato: The Man and his Dialogues Earlier Period
  W. K. C. Guthrie (Cambridge University Press, 2008) Google Books →
• Plato and the Hero
  A. Hobbs (Cambridge University Press, 2006) Google Books →
• Plato's Ethics
  Terence Irwin Google Books →
• Drama and Dialectic in Plato's Gorgias
  C. Kahn
• Plato's Moral Psychology: Intellectualism, the Divided Soul, and the Desire for Good
  Rachana Kamtekar (Oxford University Press, 2017) Google Books →
• Self-Knowledge, Elenchus, and Authority in Early Plato
  Fiona Leigh
• Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule
  J. Ober (Princeton University Press, 1998) Google Books →
• Gorgias
  Plato (Oxford University Press, 1980) Google Books →
• Gorgias, Menexenus and Protagoras
  Plato (ed. M. Schofield and trans.T. Griffith) (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
• Gorgias
  Plato (introduction and commentary by E. R. Dodds) (Oxford University Press, 1990) Google Books →
• Plato on Pleasure and the Good Life
  Daniel Russell (Oxford University Press, 2005) Google Books →
• The Birth of Rhetoric: Gorgias, Plato and their Successors
  Robert Wardy (Routledge, 1998) Google Books →
• Callicles and Socrates: Psychic (dis)harmony in Plato's Gorgias
  R. Woolf

Related episodes

• Plato’s Republic
  
  29 Jun, 2017 100 Philosophy
• Rhetoric
  
  28 Oct, 2004 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• Plato’s Symposium
  
  2 Jan, 2014 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• Aristotle’s Politics
  
  6 Nov, 2008 320 Political science
• The Examined Life
  
  9 May, 2002 100 Philosophy
• Virtue
  
  28 Feb, 2002 170 Ethics
• Happiness
  
  24 Jan, 2002 100 Philosophy
• Friendship
  
  2 Mar, 2006 170 Ethics
• Socrates
  
  27 Sep, 2007 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
• Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
  
  2 Nov, 2023 170 Ethics

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Programme ID: m0011rzy

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0011rzy

Auto-category: 184 (Plato and his works)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, Plato's Gorgias is one of his most striking dialogues, addressing the real nature of power and freedom and the relationship between pleasure and true self-interest.